This website is the result of the work done by the spring 2009 Historical Journalism class at the American University of Central Asia (AUCA) in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The class, the website, and the resulting book were conceived, organized, and edited by Sam Tranum, who was then an Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism & Mass Communications at the American University of Central Asia.

The Historical Journalism course syllabus is available for instructors interested in duplicating this project. During the course, the students – as a group – chose nine topics to explore, based on their own interests. They then prepared a list of questions on each topic.

The Kyrgyz students found their interview subjects through family, friends, and acquaintances. The Turkmen, Uzbek, and Tajik students worked through Kyrgyz friends and through Bishkek organizations that serve the elderly, including the Babushka Adoption Foundation (http://www.babushkaadoption.org) to find interview subjects.

Before each interview, the students explained the purpose of the project and asked each interview subject to sign a consent form. After each interview, the students checked with the interview subjects to make sure that they were comfortable with having the stories they had told published, and then had them sign a “deed of gift” form.

The consent and deed of gift forms are available in English , Russian , Kyrgyz , and Uzbek . They were adapted from consent and deed of gift forms found (in English) on website of the Indiana University Center for the Study of History and Memory (http://www.indiana.edu/~cshm). The students prepared the translations.

During the interviews, the students began by asking the interview subjects to tell their life stories and asking follow-up questions to explore interesting topics in more detail. Once the interview subjects ran out of things to say, the students turned to the question list they had prepared to continue the interview. They recorded all the interviews with digital audio recorders.

After each interview, the students photographed their interview subjects and asked to borrow any old photos or other archival materials they might have. To ensure that they completed all the steps of the interviewing process, the students completed a checklist for each interview.

The students transcribed the interviews and translated them into English and – if the interview was not conducted in Russian – into Russian. (A Russian-language version of this website may be available in the future). For each interview, the students provided the project coordinator transcripts in English and Russian, a consent forms, a deed of gift form, a digital audio recording, photographs of the interview subjects, and any archival photographs or other materials they gathered.

The project coordinator edited the English-language transcripts. Sometimes this involved simply fixing grammatical mistakes. Other times it involved turning question-and-answer-style interviews transcripts into narratives (to make them more accessible for readers). It also involved adding footnotes to help those unfamiliar with the region understand the stories.