Archive

The Economy of Nationality

04.09.2007, 15:00

Christian Teichmann (Humboldt University, Berlin)

The Economy of Nationality.
Stalinism and Irrigation in Uzbekistan, 1924-1941*


Land without water has little value in most parts of Central Asia. Despite of the vast territory occupied by Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, their populations are clustered around ancient oases and along rivers and canals, where thousand year-old irrigation systems have flourished and declined. By the time the Bolsheviks had gained control over unruly Turkestan in 1924, after almost a decade of violence and disruption, many canals and irrigation systems had been destroyed or were only partly operative. The reconstruction of Uzbekistan?s agricultural infrastructure as well as that of other branches of the Soviet economy after the Civil War was therefore a process highly charged with symbolic meaning. Lenin underlined this point when he held that ?irrigation [...] changes the country; it leads to its rebirth, buries the past and enforces the transition to socialism.?(1)

It was personally Lenin who charted the course of Soviet irrigation and water policy by putting engineer Georgii Rizenkampf in charge of Central Asia?s irrigation development. Lenin approved of Rizenkampf?s plan to newly irrigate 300.000 hectares in the Hungry Steppe, a semi-arid region between Tashkent and Samarkand. This idea was by no means original. The development of irrigation in the Hungry Steppe had been a pursuit of the Tsarist colonial administration in Turkestan for decades, but the project was beset with technological difficulties and financial problems. Nevertheless, Rizenkampf saw his chance and threw his lot in with the new regime. In 1920, he published a pamphlet about the new golden age for irrigation the Bolsheviks would bring: ?Tsarism didn?t understand the importance of our work. The Provisional Government halted it entirely. Only after the October revolution we saw a lively interest in irrigation in Turkestan.?(2)

Reconstruction of the economy after the Civil War and nationality policy were closely intertwined when the Soviet Union was in its formative stages during the early 1920s. Experts argued about how to synthesize the competing interests of the Soviet national republics on one hand with the needs of the All-Union economy on the other. The majority of experts were enlightened modernizers who had served the Tsarist state and had allied themselves with the Bolshevik government (like Rizenkampf). While most of them were not members of the Communist Party, they were on a common track with Bolshevik leaders and high-ranking government officials in their search for ?best solutions? to the many ?unresolved questions? of the re-established empire (3). A shared outlook on modernity, competing visions on how the Soviet Union was to function as a whole, and contested economic programs defined the debate over water politics in Uzbekistan in the 1920s. Therefore, though somewhat exotic, irrigation in Central Asia was by no means out of the ordinary in the early Soviet period. Issues of water politics and irrigation, however, later acquired a special place in the Soviet modernity. This story has yet to be told.

This paper draws on research into the ways in which peripheral regions of the former Tsarist Empire were transformed in the early Soviet period. What did Soviet modernity look like when seen from a ?peripheral? region like Uzbekistan? Who were the actors implementing the Soviet agenda and thus shaping the Soviet Union? Where, beyond destruction, lay the forces of Soviet modernity? Irrigated agriculture in Uzbekistan presents an excellent opportunity with which to address these questions, as it was where economic and nationality policies overlapped in several key relationships within the Soviet order. First of all, it was a bone of contention between the economic planners in Moscow and the leaders of the new Soviet republics in Central Asia (section I). Secondly, irrigation was a contested issue between peasants in Uzbekistan and the Bolshevik political elites. The operations of the irrigation system can serve as an indicator of state-peasant relations, but it also shows just how deep the influence of the political center penetrated (section II). Finally, the way in which irrigation construction was managed and organized dramatically changed in the short span of 20 years. The changing approaches to irrigation were closely linked to a constantly shifting political landscape and to the personalities of its principle actors (section III). This paper tries to answer the following question in its three sections: How did Soviet economic policy and the revolutionary agenda to modernize ?backward? nationalities interact?

I Between Development and Centralization

In the first years of the Soviet Union, relations between the center and the national peripheries of the ?Soviet East? were largely managed through money flows (4). Funding for irrigation in Central Asia came out of the All-Union budget for agriculture, which saw its heyday in 1924 and 1925 (5). After a general revision of the irrigation system in 1926, All-Union government started to keep a closer eye on how the money it had assigned for irrigation was in fact spent. In early 1927, during Ordzhonikidze?s ?rationalization? campaign to redirect the state?s financial resources to the industrial sector, Moscow further decreased its spending on Central Asian irrigation. The Central Asian Water Administration was asked to cut 50% of its staff (6). In reaction to reduced central subsidies, the Uzbek and Turkmen governments decided to introduce a water tax in 1928. In Uzbekistan, however, grain shortages prevented officials from collecting the tax. In Turkmenistan, officials told tax payers that the money would be used to build a new railroad, to wage war against England, and to pay Russian engineers. These measures suggested by the Turkmen officials were disliked by the tax-paying population (7). All this had a off-putting impact on the tax campaign, eventually rendering it a failure. Moreover, the repercussions of the reducing subsidies for irrigation were more far-reaching than the failure of a tax campaign might initially suggest.

