Aleksandr Minkin: A pioneer of investigative journalism in Soviet Central Asia (1979–1991)

Abstract

In the 1980s, Aleksandr Minkin was a young Russian journalist at the beginning of a brilliant career as a literary and theater critic. During his tours in Central Asia, he turned to investigative journalism, reporting on the unstable circumstances in Soviet peripheries, painting a picture for the Soviet public of the brutal side of Bolshevik modernization, such as cotton monoculture in Uzbekistan, the exploitation of peasants, the spread of deformities and disease in children due to the abuse of defoliants and pesticides in rural areas, widespread corruption, as well as the general social backwardness of the most remote areas of the USSR. In 1988, the magazine Ogonek published Minkin’s famous piece ‘khlopkorab’ (cotton slave) – denouncing for the first time in the Soviet press the exploitation of child labor in the cotton fields – as well as other articles revealing the use of dangerous Butifos defoliant, and the spread of illness in the republic. These articles caused a sensation and were at the center of a political debate during perestroika that both thrilled Soviet readers and frightened the Communist party. Minkin was viciously attacked by the official press and endured the surveillance of Soviet security authorities, as well as of foreign intelligence agencies. However, the campaign to discredit him could not cover the scandals up entirely, and Minkin became a symbol of free journalism, and a liberal intellectual figure in post–Soviet Russia, raising public awareness of social and environmental issues in Central Asia that had been officially hidden for decades.