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

:	Julia Obertreis
:	Imperial Desert Dreams Cotton Growing and Irrigation in Central Asia, 1860-1991
:	Vandenhoeck& Ruprecht Unipress
:	9783847007869
:	Kultur- und Sozialgeschichte Osteuropas / Cultural and Social History of Eastern Europe
:	1
:	CHF 76.90
:

:	Kulturgeschichte
:	English

:	536
:	Wasserzeichen
:	PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
:	PDF

Beamte, Ingenieure und Wissenschaftler des Russischen Reiches und später der Sowjetunion planten die Ausweitung und Modernisierung der Bewässerungssysteme und des Baumwollanbaus in Zentralasien. Die Studie, die das heutige Usbekistan und Turkmenistan untersucht, betont die diskursiven und politischen Kontinuitäten über die Zäsur von 1917 hinweg. Einer der zentralen Topoi war die Umwandlung von ?toten? Steppen und Wüsten in ?blühende Oasen?. Der high modernism erreichte seinen Höhepunkt in den Nachkriegsjahrzehnten. Seit den 1970er Jahren entwickelte sich eine Öko-Kritik an der sowjetischen Modernisierung, die in der Perestrojkazeit an Fahrt aufnahm. Letztendlich trugen die ökologischen und ökonomischen sowie sozialen Folgewirkungen der wachstumsfixierten Modernisierung zum Zusammenbruch des kommunistischen Regimes bei. Officials, engineers and scientists in the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union envisaged the expansion and modernization of irrigation systems and cotton growing in Central Asia. Focusing on the region of today's Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, this book highlights the continuities in discourse and policies beyond the historical divide of 1917. One of the central topoi was the transformation of 'dead' lands into 'blossoming oases'. High modernism policies hit their peak in the post-war decades. From the 1970s, an ecological critique evolved which gained momentum in the Perestroika period. Ultimately, the grave ecological, economic and social consequences of the growth-fixated modernization contributed to the downfall of the Communist regime.

Prof. Dr. Obertreis ist Inhaberin des Lehrstuhls für Neuere und Neueste Geschichte mit dem Schwerpunkt der Geschichte Osteuropas an der Friedrich-Alexander-Universit t Erlangen-Nürnberg.

	Title Page	4
	Copyright	5
	Table of Contents	8
	Body	12
	Acknowledgements	12
	Introduction	16
	People, Geography, and Agriculture	26
	Concepts, Approaches, and Questions	34
	Sources, Languages, and Transliteration	48
	I. Russian Colonial Rule in Turkestan, 1860–1917	50
	The Motivation for the Conquest	52
	The “Blossoming Oases”	57
	A Cotton Fever	61
	Local “Customs” and Local Knowledge	66
	Engineers' Fantasies	77
	The Ancient Riverbed of the Amu Darya	82
	The Opening Up of the Hungry Steppe	86
	The “Obituary List” of Failures and Moral Superiority	90
	The Striving for “Cotton Autonomy”	97
	The Legal Framework and Scepticism about “Capitalism”	104
	The Ministry of Agriculture and the Turkestan Agricultural Society	116
	The Taming of Nature through Infrastructure, 1910–1914	122
	The First World War	131
	Conclusion	133
	II. Soviet Nation-Building and Stalinism, 1917–1944	140
	The Advent of the Bolsheviks	141
	Georgii K. Rizenkampf and his Cotton and Irrigation Program	148
	“National Delimitation” and the “Land-Water Reform”	157
	The Collectivization of Agriculture and the First Five-Year Plan	164
	The Attack on “Bourgeois Specialists”	172
	Haste, Coercion, and Incentives: Cotton Growing in the 1930s	179
	Progressive Methods in Agriculture and the Experience of the Peasants	189
	Terror	198
	Stagnation in Irrigation Construction and Management	202
	Scientific Institutes and the Training of (Indigenous) Specialists	207
	“People's Construction”	214
	The All-Union Agricultural Exhibition of 1939 and the Republics' National Designs	223
	The Second World War	231
	Conclusion	237
	III. High Modernism in Central Asia, 1945–1969	246
	Stalinism and Cotton Growing after the War	249
	Agricultural Politics after Stalin	253
	The Educational Boom and the Training of Indigenous Experts	265
	The Hungry Steppe: a Microstudy	274
	The New Zone	281
	The Memoirs of the “Hungrysteppers”	287
	Akop Sarkisov and the Recruitment of Cadres	290
	Leadership Styles in the “Hungry Steppe Construction Trust”	302
	Personal Networks: from Yangier to Tashkent to Moscow	305
	Central Asians and the Druzhba narodov	315
	“Teachers and Educators”	320
	The “River of Happiness” – the Karakum Canal	322
	The Drainage Problem	330
	The Backwardness of the Others	335
	“Engineerization”, “Chemicalization”, and “Mechanization”	340
	Local Knowledge	357
	“Irrational” Water Usage: the 1960s	360
	Conclusion	367
	IV. A Time of Crisis, 1970–1991	372
	The Water Crisis	375
	The Diversion of Siberian Rivers as a Solution to the Problem	383
	The Cotton Crisis	388
	The Individual Experience	391
	Nature Protection and De-Stalinization	393
	The Society for the Protection of Nature	398
	An Ecocritique Emerges	401
	The Cotton Scandal	411
	Politics and Opposition during Perestroika	418
	Debates in the Press and Environmental Scandals: Health	427
	The Diversion Debate	429
	The Vodniki under Fire	434
	The Reaction of the Authorities	443
	The Growth of Ethnic Conflict	447
	Chemicals in Agriculture	448
	Cotton and National Pride	451
	A Feeling of Loss and Despair	455
	Conclusion	458
	Conclusion	464
	High Modernism	464
	Continuities between the Tsarist and Soviet Periods	471
	Indigenization and the Cotton Contract	474
	The Crisis of Soviet Modernity and Environmental Aspects	479
	Central Asia Post-Soviet	483
	Glossary	492
	List of Maps and Illustrations	496
	Bibliography	500
	Index	528