Cultural Heritage - The Times Of Central Asia

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Cold War History

Kazakh Academic Kanysh Satpayev in Britain: A View from 1947

After the end of World War II, relations between the Soviet Union and Western countries began to deteriorate rapidly. Although Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union had been allies, the period known as the Cold War began. Winston Churchill's famous speech in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946, is often regarded as one of its defining early moments. Nevertheless, just over a year after the speech, a large official Soviet delegation visited Britain in March 1947. The delegation represented the Supreme Soviet, the Soviet Union's legislature, and arrived in London at the invitation of both houses of the British Parliament. Clement Attlee's Labour government supported expanding contacts with the Soviet Union despite growing disagreements over the postwar settlement in Europe. [caption id="attachment_59046" align="aligncenter" width="1600"] Soviet delegates at Karl Marx’s grave. From left: Kanysh Satpayev, president of the Kazakh SSR’s Academy of Sciences; mathematician N. I. Muskhelishvili; and Soviet official P. A. Shariya. The other individuals have not been identified.[/caption] The delegation consisted of 20 people and was led by Vasily Kuznetsov, chairman of the Soviet of Nationalities, one of the Supreme Soviet's two chambers. Among its members were Alexander Fadeev, head of the Union of Soviet Writers and author of The Young Guard, about Soviet youth resisting Nazi occupation during World War II, and the poet and writer Konstantin Simonov. Aviator Mikhail Gromov, a Hero of the Soviet Union who commanded a nonstop flight from Moscow across the North Pole to San Jacinto, California, in 1937, also joined the delegation. Kanysh Satpayev, president of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, was also among the invited delegates. [caption id="attachment_59047" align="aligncenter" width="1600"] Soviet delegates meeting Newcastle’s Lord Mayor Pearson. From left: Ukrainian poet N. P. Bazhan, test pilot M. M. Gromov, Kanysh Satpayev, an unidentified individual, Soviet official P. A. Shariya, Communist Party foreign policy department head M. A. Suslov, and Pearson.[/caption] The delegation stayed for almost a month, from March 13 to April 11, 1947. The visitors met with Prime Minister Attlee, Conservative opposition leader Churchill, and members of Parliament. According to Satpayev's notes, the participants visited the University of London, the Royal Society, the British Museum, industrial enterprises, and government institutions. Outside the capital, the delegation visited Newcastle, Sheffield, Cardiff, Manchester, Oxford, Cambridge, Stratford-upon-Avon, Coventry, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. [caption id="attachment_59048" align="aligncenter" width="1600"] Soviet delegates viewing armor in the White Tower at the Tower of London. Among the delegates, from right: A. M. Ivanov, Kanysh Satpayev, and M. Z. Babayev.[/caption] In his report following the trip, Satpayev claimed that the British organizers had tried to overwhelm the visitors with official events and limit their contact with ordinary workers: "It should be noted that government officials tried to organize our visits to industrial enterprises in such a way that the delegation had practically no opportunity to communicate with workers. Visits to factory workshops often coincided with lunch breaks. Sometimes the delegation was shown workshops during working hours, but these were places where there were few...

Tselinny Center

Tselliny HIMOYA Exhibition: Women’s Memory, Protective Amulets, and Colonial Legacies

Kazakh protective amulets incorporating family photographs are among the works on display at HIMOYA: Matrilineal Energies, Oracular Kin at the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture in Almaty. Elsewhere, a pregnant bird-woman stands at the boundary between life and death. Artists from Central Asia and beyond explore how inherited beliefs and women’s experiences help preserve cultural identity. The exhibition opened on October 15, 2026, and runs through April 4, 2027. It features more than 20 artists and is curated by Natasha Ginwala, who has previously worked on international projects, including the Gwangju and Sharjah biennials. [caption id="attachment_59058" align="aligncenter" width="682"] From Natasha Ginwala’s personal archive.[/caption] The title HIMOYA evokes protection across several linguistic traditions. In the participating artists’ works, that includes preserving ancestral memory. Speaking at the center, Alima Kairat, Tselinny’s artistic director, said the exhibition’s concept had developed over several years. “For Tselinny, HIMOYA is the culmination of a conversation that began in 2021. We gradually explored questions of maternal memory, rituals, protection, inherited ideas about shame, and care. These themes are deeply rooted in life in Kazakhstan and Central Asia, where ancestral knowledge continues to influence the present and helps us imagine the future in new ways,” she said. Female Figures and Ancestral Memory Ginwala’s curatorial concept centers on women’s experiences and knowledge passed down through generations. The artists draw on folk narratives and religious practices, including pre-Islamic steppe beliefs, to reconsider ideas about women’s roles and power. “During conversations with the artists as we prepared the project, different female figures emerged – nurturing and powerful figures, as well as ‘monstrous’ beings from folk tales, steppe mythology, and pre-Islamic cosmologies,” Ginwala said. In Kazakh tradition, genealogy is closely linked to the concept of zheti ata, the knowledge of seven generations of ancestors on the paternal side. The custom also served as the basis for prohibitions on marriage between close relatives. HIMOYA turns to another line of inheritance: the maternal one. The grandmother holds a particularly important place as a guardian of family memory. This theme intersects with the history of colonial and Soviet pressure on local beliefs. The artists explore how traditions once dismissed as backward or superstitious have survived through family practices and acquired new meanings in contemporary art. The Bird-Woman Between Two Worlds One of the exhibition’s central works is Gatekeeper by Rajni Perera, an artist born in Sri Lanka and based in Toronto. Her work draws on South Asian folklore and fantasy to explore migration and motherhood, including questions of reproductive rights. [caption id="attachment_59059" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] “Gatekeeper” by Rajni Perera. Image: Theo Frost.[/caption] The life-size sculpture was first presented at the 2025 Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates. It depicts a pregnant woman with features of a hornbill and a crow. Its surface is decorated with motifs inspired by azulejos, painted ceramic tiles widely associated with Portugal and shaped by Islamic decorative traditions. “When I was creating this figure, I was thinking about the umbilical cord because she is pregnant. She seems to pull life out...

