A Sobering Reminder

Given our typically short collective memories, I sometimes struggle with how to convince people of the relevance of my academic work. Why should we care about Eastern Europe now that the Cold War is long over? CNN has a compelling story about how some people are still experiencing the effects of that period. It's a sobering reminder that the consequences of political policies often outlive the policymakers (and in this case, the political regimes) that made them. It's also quite a different look at Kazakhstan that what you might have seen in Borat.