Uzbekistan: an overview

Twenty years into independence, Uzbekistan's Soviet past still remains a politically painful and academically underexamined subject, resulting in major gaps in the historical narratives of the society. The government of the newly independent nation quickly embarked upon reviewing and revising pre-Soviet and Soviet history, relating it to the current political agendas. Most scholarly research has focused on current-day matters, responding to the market and to the availability of data. Scarce references to the Soviet period tend to focus mainly on early the Soviet years (creation of nations, collectivization, education, etc. ) . These circumstances point to a pressing need for a more comprehensive and systematic inquiry into the Soviet past of the region, particularly on matters that continue to shape social and political agendas, to understand the nature of ongoing changes in the field of education in post-Soviet Uzbekistan.