Humans as territory: forced resettlement and the making of Soviet Tajikistan, 1920–38

Abstract

This article re-evaluates the history of internal resettlement in Soviet Tajikistan in the 1920s and early 1930s. Rather than a purely ‘economic’ measure, as the policy has thus far been identified by historians, the programme of internal resettlement had political and military rationales to secure the republic's southern plains bordering Afghanistan. These territories were considered by Soviet leaders to be insecure and under threat. By pointing to the role of ethnic categories in organizing the resettlement and the violent manner in which the policy was conducted, the author analyses state leaders' attempts to ethnicize territories and populations in order to identify, naturalize and secure allies, within and beyond Tajikistan. Tajikistan's resettlement had internal as well as foreign-policy objectives to secure the Soviet Union's border regions as well as to spread Soviet influence abroad.