Red Odyssey: A Journey Through the Soviet Republics

With the breakup of the Soviet Union a reality, headlines are full of names of cities and republics unfamiliar to most Americans. In Red Odyssey, Marat Akchurin vividly describes these lands and people, taking readers along with him on a journey through the Soviet Moslem and other ethnic territories during their last days under Soviet domination. Red Odyssey brings to life the former Soviet Union’s colorful, diverse landscapes and cultures, from Kazakhstan, which remains in possession of large numbers of nuclear weapons, to Uzbekistan and Tadzhikistan, now being rocked by political and ethnic riots; to Turkmenia, one of the poorest regions in the country, populated by polygamous nomads; to Azerbaijan, which is locked in a territorial war with Armenia. Akchurin’s keen, perceptive eye, his taste for adventure, and his intimate knowledge of the former Soviet republics—their histories, cultures, legends, folklores, politics, and ethnicities—allow him fully to explore and describe a nation never before seen by Western eyes. Wending his way through the backwaters of this fractured superpower, he visits new towns and old haunts, friends and family, poets, artists, scholars, singers, outlaws, and politicians. The result is a highly personal, anecdotal, resonant portrait of the last great empire on earth in the midst of a new revolution.