Ah, that's a shame. But I will keep an eye out from now on. If my trip to Karelia this spring will be possible, it will be a great opportunity to check out local culture besides gorgeous views.

Uzbekistan is a lovely country. Quite harsh climate though. Insanely hot summer (+45°C easily) and quite cold winters (-15°C this winter, which may not sound too much for Finland, but thats feels like -30 in Siberia). Tashkent or Toshkent depends on which language you speak, uzbeks say Toshkent (Tosh - stone, Kent - city), but again those who speak Russian do call it Tashkent so both ways are appropriate. It's the capital and very beautiful at that with more then 2000 years of history. But the real troves of history are big old cities like Bukhara Khiva and Samarkand. They are even older with carefully preserved historic buildings going way back to glorious days of Amir Temur. The most impressive display is the paint which still hold its original colour. It's quite amazing to see contrast of nearby desert and cloudless sky with buildings that sport blue and green colours. The secret of that paint sadly is lost but most popular theory is that valuable gems were grinded to dust and used for that purpose, which I believe myself to be true, as that was created at peak of Timurid Empire and it had resources for that kind of showoff. Tashkent hovewer have much less of those historic building left as it was devastated by earthquake which leveled most of the city in 1966. It's quite a historic event and one of the reason why many uzbeks remember USSR fondly, as the call was made to rebuild Tashkent and it was answered. In 3 years city was complely rebuilt and modernized, many of those who helped later stayed as well and formed new local intelligence which is never bad to have young blood with knowledge.

The book you mentioned is from memories of much darker times. Uzbeks themselves don't really like to remember those. Even history books in schools were quite short on that subject.