This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of youth, in all its diversity, in Muslim Central Asia and the Caucasus. It brings together a range of academic perspectives, including media studies, Islamic studies, the sociology of youth, and social anthropology. While most discussions of youth in the former Soviet South frame the younger generation as victims of crisis, as targets of state policy, or as holy warriors, this book maps out the complexity and variance of everyday lives under post-Soviet conditions. Youth is not a clear-cut, predictable life stage. Yet, across the region, young people’s lives show forms of experimentation and regulation. Male and female youth explore new opportunities not only in the buzzing space of the city, but also in the more closely monitored neighbourhood of their family homes. At the same time, they are constrained by communal expectations, ethnic affiliation, urban or rural background and by gender and sexuality. While young people are more dependent and monitored than many others, they are also more eager to explore and challenge. In many ways, they stand at the cutting edge of globalization and post-Soviet change, and thus they offer innovative perspectives on these processes. This book was published as a special issue of Central Asian Survey.

Youth and Rock in the Soviet Bloc explores the rise of youth as consumers of popular culture and the globalization of popular music in Russia and Eastern Europe. This collection of essays challenges assumptions that Communist leaders and Western-influenced youth cultures were inimically hostile to one another. While initially banning Western cultural trends like jazz and rock-and-roll, Communist leaders accommodated elements of rock and pop music to develop their own socialist popular music. They promoted organized forms of leisure to turn young people away from excesses of style perceived to be Western. Popular song and officially sponsored rock and pop bands formed a socialist beat that young people listened and danced to. Young people attracted to the music and subcultures of the capitalist West still shared the values and behaviors of their peers in Communist youth organizations. Despite problems providing youth with consumer goods, leaders of Soviet bloc states fostered a socialist alternative to the modernity the capitalist West promised. Underground rock musicians thus shared assumptions about culture that Communist leaders had instilled. Still, competing with influences from the capitalist West had its limits. State-sponsored rock festivals and rock bands encouraged a spirit of rebellion among young people. Official perceptions of what constituted culture limited options for accommodating rock and pop music and Western youth cultures. Youth countercultures that originated in the capitalist West, like hippies and punks, challenged the legitimacy of Communist youth organizations and their sponsors. Government media and police organs wound up creating oppositional identities among youth gangs. Failing to provide enough Western cultural goods to provincial cities helped fuel resentment over the Soviet Union’s capital, Moscow, and encourage support for breakaway nationalist movements that led to the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. Despite the Cold War, in both the Soviet bloc and in the capitalist West, political elites responded to perceived threats posed by youth cultures and music in similar manners. Young people participated in a global youth culture while expressing their own local views of the world.

Frustrated Democracy in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan follows a newly independent oil-rich former Soviet republic as it adopts a Western model of democratic government and then turns toward corrupt authoritarianism. Audrey L. Altstadt begins with the Nagorno-Karabagh War (1988–1994) which triggered Azerbaijani nationalism and set the stage for the development of a democratic movement. Initially successful, this government soon succumbed to a coup. Western oil companies arrived and money flowed in—a quantity Altstadt calls "almost unimaginable"—causing the regime to resort to repression to maintain its power. Despite Azerbaijan's long tradition of secularism, political Islam emerged as an attractive alternative for those frustrated with the stifled democratic opposition and the lack of critique of the West's continued political interference. Altstadt's work draws on instances of censorship in the Azerbaijani press, research by embedded experts and nongovernmental and international organizations, and interviews with diplomats and businesspeople. The book is an essential companion to her earlier works, The Azerbaijani Turks: Power and Identity Under Russian Rule and The Politics of Culture in Soviet Azerbaijan, 1920–1940.

After the final collapse of the Soviet Union, the so-called 'last empire', in 1991, the countries of Central Asia - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan - and of the Caucasus - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia - became independent nations. These countries, previously production centres under the socialist planning system of the Soviet Union, have made enormous economic adjustments in order to develop - or attempt to develop - along capitalist lines. As this study will show, however, inequality in Central Asia and the Caucasus is widening, as the Soviet systems of healthcare and state provisions disappear. Rejecting the Cold War-era East/West paradigm often used to analyse the development of these nations, this study analyses development along the North-South lines which characterise the migration patterns and poverty levels of much of the rest of the developed world. This opens up new avenues of research, and helps us understand why it is, for instance, that this region is better characterised as a 'new South' - as skilled workers flood out of the territories and into Russia and Western Europe. Development in Central Asia and the Caucasus draws together detailed analyses of the development of migration economics as the region's oil wealth further enhances its strategic and economic importance to Russia, the US, the Middle East and to the EU.