The Uzbek government had a political agenda when introducing the water tax in 1928. Its aim was to encourage social change in the countryside by having poor peasants elect miraby, or local canal overseers. In most places miraby were elected by local water community assemblies which had become widely accepted forums of interaction between the government?s water administrations and the local peasantry during the 1920s. To the government, the mirab office seemed a likely port of entry into village structures that were dominated by elites seen as ?traditional? and therefore ?anti-soviet.?(8) The water tax was therefore introduced to support poor peasant miraby financially. In the conditions of rural Central Asia, where Soviet and state power was spread mainly through directing money flows and granting privileges, this measure promised considerable success (9). Uzbek government officials tried to forge state-payment of miraby to secure poor peasants? political loyalty and the spread of its own influence. The Central Asian Bureau of the Central Committee (Sredazbiuro) supported this social revolutionary agenda of the Uzbek government on the bases of its class policy approach (10). The main objective of the Uzbek initiative, however, was clearly to secure more control over the irrigation system itself by winning loyal allies in the villages.

The institutional organization of the water administration in the 1920s mirrors the deciding influence that central government agencies had reserved for itself. Though the water administrations of the national republics managed minor irrigation systems, the Central Asian Water Administration in Tashkent administered all ?inter-republican? (me?natsional?nye) irrigation systems that crossed republican borders. The Central Asian Water Administration was directly subordinate to the Party?s Central Asian Bureau, and its director was one of the Bureau?s permanent members (sekretar?). The agency employed 650 engineers and administrative personnel and received the lions? share of Moscow?s financial contributions (11 million out of a total of 23,7 million rubles in 1925/26) (11). The director of the Central Asian Water Administration, Mikhail Rykunov, was a Party member since 1903 and a close associate of Izaak Zelenskii, the head of the Central Asian Bureau between 1924 and 1931 (12).

Like all other institutions on the Central Asian level, the centralized Water Administration met opposition from the start. In the view of the republican governments, a centralized water administration was unnecessary because it was too remote and too bureaucratic to effectively manage the different water systems in each of the republics; to administer local irrigation systems, all that was needed was the republican water administrations (13). Nonetheless, the Central Asian Party authorities, namely Izaak Zelenskii, championed the cause of centralized water control: ?The argument that the republics are not interested in the implementation of irrigation projects by the All-Union organs carries no weight whatsoever because the population has shown lively interest in expanding the irrigated area.? Since water management in Central Asia was a political issue, it was to be overseen by the central Party authorities: ?The necessity for constant ?agreement? [between the republican water administrations] leads to the weakening of the Party?s influence.? (14) Central authorities doubted the political reliability of the republican Party organizations throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Despite the many organizational changes throughout the interwar period, centralized water management remained one of the most important (and most contentious) issues between the center and the Central Asian republics until 1937. At the same time, the central Party and government institutions in charge of maintaining the irrigation system were unable to respond adequately to problems and difficulties (as Central Asian officials had pointed out in the early 1920s). Moreover, the central government remained in control of finances down to the village level (15).

Moscow?s inability to deal with Central Asia?s irrigation had numerous causes. The government institutions? ?wheeling and dealing? in the socialist economy (as David Shearer put it) (16), the Party?s protean ?hard and soft line politics? in the nationality question (as referred to by Terry Martin) (17) and the mistrust and discrimination against ?old specialists? all added up to the difficulties and frustrations experienced by Central Asian Party leaders and engineers specialized in irrigation. In the planning stage, an irrigation project had to pass through 17 administrative echelons, among them several sections of Gosplan, the People?s Commissariat for Finances, and the Council of Labor and Defense (STO) (18). Problems mounted in early 1928 after the show trial of leading engineers in the Central Asian Water Administration in Tashkent. Engineers quit their jobs and left Central Asia to work in Russia proper. Canal construction projects ran out of money and building materials. During the trial, the authorities in Moscow stopped taking decisions (19). In February 1928, Zelenskii sent an alarmed telegram to Ordzhonikidze with the plea to urge Gosplan decisions. The boycott of Gosplan against Central Asian irrigation projects endangered ?the full appropriation of [newly irrigated] land which has outstanding political importance.? (20)

