On a wall in the Savitsky Museum of Art in Nukus, NW Uzbekistan, hangs a modest landscape painting from 1976 depicting the Moynaq fish canning factory. The factory itself is a relatively unobtrusive part of the scene and probably served more as a means of keeping the authorities from shipping the artist off to the gulag for the crime of rejecting the absurd values of Soviet Realism, as had happened to others. Art could not function as a means of…
In the golden age of education, that some politicians would still like us to return to, we were told that Europeans, preferably British, discovered everywhere, Europeans invented just about anything of any use and made the important scientific breakthroughs. When the rest of the world was mentioned it was likely to be with reference to what a marvellous job we had done bringing our enlightened values to their barbarian darkness. Of course I am being a tad facetious but it’s…
If you thought that equestrian sports were for upper class twits and the nearest the working classes should get to them is putting a tenner on the 3 30 at Chepstow then you ought to get yourself to Central Asia. Here in Uzbekistan, kupkari, the local variant of the traditional, regional game more commonly known as Buzkashi, is a sport for real men, on the kind of tough horses, which, if in England, would probably call your horse a poof,…
I wouldn’t normally have considered a post about Turkey as its somewhere you are probably reasonably familiar with, but it provided a suitable contrast to the atmosphere of city life I experienced in the neighbouring Caucasus. The instant I stepped off the bus in the port city of Trabzon on a Sunday afternoon it was obvious that it had a vitality which was missing throughout the Caucasus. Just the simple heart beat of everyday life hummed with an enthusiasm and…
When confronted by a hostel manager reluctant to discuss the price of a room but insisting on serving up tea with bread and jam, you tend to be suspicious as this is quite possibly a prelude to charging an extortionate rate, having made it awkward to walk away after such hospitality. This was the case in Zugdidi, Georgia, but was followed by the insistence that the room was, “no good”. Could this be some reverse psychology tactic to make me…
Near the epicentre of a devastating earthquake in 1988 Gyumri is a town that at first glance appears to have recovered fairly well: most buildings have been rebuilt, very few are still abandoned and some display minor damage, which if you didn’t know the history you could have put down to neglect. The graveyard, however told a different story. With a profusion of stones, monuments and graves packed tightly together, in what was hardly a small area, it obliged visitors…
In the unlikely event you don’t share my passionate interest in small wars, in forgotten corners of the world, your response to the name Nagorno Karabakh may well be, “where”? So let me fill you in. Back in 1998 in the heady days of the downfall of the USSR the mostly Armenian population of this neighbouring region of Azerbaijan reopened their long simmering claim for independence, which kicked off with peaceful protests in the capital Stepanakert. As you can imagine…
History is everything in Armenia, particularly its Christian heritage. In fact to question someone’s religion can be seen as questioning their very Armenian character. Given that it became the world’s first Christian state in 301 AD (followed in the next few decades by Georgia and Ethiopia) one could hardly blame them for thinking otherwise. Decades of atheist communism made not the slightest dent in their belief. So it comes as no surprise that the landscape is dotted with ancient monasteries…
Yerevan is nice. Thus Armenia’s capital city is dammed by faint praise. It’s difficult to find fault in the immaculately clean streets and plentiful parks and trees that any city need to smooth its harsh edges. Its stylish residents enjoying their espressos would not appear out of place in southern Europe. So whats the problem? A look at the night-time celebrations for the city’s 2795th birthday may give a clue. Such a ripe old age for a city is indeed…
If there was ever a total give away that you were in a dictatorship, it’s the profusion of huge images of one man around every town. If it’s a woman, it’s not a dictatorship. The twist here is that the images are of Heydar Aliyev, the deceased father of current president Ilham, as if his divine grace bestows legitimacy to the son. Although neither of them are up to Saddam Hussein’s standards you can be sure that none of those…
