The Union Republics and Contradictions in Gorbachev's Economic Reform

An American sovietologist assesses the economic pressures on the constituent republics of the Soviet Union from the outset of the Gorbachev era through early December of 1991. Following an overview of the center-periphery relations within the command-administrative system in the early 1980s, the author evaluates the impact of perestroyka on republic economies prior to the political transformation of the governments in the 1990s. The implications for territorial integration in the wake of the coup in August 1991 and the subsequent efforts to structure a new economic union between the republics are presented and analyzed in the concluding section. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: P20, P24.     

Ethnicity and the politics of heritage in Uzbekistan

The UNESCO office in Uzbekistan has been relatively successful in nominating cultural practices to The Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Selection for the List conveys prestige and draws international attention to local culture that is deemed of universal value. What is striking about the first successful nominations from Uzbekistan is that they point to the inseparability of Tajik and Uzbek culture, a touchy subject for both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In this article the author looks at how the politics of ethnic cultural heritage play out through these projects, highlighting the tensions between a rhetoric of diversity promoted both by UNESCO and by the official national ideology, and practices that demonstrate a more mundane, ethnically exclusive sense of national culture. Although ostensibly celebrating the rich diversity of Uzbekistan's national culture and eschewing the strict delineation of Tajik culture from Uzbek culture, the effect of UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage programmes is to perpetuate the occlusion of Tajik culture in Uzbekistan.     

越南的伊斯兰教

越南穆斯林以占族人为主,主要分布在南方的胡志明市、西宁省和安江市,人数约10万。越南伊斯兰教经阿拉伯和波斯商人传入,后受马来人影响较大。占族人与他族的族群差异以及越南政府的民族同化和宗教歧视政策造成族群偏见和越南穆斯林同伊斯兰世界的隔离,导致越南穆斯林在宗教知识与实践、信仰传承、文化教育、机构团体、社会融入等方面存在着诸多困难。其处境亟待越南政府的理解和支持,以及穆斯林世界的帮助。