Abstract

In this essay, oq oltin—Uzbek for “white gold”—is examined in two interrelated contexts: as a symbol of Soviet ideological propaganda (collectivization and exploitative labor practices) and as an emblem of Soviet “national” modernity. It traces the term’s uncritical reappropriation in the 1990s and its more recent critical, postcolonial reassessment in contemporary Uzbekistan.

Drawing on art, photography, political posters, agitation porcelain, poetry and prose, as well as rituals and participatory practices such as the cotton kurultai (national congress) and pakhta bairami (harvest festival) from the 1930s onward, the essay follows the transformation of cotton from a decorative textile motif into a highly recognizable visual and performative symbol of ideological power. Across these media, the cotton boll functioned simultaneously as an aesthetic marker of “national” form and Soviet socialist modernity.

Ultimately, the essay demonstrates how cotton—an agricultural monocrop that hindered diversified industrial development, contributed to environmental degradation, curtailed rural educational opportunities, damaged public health, and entrenched economic dependency on Moscow through coercive labor regimes—nonetheless became associated with socialist modernity, the Soviet way of life, and (post)Soviet “national” pride.