A nation must think before it acts.
Meeting in Tashkent in January 1993, the presidents of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and the chairman of Tajikistan’s — parliament concluded their discussion of common concerns with what they saw to be a momentous declaration. The collective name of the region they shared would no longer be known by the Soviet-era term of “Sredniaia Aziia i Kazakhstan” (Middle Asia and Kazakhstan) but would now become “Tsentral’naia Aziia,” or Central Asia.