Water distribution was understood as a key instrument of transforming Central Asian societies by the regional authorities, who strove to broaden the scope of its influence by making miraby loyal to the Soviet cause. In Moscow during the latter half of the 1920s, however, irrigation was viewed solely through the prism of financing, administration, and technical planning. Consequently, engineers and subsidies from the central economic organs fell victim to Moscow?s changed agenda of economical planning at the beginning of the first Five-Year Plan. It was principally the Workers? and Peasants? Inspectorate (Rabkrin) under the leadership of Grigoriy Ordzhonikidze that imposed the new economic agenda in Central Asia?s irrigation sector (21). In the process, the creation of state-paid, poor peasant miraby in Uzbekistan fell victim to Moscow?s cost-cutting measures, thereby frustrating the attempts of the Uzbek leadership to pursue a water policy based on ?class politics.? At the same time, Moscow retained its tight control over water management in Central Asia, excluding republican administrators from managing all but the small irrigation systems (22).

II Experts and Travelers

Elite specialists in Soviet Central Asia acted as agents of the center. In the case of Uzbek irrigation, they were not only engineers and agronomists, but Party functionaries, trade union officials, and employees of the control commissions. For many of them, traveling was an important part of their profession. As in Tsarist days, traveling was a means to achieve dominance, cohesion, and hegemony within the state (23). Groups of traveling specialists were crucial for the internal communications of the Party and the government. Travelers thereby shaped the state through their observations, reports, and public statements. In their reports to the central political bodies in Moscow, elite specialists gave a picture of what they thought was Central Asia?s situation, function, and contribution to the Soviet Union. Many had strong opinions about Central Asian life and mores. Others were more interested in their professional missions. Much of the early Soviet discourse on Central Asia was based on approaches and viewpoints of the Tsarist period. The views expressed in the travelers? reports of the 1920s and 1930s suggest that they simply translated ?Orientalist? stereotypes about Central Asians into the Bolshevik discourse of emancipation. What earlier had been called the ?Oriental fatalism? or ?static lifestyle? was now called ?backwardness? or ?survivals for the past.? These people were central to the creation of ?Soviet? Central Asian identities by translating their own observations about peasant community life into Soviet visions of the ?East? (24).

A speech delivered at the Plenary Session of the Party Control Commission (KPK) in March 1936 by its deputy in Uzbekistan, I. M. Bekker, illustrates this process well (25). During collectivization, irrigated agriculture had suffered heavily (26). Bekker reported that irrigated areas had declined despite significant government investments. Whereas in 1929 there were 1,401 million hectares, statistical reports in 1935 showed only 1,329 million hectares of sown area. Another decline of 122.000 hectares was expected for 1936 (27). Obviously, ?enemies? of the Soviet Union had done their job well. Among the predominantly Russian employees of the water administration Bekker and his team found ?dozens of alien persons such as former army colonels, old officers, cavalry captains, wherever from you like, and all of them are in the water administration working as canal overseers, planners, book keepers. That is why the results in this area are how they are.? According to the rules of the game, Bekker?s KPK commission had habitually named and prosecuted ?enemies.? Nonetheless, he also had to admit that this didn?t solve the problem: ?We looked for the roots of the problem. But these roots are hard to find.?(28)

Bekker named three causes for the degradation of the irrigation system and the consequent decline in cotton production. Firstly, Uzbekistan was a national republic, and in comparison to Russia ?this republic is not free of deficiencies, on the contrary.? Despite of the ?successes of the Leninist-Stalinist nationality policy,? for Bekker Uzbekistan?s status as a national republic seemed to have been a problem in itself. He started his speech with the words: ?Firstly, I will speak about a national republic and, secondly, I will speak about cotton, which will be a bit at dissonance with what has been said here about, let?s say, the industry in Leningrad.?(29) All ?these shortcomings, these deficiencies and shortfalls (eti nedostatki, eti prorekhi i proryvy)? were ? as Bekker?s audience could easily understand ? due to Uzbekistan?s peripheral and still backward social order which provided no firm foundation for socialist development.

The second and main cause of Uzbekistan?s problems was the Uzbek Party organization. Not only that the Party was made up by ?peasant communists? who were ?politically illiterate?: ?The main defect of the republic is that organizational questions severely lag behind the political aims and that, regardless of any success on the cotton front, organization never reached a satisfactory level in organizational questions. The achievement of a number of economic-political goals have likewise suffered from that.? Bekker saw the reason for this in the ?weakness of the leading cadres,? but did not elaborate on this point in his public speech (30). The third cause for problem were the actions of the ?enemy,? Bekker found enemies among irrigation engineers, in the judicial system, and all over the countryside (31). The KPK members listening to the Uzbek deputies? remarks about enemies were amazed. One interrupted the speech with the remark: ?But after 18 years of Soviet power, you should be able to find some [kolkhoz] accountants [in Uzbekistan].? Bekker answered: ?Yes, 18 years of Soviet power, but, sadly, we find these facts.? To this, hardliner Ian Peters replied: ?Nevertheless, not the entire apparatus is polluted like this.?(32)

