Sovietistan: Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan
SynopsisPlot
Traveling alone, Erika Fatland is a true adventurer in every sense. In Sovietistan, she takes the reader on a compassionate and insightful journey to explore how their Soviet heritage has influenced these countries, with governments experimenting with both democracy and dictatorships. In Kyrgyzstani villages, she meets victims of the tradition of bride snatching. She meets German Mennonites that found paradise on the Kyrgyzstani plains 200 years ago.
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About this book
Sovietistan is a travel account by Norwegian social anthropologist Erika Fatland, covering all five Central Asian republics: Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Fatland traveled alone through the region, observing how decades of Soviet rule shaped each country's politics, culture, and daily life after independence. The five nations share a common Soviet past but have taken sharply different paths since 1991, with some governments moving toward democratic structures and others toward authoritarian control.
In Kyrgyzstan, Fatland visits rural villages where the practice of bride snatching persists, a tradition in which young women are taken, sometimes by force, into marriage. She also encounters communities of German Mennonites whose ancestors settled on the Kyrgyzstani plains roughly two centuries ago, forming distinct enclaves that survived both tsarist and Soviet periods. These encounters sit alongside broader observations about identity, borders, and the friction between old customs and post-Soviet realities across the region.
The book is structured country by country, giving each republic its own section. Fatland draws on conversations with local people, officials, and outsiders to build a ground-level picture of a region that remains unfamiliar to many readers outside of it.
