Historical Fortunes of Jews of the Middle Asia

Appearance in the region, history, exodus

As an epigraph to the contents of the book, Heinrich Heine's saying may be quoted: "It's an old story but it's new forever".

The book is a wide historical description including the period since the times of the Russian Empire (with notices on earlier times) till nowadays. It may be considered as an attempt to reconstruct one of the elements of the richest and variegated (like mosaic) ethnic and cultural situation existed in the USSR.

Wide diapason of problems has been examined: state of Jews in Muslim region, specifics of cultural, economic and political life in Jewish communities - those of Middle Asian and European Jews. For the first time arising of Zionist movement in Turkestan as well as participation of Jews in political parties of Turkestan have been reconstructed. Great role of Jews in development of urkestan/Uzbekistan, their contribution into modernization of the region, their heroism in the World War II have been demonstrated. Conditions in the Middle Asia at the Soviet time, Stalin's period of persecution against of Jews etc. have been described in detailed manner.

Examination of these problems has been given at a wide background, since the history has been included into wide and complicated historical context repeating more or less the fate of many minorities in the Russian Empire/USSR, keeping their own specifics at the same time.

The author has used a lot of little known and unknown facts and archive sources. That makes the book an interesting one for wide reader's audience.