Tourism

Tajikistan’s Panjakent Aims to Build Its Tourism Industry

The area around Panjakent in western Tajikistan has ancient ruins, including a UNESCO World Heritage site, as well as picturesque landscapes that have attracted more than 41,000 tourists so far this year. However, the area faces obstacles to development of its tourist industry, including rough roads that make it difficult for visitors to move around. Panjakent city is about 60 kilometers from Samarkand, an ancient city across the border in Uzbekistan whose spectacular cultural heritage makes it one of Central Asia’s major tourist draws. While the Panjakent region has a history extending back thousands of years, it has attracted relatively little international attention as Tajikistan takes steps to build up its tourism infrastructure. More than 41,000 tourists from many countries visited Panjakent in the first nine months of 2026, city officials said, according to Tajikistan’s state news agency Khovar. The city says the area has more than 300 historical monuments in addition to several major sites, including UNESCO-designated Sarazm, whose archaeology traces the development of human settlements in Central Asia from the fourth millennium BCE to the end of the third millennium BCE. Sarazm also provides evidence of trade and cultural ties among societies over a vast area “extending from the steppes of Central Asia and Turkmenistan, to the Iranian plateau, the Indus valley and as far as the Indian Ocean,” UNESCO has said. The U.N. cultural agency said the “proto-urban” site of Sarazm was a major regional center in the working of tin, copper, and other metals, and “is one of the places that gave birth to and saw the development of the major trans-Eurasian trade routes.” The tourism industry has been growing in Panjakent, which now has 24 travel companies, 11 “modern” hotels, 22 guest houses, and numerous restaurants and cafes, according to the city. It also said that a climbing base in the Kuli Kalon area outside Panjakent, which dates from the era of the Soviet Union, is still operating. The Khovar news agency reported that some problems are holding up further development of tourism in Panjakent, including a rough road on the 30-kilometer stretch between the villages of Ruknobod and Artuch. “Every year, tourists pass this road with difficulty,” Khovar reported. The agency also said that the tomb of Abu Abdullah Rudaki, regarded as a founder of Tajik-Persian classical poetry, needs significant repairs. Rudaki was born in Panjrud village near Panjakent and spent many years as a court poet in the Samanid capital of Bukhara. He is believed to have died around 941. While Rudaki is said to have been prolific as a poet, most of his work has been lost.

Art and Culture

Kazakhstan Joins Alliance for Cultural Heritage in Asia as Observer

Kazakhstan has been granted observer status in the Alliance for Cultural Heritage in Asia, an organization established at China's initiative. The Ministry of Culture and Information announced the decision on October 18 following a meeting in Hangzhou. Representatives from more than 20 countries attended. Kazakhstan hopes to pursue joint archaeological research and use new technologies to preserve historical monuments. The alliance was established in 2023 and is headquartered in Beijing. It has operated as an intergovernmental organization since 2024. It focuses on preserving Asia's historical heritage, supporting archaeological expeditions, restoration projects, and the exchange of scientific data. Kazakhstan has joined as an observer for now, with the possibility of full membership remaining open. At the meeting in Hangzhou, Kazakhstan's Vice Minister of Culture and Information, Aibek Sydykov, proposed joint research into the Silk Road, training for restoration specialists, and the use of digital technologies and artificial intelligence to assess the condition of historical sites. Silk Road heritage sites are of particular interest to Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is home to the remains of ancient settlements and archaeological complexes associated with this trade. Some are part of the UNESCO World Heritage property Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor, a transnational designation encompassing sites in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and China. The three countries already share obligations under UNESCO to preserve the Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor. In 2025, the World Heritage Committee called for outstanding management plans for the heritage sites to be completed and requested a joint report on their state of conservation by December 1, 2026. In March 2026, Kazakhstan announced that the Zharkent Mosque and Almaty's Ascension Cathedral had been added to UNESCO's Tentative List, an inventory of sites being considered for possible nomination to the World Heritage List.

