Abstract:

This paper explores the history of cotton ginning during a period of intensification of cotton monoculture in the Tajik SSR, roughly from the late 1950s to the late 1970s. While growing high yields of cotton during these decades in the arid climate of Soviet Central Asia required specific and very detail-oriented forms of labor, water management, and industrial inputs, the work was not complete once the cotton had been harvested. Following the story of the cotton as it left the fields to be ginned (the first step of processing raw cotton where the seeds and fibers are separated), this paper is an exploration of the Soviet state’s attempts to control the procurement and transportation of cotton, while also assuring the quality of the finished cotton fiber and protect the cotton from contamination and fire, which were all too common given the material nature of the product. By looking at these processes and the individuals and institutions involved, this paper argues that the procurement sites and the ginning factories were crucial spaces for the state to manage space and resources, but they also created room for small pockets of professional and industrial experts to receive material and social benefits through their involvement in this stage of the supply chain. Finally, this paper demonstrates how the value of raw cotton and its unique material properties shaped relations between center and periphery in the control of quality and transportation of the raw fiber produced in the Republic.

Abstract:

Collectivization Generation, my forthcoming monograph, draws on oral histories to trace the introduction of collectivized agriculture in Uzbekistan and its impact on the lives of dehqons. Interviewers finished each interview with a question about the respondent’s overall view of collectivization, though their positive and critical views were embedded throughout what they told us. In this paper, I reflect on the great variety of their judgments, compare those with Soviet and post-Soviet historiography of collectivization, and examine my own hesitations about using the term ‘decolonial’ as I write their stories.

Abstract:

This paper draws on qualitative fieldwork in Tajikistan and grey literature to examine community-based seed banks as a response to ongoing challenges in the country’s seed sector, arguing that rural women’s interest in engaging with these projects – despite tradeoffs – is indicative of the way that the kitchen garden continues to function as an essential support to social reproduction. NGOs in Tajikistan’s four provinces have recently introduced community-based seed banks as a means of preserving locally adapted open-pollinated crop varieties and, in turn, improving access to appropriate inputs for kitchen garden cultivation, stemming agrobiodiversity loss, and strengthening household adaptation to climate change. Operating on a small scale and with lingering questions about sustainability, organizers nevertheless hope that seed bank structures will support these objectives as national institutions responsible for genetic preservation, seed breeding, and seed production have struggled to recover post-independence – a reality exacerbated by fractured interventions from mainstream development actors. Currently, local markets for vegetable seeds are increasingly dominated by imported F1-hybrid varieties of inconsistent quality, aggravating concerns about varietal loss and frustrating households grappling with income insecurity and risks they associate with purchasing these inputs. By exploring the responses of the development sector and rural households to seed system concerns, this paper offers insight into transformations in post-Soviet space that have, as of yet, received little academic attention.

Abstract:

Historians looking to understand the global dynamics of decolonization have long underscored the pivotal role played by postcolonial migrations in shaping the socio-economic trajectories of former metropole and colony alike. Today, the presence of millions of post-Soviet migrants from Central Asia in the Russian Federation attests to the lasting impact of unequal connections in a postcolonial era.

Historical accounts of South-North migration during the late Soviet period, however, have yet to fully address how the perceived immobility of a looming surplus population along the southern border of the USSR served as the rationale for differential state policies on employment, education, and resettlement — with lasting implications for the Soviet Union's treatment of its agrarian population in Central Asia.

My paper examines the collaborative efforts of Soviet officials, planners, and scholars in the budding social sciences as they worked to generate knowledge on the excess workforce in the Soviet South and advocate for government interventions to foster greater mobility and, consequently, labor force participation of Central Asian peasants.

Centering on the 1970s and 1980s, my paper draws on state archives in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, academic publications, and specialized journals to track Soviet discussions on the challenges of encouraging greater migration.

I argue that the ongoing failure of state policies prompted a reevaluation of what I term "Soviet ergonomics" — the study of the rational redistribution of surplus labor — by compelling Soviet officials and scholars to engage with the social and economic specificities of the Central Asian countryside. As the perestroika-era economic reforms took hold, the insights derived from this reassessment began to coalesce, marking a departure from Soviet universalist ambitions and ushering in a new consensus on “traditional” Central Asian society at a moment of profound socio-economic dislocation.