Published October 17, 2021

As a journalist in the 1990s based in Moscow, Jeff Lilley wrote about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of 15 independent republics. He covered Russia's relations with Asia and reported from three Olympics Games. His first book, China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage and Diplomacy (Public Affairs, 2004) presents a fascinating portrait of an American family’s engagement with Asia in the 20th century. Lilley moved to Central Asia in 2004. During a three-year posting in Kyrgyzstan, he started reading the works of Chinghiz Aitmatov, slept in yurts, drank fermented mare’s milk and hiked in the country’s beautiful mountains. That led to his second book, completed over ten years as he worked in the field of democracy and governance support in Washington, DC and the Middle East. Have the Mountains Fallen? Two Journeys of Loss and Redemption in the Cold War was published by Indiana University Press in 2018. Jeff works as Director of Monitoring and Evaluation for American Councils for International Education, based in Washington, DC. Recorded July 2, 2021

Show Notes:

• 03:00 “I found out my dad was a CIA agent when I was 16.”
• 05:08 “I was a child of the Cold War.”
• 10:13 A privileged expatriate childhood in the German colony of Qingdao in prewar China
• 11:44 The desire to birth a modern China through an ideology that was completely alien and antagonistic to the American way.
• 13:55 A father who fought the spread of communism throughout Southeast Asia through a series of covert operations.
• 16:30 A front row seat to the US-China rapprochement and a belief that the best way to deal with China was to engage with China.
• 18:33 Why is it that democracy in China never followed the trajectory that it did in Korea during Amb. James R. Lilley’s tenure?
• 20:21 One of the best American accounts of the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989
• 24:19 On being a junior high school waiter at a Chevy Chase luncheon with senior Chinese leadership and George H. W. Bush
• 27:44 The classic Yale gentleman
• 35:30 There are more students of English in Russia than there are of Russian in the United States
• 39:00 Covering Kyrgyz acrobats for Ringling, Barnum and Bailey brothers
• 45:25 Chinghiz Aitmatov: one of the most prominent non-Russian authors in the Soviet Union
• 51:32 The Soviet Union wasn’t all bad
• 58:22 The Islamist threat in post-Soviet Central Asia
• 1:02:33 The borders of post-Soviet Central Asia are as random and problematic as the borders in the post-colonial Middle East
• 1:06:20 The bright, smart and plugged-in younger generation of Central Asia

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