The hydrosocial empire: The Karakum River and the Soviet conquest of Central Asia in the 20th century

Abstract

Irrigation canals played an essential role in the Soviet conquest of Central Asia in the 20th century. From the time of Lenin onwards, Soviet authorities invested significant human and material capital to dig new irrigation channels in Central Asia's arid deserts, in an effort to subdue native peoples and integrate the region into a command economy. While the Soviet Union’s great success with environmental transformation in Central Asia was indeed extraordinary (and notorious), too little attention has been given to the ways that this transformation was assembled. In this contribution to the special issue on Archaeologies of Empire and Environment, I explore an archaeology of the contemporary past of Soviet irrigation in Central Asia, utilizing the insights of new materialism theory. Rather than conceiving of the Soviet imperial project as exclusively human-driven, I consider the multiple other non-human agents that exerted forces on irrigation development and drove its emergence within Central Asia’s desert environments. The example of the region’s largest irrigation canal is examined. Using a critically-informed, animated GIS, I show how this canal emerged through negotiations between human and non-human agents. In this process, a hydrosocial object – the Karakum River – was produced that continues to promote the imperial agenda even after the Soviet Union’s collapse. The implications for 21st century discourses on environmental degradation and post-Sovietism, and the methodological possibilities of a theoretically-informed, animated GIS for symmetrical, contemporary archaeologies, are also explored.