This book is an attempt to offer the reader a historical and topical introduction to several countries in the core of Eurasia which until recently were little noticed except by a small community of scholars or people who had special reasons to do so. One result of this neglect has been a lack of adequate literature of the kind presented here: a general survey of the past and present of this part of the world.

Almost overnight, a few years ago, these countries – Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Sinkiang, and Mongolia – began to attract considerable attention from politicians, journalists, businessmen, and academicians. The reason was the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since the formation of that Union in the early 1920s, the first five of the group had been almost sequestered by the rulers of the Soviet empire. The outside world was barred from unhindered access and communication with them, and their own citizens found contact with that world both difficult and risky. Mongolia was officially independent, but its membership in the family of Soviet satellites had imposed on it similar strictures. For the same reason, the Soviet Union's demise affected it almost as profoundly as it did the five Union republics. We are also including Sinkiang, although the course of its recent history has followed a somewhat different path. The inclusion is justified, we think, because the province is geographically as well as historically an integral part of the group, and because the evolution occurring among its members is likely to affect Sinkiang as well.