Laboratory of Socialist Development

Laboratory of Socialist Development grapples with how universal ideas were negotiated locally and ultimately reshaped. Throughout the book, Kalinovsky demonstrates how the modernizing paradigm changed, as large-scale investment failed to yield the hoped for result for both European and Soviet modernizers, who sought to recreate European style modernity in the Third World and Central Asia.

~Europe Now

Laboratory of Socialist Development leaves a certain nostaliga for the more hopeful times of the Soviet 1960s and early 1970s. The book's mediations are wide-ranging and fascinating.

~Russian Review

This book is not only highly informative to readers familiar with the Soviet realm, but its references to 'modernisation' and 'development' projects around the world also make the book relevant to readers not familiar with the context of Tajikistan. Kalinovsky offers a very rich and multidimensional account of the way in which Tajikistan was developed under Soviet rule.

~Inner Asia

A pleasure to read, and it has given me the rare opportunity to write a review in which praise does not have to be accompanied by criticism. Scholars in several different fields will likewise read this book with profit.

~Central Asian Affairs

A towering achievement. It is by far the best existing study of the Soviet approach to development at home.

~H-Diplo

Historians in many fields will appreciate the strength of this book for Kalinovsky's respect for oral histories and memoirs, his close attention to international and domestic political intrigues, and his concern with the less closely studied latter half of the Soviet era in Central Asia... This is a book I would be pleased to assign in any level of undergraduate and graduate history class.

~American Historical Review

Its major merit [is] to inscribe Central Asian and Soviet history into the broader post-war and post-colonial history of development. It will provide inspiration and food for thought for further considerations about what socialist development was... Besides, the book provides the first coherent political, social, and intellectual history of Soviet Tajikistan and is thus an important contribution to Central Asian studies.

~Slavic Review