A Review of Nick Megoran, Nationalism in Central Asia: A Biography of the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan Boundary. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017, 348 pp.

Abstract

The review considers Nick Megoran’s new interpretations of the history of nationalism in the former Soviet countries of Central Asia. Megoran, who examines modern nation-building, claims that nationalisms as political projects in different countries encounter the local residents’ moral maps, in which ethnicity does not have a leading role. However, the reviewer believes that Megoran’s narrative is guided by the logic of unavoidable nationalism, materialization of national borders, and ethnicization of local identities.