Marianne Ruth Kamp
Adrienne Edgar looks closely at intermarriage in the USSR to ask key questions about notions of race, nationality, primordialism, and the state. The words of her interviewees take center stage, shedding light on the experiences of people in mixed marriages throughout Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.
Ronald Grigor Suny
Adrienne Edgar unpacks the complexities behind progressive Soviet programs celebrated as the marker of success of Leninist nationality policy, telling a story full of insights and paradoxes about an experiment to move beyond race and nationality and create a new people.
Donald J. Raleigh
An original historian of Soviet Central Asia and of the Soviet experience, Adrienne Edgar has crafted a valuable and interesting book that grapples with one of the central issues that faced the Soviet state: how to promote the development of an internationally minded Soviet person.
Adeeb Khalid
Adrienne Edgar opens a fascinating window into an unusual corner of everyday life in late-Soviet Central Asia. This masterful work provides unprecedented insights into how Soviet notions of internationalism interacted with those of nationality and tradition in the lived experience of ordinary Soviet citizens who married across cultural lines.
Paul Spickard
Writing with grace and moral force, Adrienne Edgar brings us the lives of ethnically and religiously intermarried people in post-Soviet Central Asia. She reveals their hearts. She forces us to contemplate the gap between human experience and government policy, and the pain that can result.
