| Publication |
2009.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Drawing on field research conducted between 2002 and 2008, including interviews with leading Turkmen 'court' artists and sculptors, personal observation of official events, and analysis of regime texts, this essay seeks to explore the intersections between official history, commemorative strategy, community memory, public sculpture and geopolitics in post-Soviet Turkmenistan. An illuminating example of this interplay is the commemoration and symbolisation of the Great Patriotic War, which has presented a complex challenge to authorised renditions of Turkmen identity, requiring the country's post-Soviet elites to devise new strategies, symbols and vocabularies to direct and accommodate, somewhat ineffectually, popular remembrance practices and the fleeting public visibility of the country's ethnic Russian minority.
|