Soviet Union Remembered : Documenting Visual Material for Central Asian Area Studies

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As indicated above, the task of recording, preserving and disseminating the qualitative data on what people experienced in their daily lives and on their relations to the ideology and political structure of the Soviet government Communist party is very urgent and important one. The urgency of this task comes from the fact that many of those who experienced Soviet life and those who have in-depth and detailed knowledge about how people lived at Soviet times are getting older with many of these people passing away. With them, they take away the data which, if properly collected, preserved and distributed, can serve as an essential supplement to the archival and other written sources of history. As indicated above, the selection method, number of interviewed and disparity in their economic, social, ethnic and religious status impacts the outcome of the interviews. Nevertheless, this kind of project provides a new source of information for understanding Socialist life and political structure. The major outcomes of this project were presented during international workshops in Istanbul (Eurasian Studies conference, March), South Korea (IICAS annual conference), Oral History Workshop in Stockholm,Oral History Workshop in Cambridge University (Department of Social Anthropology) and many others.These workshops, conference and seminars presented the data and served as venues for receiving feedback on how to preserve and disseminate this data. Therefore, the next challenge and task of this project is to design, build and functionalize the data-base on the oral history of everyday life in Central Asia.