National identity for the Tajiks, the Uzbeks and the Turkmens is a construct derived from the Soviet period. Over seventy years of Soviet social engineering and efforts at creating a Soviet community have led to the unintended emergence of aspiring "national" elite and intelligentsia groups, trained and educated in their "national" languages and identifying Soviet-defined administrative territories as their "national" motherlands. The Soviet trained elite and intelligentsia groups in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan were responsible for the smooth transition to the post-Soviet era, and thus...