Like Cooking Plov with Hoja Nasreddin: Recalculating Financial Transfers to Tajikistan, 1971–1989

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This article recalculates financial flows to and from the Tajik SSR during the 1970s and 1980s. Using tax and export revenue from cotton production largely unregistered in Soviet financial accounts, it provides an estimate for the annual financial outflow of revenue from the Tajik SSR. This is then compared to the annual ‘subsidy’ sent to the republic. In practice, the article concludes that financial transfers to the Tajik SSR were largely equivalent to the revenue accrued from its cotton production, calling into question the discourse of subsidisation of Soviet Central Asia. In this sense, the article suggests an overlooked risk-sharing mechanism built into late Soviet redistributive financial transfers.