“Through the lens of the legendary weekly satire Molla Nasreddin, the Caucasus in the early 20th century is seen as a hotbed of progressive ideas and characters. The heavily illustrated Molla Nasreddin addressed issues such as gender equality, education, colonialism, and Islam’s integration of modernity – all of which remain as relevant and pressing today as when the magazine was first published more than a century ago. In 2011, Slavs and Tatars translated the journal, arguably the most important periodical of the Muslim world in the 20th century, read from Morocco to India. In doing so, the artists had to negotiate issues such as freedom of speech, self-censorship, not only in the waning days of the Russian empire but in liberal societies in the early 21st century.”