By the mid-1930s, center-periphery relations in the Soviet Union were defined in solely economic terms. Whereas nationality and cultural revolutions had had their importance in the 1920s, they gradually had become meaningless categories for state agents in the 1930s. Questions of nationality policies or women?s emancipation became low priority for the central government (33). ?Cultural campaigns? were conducted in the form of Party purges and terror against ?nationalists? and other ?enemies? (34) That ?Uzbekistan? became a mere synonym for ?cotton? holds true especially for the Kremlin leaders. Stalin, who had initiated the cotton drive in 1929, had stated more than once that is was cotton production he expected the Uzbeks to attend to. Starting in early 1930, he reduced his communications to the Uzbek leadership to questions of cotton and collectivization of cotton farmers (35). When in 1935 Uzbekistan?s cotton plan was fulfilled only because peasants were allowed to deliver great amounts of low-quality wet cotton, Party leaders like Akmal Ikramov were made personally responsible. That same year, Ikramov was booted out of Ordzhonikidze?s office when he wanted to talk about Uzbek industrial development (Ikramov complaint about Ordzhonikidze that ?instead of solving the question, he insulted and accused me of all kinds of sins, even of contentiousness?). Stalin scribbled angrily on a paper with Ikramov?s request for a leave in 1936: ?Why holiday? And what about the cotton??(36)

Making Uzbekistan Soviet had come down to controlling kolkhoz income and its distribution, counting working days in the kolkhoz, setting cotton yields, and enforcing compliance to the water distribution plan. Because people were not complying with plans, did not work on kolkhoz fields, and distributed goods on the black market outside the ?Soviet? economical sphere, officials saw enemies whenever economical questions were discussed (37). Peasants and irrigation workers cheated and embezzled, prosecutors sold evidence to the accused, and the Uzbek Central Committee lied about cotton yields and the seize of irrigation areas (38). The ambition of Soviet officials to ?develop? and ?civilize? the periphery had given away to a crude social policing solely on the base of economic indicators.

How did the peasants in Uzbekistan react to this new reality? As noted in a 1935 NKVD report, ?the bai [equivalent for the Russian kulak in Central Asia] intentionally flooded cotton fields and in a criminal way contaminated first sort cotton.?(39) In 1939, the irrigation system?s operation was still evaluated in highly critical terms. Cotton fields, a report stated, were watered too late, and it was not always made sure that fields had been plowed or hoed before water was led onto them. Peasants used flood irrigation instead of canal irrigation which harmed the cotton plants. Canal networks in the fields were neglected, as were drainage systems. As a result, soil salinity started to rise, preventing a substantial increase in the amount of irrigable land. ?To this day, in a number of districts and kolkhozes the conduct in respect to water usage is very poor and sometimes bears a criminal character.? Officials found ?a bulk of facts where water is used in an uneconomical and criminally negligent way (massovye fakty bezkhoziaistvennogo prestupno nebrezhnogo ispol?zovaniia vody).? But while cotton fields lay dry and unworked, private plots were watered and guarded. ?On Kzyl Asker collective farm, Funze district, Tashkent region, the brigade of Satyb-Aldyev led water into an aryk [field canal] which waters not the cotton fields of the collective farm, but the tamarka [private plots] of the collective farm members which are watered from this aryk.? When there were no canals to transport water onto private plots, peasants flooded roads and used other ways to carry water were they believed it was needed most. In the Ferghana sovkhoz Savai, where water usage was ?particularly barbaric? (osobo varvarski), ?at the end of an irrigated field ponds emerged, the water of which railroad workers used to water their private plots.?(40)

It is a widely accepted thesis that collectivization in Uzbekistan led to a massive breakdown of the irrigation system. After Moscow supposedly took a softer line in spring 1933, the system slowly started to recover and worked according to the plans and goals set by the engineers of the water administrations and the Party workers in charge. Thus, the establishment of the kolkhoz system and the terror implemented by MTS and OGPU allegedly led to the establishment of total control over the peasantry. Peasants in Uzbekistan were reduced to cotton producers who worked under highly unfavorable, slave-like conditions (41). But as the reports of the late 1930s indicate, it is rather a different story that has to be told. The state was not in charge of the irrigation system. And peasants were by no means ?Soviet.? What to the traveling agents of the center looked like a catastrophic ?abuse? of water, was in fact signs of the emergence of a new water distribution system. After the start of the cotton drive in 1929, peasants and local officials had to look for ways to reconcile large-scale cotton production with their own survival needs. Accommodation between the peasant and state needs was reached through the arrangement of small-scale irrigation ?accidents? and ?inefficiencies? that secured water for the private plots (42). What appeared to traveling state officials has acts of theft, carelessness, or fraud was in fact a system of local agreements necessary for survival, but also highly vulnerable to state prosecution and terror.


