Word: beishenov
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...rugged, snow-mantled mountainside above Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, Joloi Beishenov tends his flock on horseback, as his ancestors did centuries ago. During the cold season he shelters his 70 sheep in two traditional canvas yurts and lives alone in a spartan wooden shack until the warm weather brings his family up from the lowlands. This spring there is another new season, the opening out of the former Soviet Union; Beishenov has heard about new economic reforms, and hopes to rent from a neighboring state farm the strip of stony pasture he uses for grazing. But he is unmoved...
...Beishenov may soon get his wish. Since the Soviet Union collapsed five months ago, more dramatic changes have been taking place in Central Asia than the sheepherder could ever imagine. Freed from control by Moscow, a vast stretch of the Eurasian continent populated by more than 50 million predominantly Muslim, Turkic-speaking peoples has unfolded to the outside world. The former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan never agitated for the breakup of the union and even served as a passive but powerful prop for the communist regime. Once centralized Soviet control began to split apart, however...
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