Spotlight on Central Eurasia Series //

The talk addresses rural life, attempting to represent people's hopes and fears about life beyond collective farming. Peasants and other agrarian villagers welcomed Uzbekistan's independence in 1991 with great expectations and some anxiety. For two decades now, few of the state's declarations about future prosperity and freedom seem to bear even a vague relation to reality. Rather, the agrarian population has faced unremitting material hardships, brutal state repression, and the major opportunity for the youth and able-bodied has been either migration to cities or to countries abroad.

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