III Personal Styles

In August 1941, when the German army had just attacked the Soviet Union, a canal-building project called Kyrkkyz (?forty virgins?) was started in Karakalpakiia on the right banks of the Amu Daria river. The canal was to take water into the Kyzyl-Kum desert to irrigate 20.000 hectares of new land. On August 20, 1941, 5.000 people were taken from the Karakalpak capital city of Turtkul into the desert to start the digging. The diggers were often very young since war mobilization in Karakalpakstan had already begun. Work was organized according to the rules of ?socialist competition.? After six days, six kilometers of the canal had been dug straight into the desert. The working conditions must have been appalling. There was no machinery whatsoever and no drinking water was available. Water had to be brought to the construction site on the backs of camels and donkeys. Another problem was the desert wind carrying sand back into the excavation pit. After work had been finished by mid-September, only 12 kilometers of the planned 40 kilometers canal had been finished. Not 20.000 hectares, but a little more than 1.000 hectares of new irrigation land were cultivated in the fall 1941 (43).

The Kyrkkyz project was by no means an isolated case for Uzbekistan?s irrigation sector by the late 1930s and early 1940s. It was a construction project in the spirit of narodnye stroiki, which symbolized the approach to irrigation taken by the new Uzbek leadership after 1937. Uzbekistan?s First Secretary since September 1937, Usman Iusupov, enjoyed the confidence of the Kremlin clique. While Andrei Andreev was purging the Uzbek Party organization in September 1937, it was his initiative to appoint Iusupov (44). Predictably, Iusupov?s assumption of the office changed the Uzbek leadership?s approach to irrigation: up to that point, every major change of leadership in Uzbekistan had brought large changes to the irrigation sector. Whereas Izaak Zelenskii had favored centralized state management, Khojaev and Ikramov stressed the organic development of this sector according to local needs. Consequently, no large-scale irrigation construction was initiated between 1932 and 1937. Iusupov?s narodnye stroiki were a radical break with these earlier development models. The Great Ferghana Canal was the ?Great Turn? for Uzbekistan, symbolizing the arrival of ?high modernism? to Central Asia.

The changes in irrigation construction works after 1937 are best illustrated with an example of flood protection on the lower Amu Daria river banks in early spring of that year. Starting in 1932, the flooding of the Amu Daria river banks became a serious problem. Every year during the winter months and during June and July, destructive flooding threatened fields, villages, and large swaths of the Karakalpak capital city of Turtkul. The central authorities in Moscow finally decreed to send building materials to Turtkul in February, 1937. Faizulla Khodjaev was ordered to oversee the construction of riverbank fortifications and protective dikes (45). However, because Moscow?s decision to grant subsidies was taken only in mid-February, by the time local authorities could start construction work, it was already too late to have any lasting effect. There was only time to improve existing fortifications before the beginning of the new flood season. Only minor improvements could therefore be made without changing the overall situation. Such construction delays and temporary stopgap measures were typical of irrigation construction before 1937 (46).

Such hastiness and improvisation was typical of state sponsored construction works and had predictably negative impacts on both the timely provision of building materials and the hiring of an appropriate workforce: transport was never available in time, and there was never enough food for the workers. Only a few specialists had the technical knowledge to plan and manage large-scale building projects. In case construction machinery was needed at the building site, a flurry of bureaucratic correspondence had to go first to and fro between Tashkent, Moscow, and Turtkul. If and when any machinery arrived, it was always late. Construction therefore relied far more on improvisation than on planning (47). As a result, the engineers and managers at building sites asked Moscow only for formal approval of technical projects. When construction works were actually implemented, most of the work relied not on the approved plans but rather on local knowledge. Miraby and ?old people? were consulted about the riverbed?s seasonal changes during flooding, and ad hoc decisions were then taken accordingly on where and how high dikes and fortifications were to be built. Due to the belated arrival of construction supplies, traditional methods and building materials were used. People worked at the construction sites in the same ways they had been doing for centuries.

