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Paper short abstract:

The main argument of the paper is that "the urban planning steps of the Communist Party in Tashkent in the first years of the revolution tried to control Tashkent by hiding and using conservative codes, rather than creating the city of a socialist, equal and classless society."

Paper long abstract:

The Soviet Union, shortly after the Bolshevik revolution, attempted to control all of Turkestan again. While military conflicts continued in the region until the 1930s, the Bolshevik regime attempted to implement important institutional reforms for political and cultural hegemony in the region. The regime soon realized that its efforts were concentrated around the following basic question: Should the steps required by the socialist revolution be taken as an outside power in Central Asia, or should the necessary steps be taken to take the region under military, political and institutional control first? It is seen that the aforementioned problematic is discussed with many sub-titles, with examples from many different fields, looking at the past today. The nationality policy of the Soviets (Koranizatsiia policy), the religion policy of the Soviets in Central Asia, the women's policies of the Soviets in Central Asia, etc.

This study, on the other hand, aims to discuss the stalemate of the Bolshevik regime in the dilemma of realizing a regional control-revolution in Central Asia and the ways out of this impasse, based on the urban planning issue that it put forward around the ideal of creating a "socialist city". While discussing this, the city of Tashkent, which was accepted as the center in Central Asia in the first years of the Bolshevik regime - and afterwards - will be examined. In this framework, in the paper, first of all, the physical and institutional structure of the city of Tashkent in the Tsarist period and the first years of the Bolshevik regime will be discussed; Then, the urban planning efforts of Tashkent in the first years of the revolution will be examined in detail. While this is being carried out, the ongoing debates between the socialist urban utopians' assertions about the city and the party officials who claim that the conditions for the revolution have been completed within the Party and that the only decision now belongs to the party will be emphasized. The main argument of the statement is that "the planning steps of the Communist Party in Tashkent in the first years of the revolution tried to control Tashkent by hiding and using conservative codes, rather than creating the city of a socialist, equal and classless society." Based on this specific claim, what is generally defended in the statement is that the Soviet Union tried to control the region with a colonial understanding by reproducing and using patriarchal social relations by reproducing conservatism rather than a revolutionary consciousness very quickly in the first years of the revolution.