The demise of state Socialisms caused radical social, cultural and economic changes in Eastern Europe. Since then, young people have been confronted with fundamental disruptions and transformations to their daily environment, while an unsettling, globalized world substantially reshapes local belongings and conventional values. In times of multiple instabilities and uncertainties, this volume argues, young people prefer to try to adjust to given circumstances than to adopt the behaviour of potential rebellious, adolescent role models, dissident counter-cultures or artistic breakings of taboo. Eastern European Youth Cultures in a Global Context takes this situation as a starting point for an examination of generational change, cultural belongings, political activism and everyday practices of young people in different Eastern European countries from an interdisciplinary perspective. It argues that the conditions of global change not only call for a differentiated evaluation of youth cultures, but also for a revision of our understanding of 'youth' itself – in Eastern Europe and beyond.

The Routledge Handbook of the Caucasus offers an integrated, multidisciplinary overview of the historical, ethno-linguistic, cultural, socio-economic and political complexities of the Caucasus. Covering both the North and South Caucasus, the book gathers together leading Western, Caucasian and Russian scholars of the region from different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Following a thorough introduction by the editors, the handbook is divided into six parts which combine thematic and chronological principles: Place, peoples and culture Political history The contemporary Caucasus: politics, economics and societies Conflict and political violence The Caucasus in the wider world Societal and cultural dynamics. This handbook will be an essential reference work for scholars interested in Russian and Eastern-European studies, Eurasian history and politics, and religious and Islamic studies.

The extraordinary account of the Cuban people’s struggle for survival in a post-Soviet world In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba faced the start of a crisis that decimated its economy. Helen Yaffe examines the astonishing developments that took place during and beyond this period. Drawing on archival research and interviews with Cuban leaders, thinkers, and activists, this book tells for the first time the remarkable story of how Cuba survived while the rest of the Soviet bloc crumbled. Yaffe shows how Cuba has been gradually introducing select market reforms. While the government claims that these are necessary to sustain its socialist system, many others believe they herald a return to capitalism. Examining key domestic initiatives including the creation of one of the world’s leading biotechnological industries, its energy revolution, and medical internationalism alongside recent economic reforms, Yaffe shows why the revolution will continue post-Castro. This is a fresh, compelling account of Cuba’s socialist revolution and the challenges it faces today.

Over the past century alone, Russia has lived through great achievements and deepest misery; mass heroism and mass crime; over-blown ambition and near-hopeless despair – always emerging with its sovereignty and its fiercely independent spirit intact. In this book, leading Russia scholar Dmitri Trenin accompanies readers on Russia’s rollercoaster journey from revolution to post-war devastation, perestroika to Putin’s stabilization of post-Communist Russia. Explaining the causes and the meaning of the numerous twists and turns in contemporary Russian history, he offers a vivid insider’s view of a country through one of its most trying and often tragic periods. Today, he cautions, Russia stands at a turning point – politically, economically and socially – its situation strikingly reminiscent of the Russian Empire in its final years. For the Russian Federation to avoid a similar demise, it must learn the lessons of its own history.

This expansive, lively introduction charts the connections between international youth cultures and the development of global media and communication. From 1950s drive-ins and jukeboxes to contemporary social media, the book examines modern youth cultures in their social, economic, and political contexts. Exploring the rise of young people as a distinct media market, the book examines the relation of youth to modern consumerism, marketing, and digital technologies. The chapters are packed with analysis of media representations of youth, debates about the media’s 'effects' on young audiences, and young people’s use of the media to elaborate identities and negotiate social relationships. Drawing on a wealth of international examples, the book explores the impact of globalisation and new media technologies on youth cultures around the world. Assessing a profusion of worldwide research, the book shows how modern youth cultures can only be understood as part of an international web of connections, exchanges, and experiences. With an ideal balance between detailed examples and engaging analysis, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in youth cultures and the modern media.