The Soviet state promised its citizens liberation from the shackles of an outmoded past. Soviet modernism after 1945 even found enthusiastic followers on the Central Asian periphery. But from the 1960s at the latest public criticism grew loud. A small group of intellectuals around Chinghiz Aitmatov criticized the decay of traditions, the repression of Islam and the increasing environmental destruction. This triggered a gradual process of delegitimisation of Soviet rule. The volume analyses this process, using the example of the Soviet Republic of Kyrgyzstan, ranking it alongside global historical contexts of decolonisation, Cold War and a growing criticism of modernism.