Water into Gold: Russian and Soviet Visions for Transforming the Central Asian Borderlands

Crossroads Asia Lecture held by Maya K. Peterson

This talk uses published and archival sources to investigate Russian and Soviet hydraulic engineering plans to remake the landscapes of the Central Asian borderlands in the second half of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. The theme of vision here is a central one: how did tsarist and Bolshevik agents of empire perceive Central Asian lands and peoples, and what shaped these perceptions? How, in turn, did perceptions of the legibility of Central Asian landscapes inform and rationalize the kinds of development projects that Russian and Soviet officials carried out in Central Asia, whether in the name of a “civilizing mission” or the introduction of modernity? The talk also discusses how historical sources produced by the colonial state can be used in an attempt to reconstruct the experiences and motivations of Central Asian actors whose voices are often left out of the archival record.

Time & location: October 22nd, 2013. 12:00 c.t. 

Geo-Campus Lankwitz, Malteserstr. 74-100, 12249 Berlin

Haus G, Raum 202

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