The ?local approach? had the advantage that irrigation systems were managed carefully and individually. Construction was done to save or improve specific local canal systems. This approach, however, had disadvantages, too. Since decisions were usually taken on the spot, work force had to be mobilized in the nearby localities. The obligatory participation the cannel construction and maintenance, kazu, had been likened by Uzbek Bolsheviks during the 1920s to ?feudal exploitation? by khans and emirs. Nonetheless, it never entirely disappeared and made a comeback in the 1930s, as financing to pay workers was unavailable. Khodjaev told his engineers in Turtkul: ?If we want to reduce the overflowing of the river banks, we have to toss 15 to 20 thousand people onto the construction site. [I remember] When [in the early 1920s] the [railway] bridge in Chardzhuy was washed away (I was at this time Chairman of the Council of Ministers in Bukhara), we mobilized around 20 thousand of the population and the people came and everyone knew what he had to do. [?] [Also here in Turtkul] it is necessary that the population took some part in the work.? (48)

After the purges of 1937 and the March, 1938 show trial, during which Khodjaev and Ikramov had been declared ?enemies of the people,? their management of the irrigation sector also came under intense criticism (49). The irrigation construction under their leadership was compared to the projects of the Tsarist period (50). Supposedly, irrigation works before 1937 had been carried out too slowly, too inefficiently, and too ineffectively. Now irrigation construction projects were characterized by their speedy completion with the aim to create ?definite solutions to the water problem.? Iusupov became involved in irrigation in late September, 1937. He sent out a telegram to the district Party organizations that demanded a purge of the irrigation administrations ?beginning with the leadership and ending with miraby of the small irrigation systems in your district and especially at the important canal heads.? (51) Then, in 1938 and 1939 new construction sites were opened all over Uzbekistan. The biggest and best known of these projects was the Great Ferghana Canal, 250 kilometers in length and built by 500.000 people during the winter of 1939-1940. The narodnye stroiki relied on the physical labor of large numbers of workers; machinery was barely used. People from all over Uzbekistan were taken to work at the construction sites. Through their large dimensions, narodnye stroiki were to change not only one local irrigation system, but whole agricultural regions. They were carried out in a period of months or weeks. The Kyrkkyz canal in Turtkul, begun in August 1941, was one of the many ? though perhaps the most untimely ? smaller adaptations of Great Ferghana Canal-type construction methods.

The Iusupov style of work organization was accompanied by a propaganda effort of hitherto unmatched dimensions. Before 1937, in the propaganda as well as in real life irrigation was to serve to expand cotton acreage. Within just two years, however, the language of irrigation propaganda changed dramatically. According to newspapers of the time, the Uzbek narod felt a yearning for water (tjaga k vode). Collective farmers were now happy participants of huge canal building projects (52). (It goes without saying that the peasants? ?yearning for water? had been triggered by a January 1940 resolution of the Moscow government calling for higher cotton outputs.) As propagandists put it, in the spirit of the 18th Party Congress, peasants digging canals into the desert were becoming members of a socialist society approaching communism (53). Usman Iusupov was the most outspoken of them. Uzbek society was to be changed by digging canals, or as Iusupov put it: ?The important fact of the [people?s] movement [for water] is that it brings with it new forms of socialist labor relations which are characteristic for the transition from socialism to communism. This is, the marvelous people?s movement for irrigation serves as an indicator for the imperturbable movement of the Uzbek narod towards communism.?(54)

Conclusion

In light of Western colonial endeavors, it is remarkable that the spread of technology was almost completely absent from Soviet development policy in Central Asia. Although tractors and the use of machinery were promoted throughout the Stalinist period, irrigation works (whether small or large in scale) were accomplished with the almost exclusive use of physical labor. Soviet modernity was primitive, dirty, and gruesome. Such interpretation of Stalinist modernization by Western European standards often leads to emphasis on the Soviet state?s backwardness and failure. Interestingly, this was exactly how many of the traveling state agents saw their own country. Uzbekistan remained in their eyes a backward and problematic region. In their evaluations of the irrigation system, they described irrationality and corruption. But this was not the whole truth. Because the majority of the male peasantry in Uzbekistan disregarded the ?Soviet? economic sphere and did not work in the kolkhoz sector, Soviet development policy could not meet its targets. As is common for development projects all over the world, the supposedly happy recipients of state support voted with their feet, doing what they thought best for their personal situation.

The Uzbek Party and state leadership naturally had a keen interest in irrigation issues since farming, and especially cotton farming, depended on a well-functioning irrigation system. During the 1920s, Izaak Zelenskii was a strong supporter of the centralized Central Asian Water Administration. (This corresponded with his aim to centralize all economic decision-making under the auspices of the Central Asian Bureau.) The leaderships of the Central Asian republics were opposed to this but in vain. When the prosecution of engineers started in 1928, however, Zelenskii himself became aware of the downsides of centralization, since irrigation construction could not be carried out in Central Asia without Moscow?s decisions.