Aral School

“It’s Not the Whole Story”: Aral School Participants Rethink Karakalpakstan

A proverb about seasonal food caught the attention of Australian researcher, multimedia artist, and producer Jess Nikitina-Li while she was at the Aral School in Nukus. “I’m interested in language, art and storytelling, and I didn’t really know what I would be working on during the program, but I became obsessed with this proverbial wisdom that kept coming up when we started asking questions about food systems in Karakalpakstan,” she told The Times of Central Asia. One proverb in particular became important to her work: “Three months of pumpkin, three months fish, three months melon, three months milk. All four seasons of the year the people are well fed and a lot of sweet fruit we have in our lands.” “This really grounded my thinking because it reflects my belief that people are not inherently depleted,” she said. “People become depleted through extraction. Seasonal abundance has always been in this land, and people know how to work with the seasons; people are adaptive.” The school is an initiative of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation (ACDF). Its first cohort studied food and water at a household level. Applications for the second cohort, which will explore the theme of “Climate and Landscape” from January to June 2027, are open until October 25. [caption id="attachment_56507" align="aligncenter" width="1774"] Image: ACDF[/caption] TCA spoke with participants about their work in Karakalpakstan. Nikitina-Li became particularly interested in the role of women within households, including kelin, a term referring to a young bride or daughter-in-law. “One of the key projects I worked on was a project called Tabak,” she said. “Tabak is a specifically resonant symbol in Karakalpakstan. It is the iron plate that everyone traditionally eats from.” Her work with women eventually led to the creation of a cooking collective called “The Wild Kelin,” through which participants explored traditional recipes, nutrition, seasonality, and the knowledge passed between generations. “I wanted to see what was important to them, what was relevant to their households, because that to me is the test of what is relevant to this region,” she said. “We did a lot of community programming, textbook research, field research, field recordings and filmmaking, but the most important thing for me was done in close collaboration with our local colleagues,” she told TCA. “This was really a priority for me. It was why I came here, to have this strong intercultural exchange and to make solidarities with the land and with the people who understand the land the best.” “We didn’t do this through this lens of people as victims, but through a lens of empowerment and understanding people as having agency - that they have an inherent capability of keeping themselves, and each other, alive,” Nikitina-Li said. “Something unique to this program was understanding how to create a community - a community of thinkers and makers who are grounded in the same principles, values and ethos, but who work so differently.” “My biggest takeaway from the first cohort is wow - this was very...

Cultural Heritage

The Art of the Witty Reply: How Uzbek Askiya Works

Imagine two people standing before an audience. One throws out a joke. The other has only a few seconds to grasp the meaning, pick up the wordplay, and fire back – preferably with something even sharper. The first responds again. Hesitate, miss the implication, or simply fail to make the audience laugh, and the round is lost. That is how askiya works – a traditional Uzbek contest of wit in which the conversation cannot be scripted in advance. In 2014, UNESCO inscribed askiya on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. But the genre lives on beyond festivals and recordings of old masters. Today, schoolchildren compete in askiya, young performers learn from their elders, and short performances circulate on social media. The Joke Is Only the Beginning Askiya usually involves two or more participants. They choose a common theme, one begins, and the others respond by seizing on words, double meanings, and unexpected associations in the previous speaker’s line. There is no time to step away and think of a better answer. A good askiyachi – an askiya performer – needs a keen sense of language, quick reactions, and the ability to instantly recognize where someone else’s thought can be taken. Almost anything can provide material: everyday situations, human habits, relationships, and events familiar to the audience. Humor also makes it possible to address subjects that are not always easy to laugh about in ordinary conversation. Askiya can poke fun at human weaknesses and comment on events around it, but it does so through verbal play rather than moralizing. UNESCO notes that the tradition is particularly closely associated with the Fergana Valley and the Tashkent region. Historically, most practitioners have been men. How Do You Teach Improvisation? The hardest part is passing the skill on to the next generation. A famous comedian’s joke can be memorized. In askiya, that is not enough. A performer has to hear the other person’s line, spot the trap hidden inside it, and find a way out before the audience loses interest. Traditionally, performers learned directly from a master. In Uzbekistan, this principle is known as ustoz-shogird – “master and apprentice.” It is used across many traditional arts, from music to crafts. The system is still at work in the Fergana Valley, one of the main centers of askiya. At a recent regional competition marking the 116th anniversary of Uzbek actor and comedian Soyib Khodjayev, the askiya club from School No. 57 in the city of Karasu took second place. The school of mastery named after Abdulkhay Makhsum Kazakov from Kurgantepa district won first place, while a team from Jalakuduk district finished third. Askiya was judged separately from other comic performances and theatrical miniatures. The distinction matters: a sketch can be rehearsed; a verbal duel cannot. Special schools of mastery also operate in districts of the Fergana region. Young performers train with experienced artists, preserving the traditional method of learning directly from a master. But a paradox remains: how do you teach...