Introduction

Subject: Introduction
From: Steve Fast (sfast@astel.kz)
Date: Wed Apr 28 1999 - 00:43:22 EDT

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27 Apr 1999

Allow me to introduce myself. I have been working for
Hurricane Kumkol Munay in Qizilorda, Kazakstan, as Cost
Accounting Manager for a little over two years. I've never
been to the Ferghana Valley, although the development issues
there do interest me very much. My first trip to the former
Soviet Union was in 1992 on an exchange program. Since then
I've worked for Ernst & Young in 1995 in the Mass
Privatization Program in Kazakstan and received my master's
degree in Russian studies from Harvard. My academic
interests in the regiona have focused on the politics of
economic reform in the region, and I wrote my master's
thesis on mass privatization in Kazakstan. Harvard was also
the place I had the good fortune to learn much about Central
Asia from John Schoberlein. Since I finished graduate
school, I have moved to Almati, Kazakstan and have been
working here.

My Central Asian interests mainly concern the politics of
economic development and reform and the formation of Central
Asian elites. In studying the politics of the region, it
seems to me that far too much emphasis is laid on placing
the governments of the states on a continuum between total
dictatorship and total democracy. What is more interesting
is understanding what groups the elites come from, how they
interact with each other, and what interests they have.

I am enjoying this list and hope that we will have many
interesting and fruitful discussions.

Regards
Steve Fast

--
Steve Fast
Professional Financial Consultant
Reply to qasimkhan@usa.net or
residence:
Almati, Kazakstan
011-7-3272-53-2780 (home phone, Almati)
permanent contact:
RR 1, Box 183
318 E. 3rd Str.
Optima, OK  73945-9759
USA
(580) 338-8193
"The skeptical, if admiring, lay observer [of subatomic
physics] may sometimes be reminded of the titanic labours of
intelligence and ingenuity expended at the end of the
nineteenth century to maintain scientific belief in the
'aether' before the work of Planck and Einstein banished it
into the museum of pseudo-theories together with the
'phlogiston.'"
       --Eric Hobsbawm in The Age of Extremes: A History of
the World, 1914-1991

• Next message: John Schoeberlein: "Membership of the Ferghana Valley list"
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