The peasantry of Uzbekistan was not ?Soviet? by 1941. Taking a close look at how irrigation systems worked and changed during the 1920s and 1930s, the limits of Soviet modernization come into focus. The ?Soviet? aim to revolutionize the ?East? was achieved largely by state terror, food shortages, and only very few incentives. Peasants in Uzbekistan confronted the state?s agenda with their survival strategies. They had to make the irrigation systems work to their own end risking prosecution and punishment. The only way such a system could work were local agreements (since water allotments were made according to community agreements). On the other hand, by the early 1930s the Party leadership in Moscow had also shifted its priorities. The support of ?backward nationalities? with the help of cultural campaigns had given away to crude economic surveillance. Now, what truly counted was only the cotton harvest.

NOTES
* Research for this paper has been made possible by the support of Volkswagenstiftung (Hannover), Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (Bonn), and The Hoover Institution and Archives (Stanford). The conceptual framework for this research project was developed by Jцrg Baberowski (Berlin) and Julia Obertreis (Freiburg). The paper has immensely profited from comments by Adrienne Edgar (University of Southern California, Santa Barbara), Benjamin Loring (Brandeis University) and other discussion participants at the 2006 AAASS Convention panel ?Interwar Economic Development in Central Asia?.

1. Vladimir I. Lenin: Pol?noe sobranie socheninii. Tom 43. Moscow: Izd. Politicheskoi Literatury, 1963: 200 (Pis?mo kommunistam Azerbaidzhana 14.04.1921).
2. Ali Mamedov: Russkie uchenye i razvitie irrigatsii Srednei Azii. Tashkent: Uzbekistan, 1965: 50.
3. Francine Hirsch: Empire of Nations. Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union. Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 2006: 21-98.
4. Terry Martin: The Affirmative Action Empire. Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939. Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 2001: 129 passim.
5. James Heinzen: Inventing a Soviet Countryside. State Power and the Transformation of Rural Russia, 1917-1929. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004: 102.
6. GARF 3292/1/10: 184-184ob.
7. RGASPI 62/2/1349: 7-7ob, 10.
8. RGASPI 62/2/1675: 13-14.
9. Adrienne Edgar: Tribal Nation. The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004: 70-128.
10. This can also be said of the Land and Water Reforms carried out during the 1920s. For an overview see Gerard O'Neill: Land and Water "Reform" in the 1920s. In: Tom Everett-Heath (ed.): Central Asia. Aspects of Transition. London, New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003: 57-79.
11. RGASPI 62/2/500: 6; RGASPI 62/2/1289: 113. According to Soviet sources, in 1925/26 106 million rubles were assigned for the development of Uzbek industry. By that time, the value of Uzbek cotton production equalled 100 million gold rubles: Istoriia Uzbekskoi SSR s drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei. Tashkent: FAN, 1974: 352.
12. RGASPI 121/2/19: 7, RGASPI 62/2/500: 121. Originally, Zelenskii wanted to appoint Rykunov as head of the Turkestan STO (RGASPI 62/2/86: 4).
13. RGASPI 78/1/151: 77-79. Arguments against the institutionalization of the Central Asian Economic Union (Sredne-Aziatskii Ekonomicheskii Sovet) went similarly unheard.
14. GARF 5446/71/74: 8, 5.
15. GA RUz 837/32/193: 6.
16. David Shearer: Wheeling and Dealing in Soviet Industry. Syndicates, Trade, and Political Economy at the End of the 1920?s. Cahiers du Monde Russe 36/1-2 (1995): 139-159. See also his Industry, State, and Society in Stalin?s Russia, 1926-1934. Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 1996.
17. Terry Martin: Interpreting the New Archival Signals. Nationalities Policy and the Nature of the Soviet Bureaucracy. Cahiers du Monde russe 40/1-2 (1999): 113-124.
18. RGASPI 62/2/1289: 13-13ob.
19. RGASPI 121/2/121: 38-38ob.
20. RGASPI 62/2/1671: 6.
21. RGASPI 85/27/210: 6-7.
22. RGASPI 121/2/121: 43-39.
23. Mary Louise Pratt: Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation. London, New York: Routledge, 1993. This also holds true for emerging nation states as demonstrated in Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, ?1991.
