Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City, 1930-1966 (Central Eurasia in Context)
“Stronski’s groundbreaking research allows a vivid portrayal of how leaders imagined and transformed one of the Soviet Union’s most important cities, which was designed to be a model for a postcolonial world.”—Jeff Sahadeo, Carleton University, Canada“This fascinating study details how Soviet planners used cities as blunt instruments to eliminate the landscapes of imperial Russia and reshape, modernize, and even homogenize traditional societies across the USSR. Stronski illuminates the dramatic and often brutal ways in which Tashkent was conceived and constructed as the population, communications, and cultural hub for a transformed Central Asia.”—Fiona Hill, The Brookings Institution“A superb piece of research that brings together urban history, social history, and debates about modernity and colonialism in the Soviet periphery. Paul Stronski traces the multifaceted transformation of Tashkent from the 1930s to the 1960s, showing the impact of Soviet power and world war on the city’s physical and social environment. This is an important work on a region and period that have received far too little scholarly attention.”—Adrienne Edgar, University of California, Santa Barbara“One of this book’s most salient features is Stronski’s use of archival sources located at the federal, republic, and city levels, as well as his ability to negotiate documents in both Russian and Uzbek. An important addition to understanding how Soviet power was implemented and resisted in an urban center. Highly recommended.”—Choice “Enjoyable, smoothly written, wide in scope, and full of  fascinating points; it should be recommended to historians of the USSR  and their students, and can be used as a resource for research and  teaching alike.”—Russian Review“A solid account based on a large number of materials from Moscow as  well as from several Uzbek archives. These documents include not only  urban development plans but also private letters intercepted during  World War II about hunger and disease, despair and death in makeshift  shelters or wet factory basements.”—Slavic Review