Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the image of Samarkand, a Soviet Silk Road city, that was projected internationally as a part of Soviet cultural diplomacy in the 1930s and in the 1960s.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the image of Samarkand, a Soviet Silk Road city, that was projected internationally as a part of Soviet cultural diplomacy in the 1930s and in the 1960s. In the 1930s, Samarkand was portrayed as an exotic destination of a romanticized adventure in the European imagination informed by the popularized notion of the silk road. The Soviet state, on the other hand, sought ways to use Samarkand’s international reputation to showcase Soviet socialist construction and Soviet-style modernization in the 1930s. The disparities among the European travelers’ romanticized expectation, Soviet propaganda image of Central Asia, and the reality on the ground contributed to disseminating less-than-flattering image of the Soviet state and socialist Central Asia. Samarkand reappeared in Soviet cultural diplomacy in the 1960s when the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) launched the Project on the Study of Civilizations of Central Asia to complement the East-West Major Project of the 1950s. East-West Major Project and the Project on the Study of Civilizations of Central Asia not only contributed to the emergence of the silk road as a diplomatic symbol and discourse but also transformed Samarkand as an internationalist Soviet ‘silk road’ city. This paper discusses how the Soviet state used the opportunity provided by the UNESCO’s Project on the Study of Civilizations of Central Asia and the 2500th anniversary of the establishment of Samarkand celebrated in 1970 to project an image of Soviet-Asian connectivity and recreated Soviet Central Asia’s ‘Silk Road’ past.