Course Catalogue

View Specification Document | Reading List

This course is designed to provide honours students with an advanced introduction to the politics and international relations of post-Soviet Central Asia - a region that is here defined as the ensemble of the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The course's core aim is to stimulate a critical reassessment of the external and internal facets of Central Asia's political evolution in the post-Soviet era.

One 2 hour class per week

This course may not be running this year. For further information please check the CEES Moodle page or contact the subject directly.

Mandatory Entry Requirements

General Honours entry requirements

Recommended Entry Requirements

Grade C in Central and East European Studies or cognate social science or humanities Level 2

None

1Assessment

■ A 2500 words essay (50 %) (Students will be provided with essay questions during the subject's opening seminar). Essays will relate to the substantive themes raised in the course, and will be assessed against both sound factual knowledge, and evidence of analytical and theoretical development. Full written feedback will be given. 

■ An unseen written exam (50 %) 

Reassessments are normally available for all courses, except those which contribute to the Honours classification. For non-Honours courses, students are offered reassessment in all or any of the components of assessment if the satisfactory (threshold) grade for the overall course is not achieved at the first attempt. This is normally grade D3 for undergraduate students and grade C3 for postgraduate students. Exceptionally it may not be possible to offer reassessment of some coursework items, in which case the mark achieved at the first attempt will be counted towards the final course grade. Any such exceptions for this course are described below. 

This course aims to present honours students with an advanced introduction to the politics and international relations of post-Soviet Central Asia - a region that is here defined as the ensemble of the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

The course offers an excursus into the principal dynamics that influenced Central Asia's socio-political evolution between the 1860s and the post-Soviet era. To this end, the course's structure is organised around two main modules. Initially (Weeks 2-4), the seminars will follow a chronological continuum that presents the key developments in the pre-independence history of the region. Here, students' attention will be directed towards the evolution of Central Asia's ideas of statehood and nationhood in the tsarist and Soviet eras. This initial segment hence identifies the main focus of the course, which will devote equal attention to top-down political processes and their impact(s) upon the local population.

The course's second module (Week 5-10), in turn, is focussed on the post-Soviet era, and aims at describing how the achievement of independence altered 1) the élites' perceptions of statehood; 2) the population's perceptions of nationhood and 3) Central Asia's place in the international relations of the post-Cold War era. In this context, the seminars will outline the emergence of independent political processes in Central Asia, to facilitate the students' understanding of the divergent socio-political paths upon which the five republics have embarked since 1991.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

■ demonstrate coherent knowledge of the political evolution of post-Soviet Central Asia;

■ identify the principal connections between post-Soviet political developments and the region's historical evolution in the pre-independence era;

■ critically evaluate the different state approaches to post-Soviet socio-political transformation;

■ establish congruent relations between the domestic and the external facets of regional post-Soviet politics; and

elaborate the knowledge acquired during the course in coherent, well-structured and sophisticated written essays and oral presentations.

■ Enhance employability through the development of autonomous learning and communication skills.

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.