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Accepted Paper:
By Tractor and Plane: Pesticides and Chemical Fertilizers in the Valleys of Soviet Tajikistan
Nicholas Seay
(Ohio State University)
This paper uses oral history interviews conducted in Tajikistan (2022, 2023), archival materials, and secondary publications to explore the expanded use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers in Soviet Tajikistan’s cotton sector. Together with expansion of irrigated lands, the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers led to a drastic increase in the cotton harvests in the late-Soviet period, which also contributed to higher wages on the collective farms and greater investments in infrastructure, hospitals, clinics, and schools. At the same time, the increase in the use of these chemical-based inputs exposed kolkhoz workers and rural communities to unprecedented health risks. In addition to exploring the “positive” and “negative” effects of these changes, I argue that it was precisely the increased level of illness derived from these chemicals that prompted local party authorities to the task of building hospitals and clinics in rural regions in the 1970s and 1980s. By exploring the relationship between cotton production, chemicals, and public health, this story complicates the common model of causations and chronology of Soviet development in Tajikistan.