Imperial Desert Dreams - Cotton Growing and Irrigation in Central Asia, 1860-1991

Title Page

Copyright

Table of Contents

Body

Acknowledgements

Introduction

People, Geography, and Agriculture

Concepts, Approaches, and Questions

Sources, Languages, and Transliteration

I. Russian Colonial Rule in Turkestan, 1860–1917

The Motivation for the Conquest

The “Blossoming Oases”

A Cotton Fever

Local “Customs” and Local Knowledge

Engineers' Fantasies

The Ancient Riverbed of the Amu Darya

The Opening Up of the Hungry Steppe

The “Obituary List” of Failures and Moral Superiority

The Striving for “Cotton Autonomy”

The Legal Framework and Scepticism about “Capitalism”

The Ministry of Agriculture and the Turkestan Agricultural Society

The Taming of Nature through Infrastructure, 1910–1914

The First World War

Conclusion

II. Soviet Nation-Building and Stalinism, 1917–1944

The Advent of the Bolsheviks

Georgii K. Rizenkampf and his Cotton and Irrigation Program

“National Delimitation” and the “Land-Water Reform”

The Collectivization of Agriculture and the First Five-Year Plan

The Attack on “Bourgeois Specialists”

Haste, Coercion, and Incentives: Cotton Growing in the 1930s

Progressive Methods in Agriculture and the Experience of the Peasants

Terror

Stagnation in Irrigation Construction and Management

Scientific Institutes and the Training of (Indigenous) Specialists

“People's Construction”

The All-Union Agricultural Exhibition of 1939 and the Republics' National Designs

The Second World War

Conclusion

III. High Modernism in Central Asia, 1945–1969

Stalinism and Cotton Growing after the War

Agricultural Politics after Stalin

The Educational Boom and the Training of Indigenous Experts

The Hungry Steppe: a Microstudy

The New Zone

The Memoirs of the “Hungrysteppers”

Akop Sarkisov and the Recruitment of Cadres

Leadership Styles in the “Hungry Steppe Construction Trust”

Personal Networks: from Yangier to Tashkent to Moscow

Central Asians and the Druzhba narodov

“Teachers and Educators”

The “River of Happiness” – the Karakum Canal

The Drainage Problem

The Backwardness of the Others

“Engineerization”, “Chemicalization”, and “Mechanization”

Local Knowledge

“Irrational” Water Usage: the 1960s

Conclusion

IV. A Time of Crisis, 1970–1991

The Water Crisis

The Diversion of Siberian Rivers as a Solution to the Problem

The Cotton Crisis

The Individual Experience

Nature Protection and De-Stalinization

The Society for the Protection of Nature

An Ecocritique Emerges

The Cotton Scandal

Politics and Opposition during Perestroika

Debates in the Press and Environmental Scandals: Health

The Diversion Debate

The Vodniki under Fire

The Reaction of the Authorities

The Growth of Ethnic Conflict

Chemicals in Agriculture

Cotton and National Pride

A Feeling of Loss and Despair

Conclusion

Conclusion

High Modernism

Continuities between the Tsarist and Soviet Periods

Indigenization and the Cotton Contract

The Crisis of Soviet Modernity and Environmental Aspects

Central Asia Post-Soviet

Glossary

List of Maps and Illustrations

Bibliography

Index