Hierarchies of trade in Yiwu and Dushanbe: the case of an Uzbek merchant family from Tajikistan

This article focuses on the trading trajectory of an Uzbek family of merchants from Tajikistan. This family runs businesses in both Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe, and China’s famous international trading city: Yiwu. The analysis is centred on the accounts placed by Tajikistan’s Uzbek merchants about their historically sustained experience, often across several generations, in trading activities. These merchants’ claims of belonging to a ‘historical’ trading community rather than being ‘newcomers’ to long-distance commerce are articulated in relation to notions of ‘hierarchies of trade’ as they evolve in a twofold relational model linking Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood and Dushanbe. I suggest that the forms of conviviality enacted in Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood need to be understood in terms of the historical, multinational and transregional contacts that have occurred within the spaces of the former Soviet Union, as well as along the China-Russia and China-Central Asian borders. Equally, the hierarchies of trade of Uzbek merchants from Tajikistan in Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood cut-across markers of identity that juxtapose the roles of Tajik and Uzbek communities in Tajikistan’s contemporary politics and economics

"The explosion and the echo". Monograph by V.M. Kryukov and M.V. Kryukov "CER 1929"

Review of the monograph by Vassili M. Kryukov and Mikhail V. Kryukov, "CER 1929: Explosion and echo." This monograph is the third and final volume published in the framework of the research project "Documentary history of Soviet-Chinese relations (1917-1929)". The introduction gives a historiographical review of the Soviet-Chinese conflict of 1929 in Chinese Eastern railway, in which the authors identified 10 points of view (versions) of the events of 1929, and a review of sources. The text of the research, according to the problem-chronological principle, is divided into 12 chapters. The research is concluded with an "Epilogue" and a conclusion entitled "Some results of the research". The main advantage of the presented historical research is that the authors introduce into scientific circulation a huge array of documents from the collections of Russian, Chinese (Taiwan) and Western (UK, USA) archives. The disadvantage is that the authors did not address the materials stored in the regional archives of Russia and in various museums, they did not have access to the documents of the archives of the PRC. In the end, the monograph "KVZHD 1929" is the best today on the breadth of the source base and the depth of analysis of historical research. The release in Moscow of the book by V.M. Kriukov and M.V. Kriukov is a turning point in the development of the historiography of the Soviet-Chinese relations

HOW THE COMPARATIVE ANALYSES OF ARCHIVAL SOURCES AND HISTORIOGRAPHY CAN HELP FOR THE NEW UNDERSTANDING OF HISTORY

“The Explosion and the Echo. CER 1929.” Monograph by V.M. Kryukov and M.V. Kryuko