Tamara Chikunova, a well-known Uzbek human rights activist who campaigned against the death penalty and torture, died in Italy on March 31. I first met her in 2000, on the day she was told that her son had been executed. In April 1999, Tamara Chikunova’s 29-year-old son Dmitry was “invited” to a police station in …
Uzbekistan’s Honored Artist, theatre director and former artistic director of the State Academic Russian Drama Theatre of Uzbekistan, Vladimir Shapiro, has died. Below is a brief biography of the director and the author’s personal recollections of one of her meetings with him in the early 2000s. “His talented work enriched the palette of the country’s …
This is the continuation of our interview with Ján Bóry, Ambassador of Slovakia to Uzbekistan. In the first part of the interview, we discussed Schengen visas, tourism, and cultural ties between the two countries. In this concluding part, we focus on priorities, educational opportunities, and the ambassador’s personal views on the future of cooperation between …
In the room where I am about to meet Ján Bóry, Ambassador of the Slovak Republic to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, there are three flags — those of Slovakia, the European Union, and Uzbekistan — along with several tables. I choose a small round one. The ambassador’s secretary offers me coffee, tea, or water. I …
I met Nikolay Kucherskiy (Nikolai Kuchersky), a Hero of Uzbekistan and former director of the Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Combine (NMMC), several times in the late 1990s and early 2000s. At the time, NMMC was one of the country’s most closed-off enterprises, as it produced gold and uranium. Once, I was even flown to Navoi …
