Since the demise of Soviet power, the newly independent republics are redefining their identities and their relations with the world at large. In Central Asia, which lies at the crossroads of several cultures, the emerging trends are complex and ambiguous.In this volume, leading experts explore factors that have driven the region's historical development and that continue to define it today: overlapping Islamic, Russian, and steppe cultures and their impact on attempts to delimit national borders and to create independent states; the legacy of Soviet and earlier imperial rule in economic and...