24. Douglas Northrop: Veiled Empire. Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia. Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 2004: 46-66; Paul Stronski: Forging a Soviet City. Tashkent 1937-1966. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University. Stanford 2003: 22-46.
25. I. M. Bekker was born in 1871 and a Party member since 1914. In 1927-28, he was First Secretary of Semipalatinsk gubkom until he was laid off after the 1928 ?excessive? expropriation campaign against bai. By 1932, he was obkom in Karaganda. This information was shared with me by Robert Kindler (Berlin). For Bekker?s early career as Akmolinsk gubkom in 1921 see Stephen Blank: Ethnic and Party Politics in Soviet Kazakhstan, 1920-1924. Central Asian Survey 10 (1991): 1-19, 10.
26. On collectivization in Uzbekistan see Askar Dzhumashev: Kasakhstan ? Karakalpakstan. Problemy vzaimootnoshenii. In: Rossiia i Kazakhstan. Problemy istorii (XX ? nachalo XXI v.). Moscow: IRI RAN, 2006, S. 133-158; Nadeshda Ozerova: Collectivization and Socialization of Agricultural Production in Uzbekistan. The Soviet Policy in 1930's. Journal of Central Asian Studies 15/1 (2005): 1-14; Reinhard Eisener: Konterrevolution auf dem Lande. Zur inneren Sicherheitslage in Mittelasien 1929/30 aus der Sicht der OGPU. Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 1999; R. Ch. Aminova: Iz istorii kollektivizatsii v Uzbekistane. Istoriia SSSR 1991/4, S. 42-53.
27. RGANI 6/1/13: 109-154, here 141, 122.
28. Ibid. 120-122.
29. Ibid. 109-110.
30. Ibid. 109-111.
31. Ibid. 120-121, 134-135.
32. Ibid. 125.
33. For the center?s indifference in the Uzbek ?women question? during the late 1930s see Douglas Northrop, Veiled Empire (note 23): 284-313. On korenizatsiia and ethnic conflict see Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire (note 4): 376-379, 387-392.
34. During Kuibyshev?s visit to Central Asia in November and December 1934, a troika consisting of Kuibyshev, Ikramov and Faizulla Khodjaev was operating in Uzbekistan. The Politbureau had granted it permission to pass death sentences. See Oleg Khlevniuk: Politbiuro. Mekhanizmy politicheskoi vlasti v 1930-e gody. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1996: 134.
35. RGASPI 558/11/38: 103; RGASPI 62/2/3270: 2.
36. RGASPI 558/11/725: 11; RGASPI 558/11/737: 65; RGASPI 558/11/65: 14. See also Stalin i Kaganovich. Perepiska 1931-1936 gg. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2001: 460-461 (28.08.1934), 544 (31.08.1935), 553-555 (5.09.1935), 678-679 (16.09.1936).
37. On the case of cotton storehouses catching fire see Tragediia sovetskoi derevni. Tom 4: 1934-1936. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002: 527.
38. All these charges were made by I. M. Bekker in the cited 1936 speech, see note 27.
39. Tragediia sovetskoi derevni (note 37): 528.
40. RGANI 6/6/662: 6-9.
41. Michael Thurman: The ?Command-Administrative System? in Cotton Farming in Uzbekistan. 1920s to Present. Bloomington: Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1999: 34. This interpretation is based on the ?standard? historical narrative of collectivization in Russia. See I. E. Zelenin: Vvedienie (Kul?minatsiia krest?ianskoi tragedii). In: Tragediia sovetskoi dereni. Tom 3: Konets 1930-1933. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2001: 7-47, esp. 36-40.
42. For similar arrangements in Russia, see Sheila Fitzpatrick: Stalin?s Peasants. Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994: 134-135, 186, 194 passim.
43. Ktaibek Sarybaev: Istoriia orosheniia Karakalpakstana (s konca XIX veka do nashikh dnei). Nukus: Karakalpakstan, 1995: 215-219.
44. Sovetskoe rukovodstvo. Perepiska 1928-1941. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999: 374; RGASPI 558/11/57: 95.
45. GARF 5446/19/4: 199-200.
46. GA RUz 837/32/46: 85-90.
47. The ability of Russian engineers to work in a chaotic and improvised environment was stressed as a positive factor in their own memories. See Susanne Schattenberg: Stalins Ingenieure. Lebenswelten zwischen Technik und Terror in den 1930er Jahren. Mьnchen 2002: 181-208.
48. GA RUz 837/32/46: 90.
49. See Sudebnyj otchet po delu antisovetskogo ?pravo-trotskistskogo bloka?. Moscow: Narodnyi Komissariat Iustitsii SSSR, 1938 (Morning session March 4, 1938).
50. R. Betin: Vtoraia molodost? Shumanaia. Turtkul?: Karakalpakskoe gosudarstvennoe izdatel?stvo, 1941: V, 3.
51. GA RUz 837/32/576: 116.
52. Pravda Vostoka 28.01.1940: 1.
53. See Klaus Gestwa: Technik als Kultur der Zukunft. Der Kult um die Stalinschen GroЯbauten des Kommunismus. Geschichte und Gesellschaft 30/1 (2004): 37-73.
54. Pravda Vostoka 4.02.1940: 3.