It took me thirty-five years to recover from the autumn smells that haunt me — the smells I associate with cotton harvesting and Soviet cotton campaigns in Uzbekistan. I picked cotton as a student at one of Tashkent’s universities in 1979, 1980, and 1981, living for at least a month on wooden bunks in field …
Autumn in Tashkent has been a theme explored by both painters and photographers. Vladimir Petrov’s paintings, Soviet photographs from the 1960s–1990s, and contemporary 21st-century images allow us to see how the appearance of Uzbekistan’s capital has changed. Autumn in Tashkent in Vladimir Petrov’s works Autumn Tashkent in the 1950s in Petrov’s works Soviet painter and …
Independence Day of Uzbekistan (history) Uzbekistan’s Independence Day has been celebrated annually on September 1 since 1992. In Uzbek, it is called O’zbekiston Respublikasi Mustaqilligi kuni — Independence Day of the Republic of Uzbekistan. This day was established in honor of the proclamation of the country’s state independence from the USSR. This happened on August …
Recently, I realized when I missed my chance to become rich — in August 1991, when I happened to be on that very square in Moscow, at that very hour, just a few dozen meters away from the future president of Russia. I was near the tank, but didn’t climb up I saw Yeltsin being …
Chilla in Uzbekistan means 41°C in the shade today, and 43°C is expected in the coming days. That’s the temperature in the capital — in the regions, it’s even higher. In direct sunlight, it likely reaches 60°C. You can’t even touch the car door — it’s scorching hot. What is сhilla? Chilla, also known as …