This week, Guardian Cities is exploring in depth the oft-ignored and exceedingly difficult to report from cities of the five “Stans”: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, a quarter of a century after they became independent from the former Soviet Union.
From the bizarre architecture of the “trophy cities” to the joys and struggles of everyday urban life in some very unequal societies, our goal is to engage with the people who actually live in the Stans cities by publishing some of our reporting in the languages spoken there: not just Russian, often considered the language of the elite, but Turkmen, Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Tajik.
Authoritarian rule makes much of Central Asia off-limits to the global press: for the recent Asian Games in Turkmenistan, next to no international media were accredited.But it is more dangerous still for local reporters.
Electrician turned journalist Stanislav Volkov gives us a glimpse of life in “the Pyongyang of Central Asia”, the white marble capital of Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, where, for the crime of taking photographs of everyday urban scenes and sending them to a network of exiled journalists, Volkov was splashed with acid on the street.
The Guardian’s Moscow correspondent, Shaun Walker, is one of the few western journalists to have visited the Stans cities repeatedly, where he has documented the true social and humanitarian costs of the “trophy city” phenomenon.
His new in-depth look at the attempts of the former Kazakh capital, Almaty, to develop around the needs of its residents shows something different: an innovative take on urban development in a region where planning tends to be top-down.
On the other side of the coin, architecture critic Oliver Wainwright interrogates Astana, 20 years after the city on the steppes was founded by Nursultan Nazarbayev.The Kazakh dictator has essentially built an entire city as a monument to himself abetted by major global architects such as Norman Foster, who have helped Nazarbayev fulfil his vision even as the country’s human rights situation continues to deteriorate.
Models at Kazakhstan Fashion Week in Almaty last week present a look by designer Kamila Bakh. Photograph: Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters
Photographer Danil Usmanov and reporter Peter Leonard have explored the Kyrgyz people’s struggle for recognition in the illegal novostroika slums on the outskirts of Bishkek; later we will go behind the scenes at Bishkek’s only gay club to find out why it closed.
In Tashkent, Uzbekistan, the once-prosperous “city of bread” is taking tentative steps to open up to the wider world but Jo Lillis has been on the ground to ask whether the gleaming vision of Tashkent New City is worth the demolition of historic mashallas and thousands of evictions.
We’ll also report on the disappearing Soviet architecture of Dushanbe, the wildly ambitious planned ring of one million trees to insulate Astana from the cold, and the weird world of the Soviet-era “sanatoriums”, where visitors can get a radon bath before filling up on food in every conceivable shade of beige.
Above all, we hope this special focus can be an opportunity to hear from readers about life in this region.Do you live in one of the Stans cities, or have you spent time there?
We’re eager to hear your thoughts and experiences, so follow us on Facebook or share stories and pictures using #SecretStans on Twitter and Instagram and we’ll feature the most compelling contributions throughout the week.