Soviet Internationalism and Friction in Tajikistan

Beginning in the post- World War II era, the Soviet Union underwent mass rebuilding and industrialization efforts. While the nation experienced extensive urbanization, with many migrating from rural areas to the cities, there were a considerable number of state-mandated migrations from urban to rural regions. Hein deHaas refers to these movements as ‘imperial emigration’.

In 1960s Tajikistan, imperial emigration came in the form of young Russian workers who were sent to harness one of the region’s most useful resources: its rivers. The Soviet state invested in hydroelectric plants; particularly along the Vaḵš . It is on this river that one of the largest dams in the world, the Nurek Dam, was built. The exploitation of Tajik waterways may have allowed for the production of electricity and the further industrialization of Central Asia, but did native Tajiks similarly reap these rewards? Moreover, what happened when Russian migrants tried to “modernize” not only the rural Central Asian economy, but the Tajik culture too?

Jeff Sahadeo’s Voices from the Soviet Edge : Southern Migrants in Leningrad and Moscow gives insight into the social context surrounding imperial emigration during this time. Ideologies of ‘domestic internationalism’ and the Russian ‘elder brother’, rooted in Soviet patriotism prevailed. In pushing the ideals of supposed equality amongst the Soviet States, the idea of Russian superiority was instead imbedded in the Soviet mindset. In this way, modernity and Soviet nationalism became intertwined with the Russian identity. Much like the rhetoric of Rudyard Kipling’s, “The White Man’s Burden”, the people of Central Asian Soviet states were viewed as primitive peoples who had the privilege of receiving Russian assistance. Interstate migration with the aim of ‘modernization’ came in turn with ‘Russification”.

Economic and Cultural ‘Modernization’ in Nurek

The construction and ‘civilization’ projects in Nurek were met by much cultural resistance from Tajik locals. The greatest source of friction between the migrant laborers’ goals and the Tajik populace was differences in lifestyles. An example of this is the comparative size of Russian- constructed urban apartments to the average Tajik family size.

Why were Tajik families notoriously large? The Tajik population experienced a spike post- WWII due a decline in infant mortality rates “from 80.8 per 1,000 in 1975 to 48.9 in 1988” and a “general improvement in sanitary conditions” (Encyclopædia Iranica 2011). Ironically enough, the Soviet government also encouraged and rewarded Central Asian families to have more children, even though they didn’t build housing large enough to accommodate them .

As one could imagine, the Muslim religion of Nurek locals was also viewed as a hinderance to Soviet progress. Prayer continued, however, in the club houses meant to instill socialist and atheist ideals that were built by Russian laborers. In addition, Tajiks who held local government positions were able to gain some autonomy over the area’s ‘modernization’. This resistance to ‘Russification’ is indicative of the contradictory nature of Soviet ‘domestic internationalism’. By forcing a collective Soviet identity, the government seemingly created more nationalistic divide. The element that bound the incredibly diverse peripheral Central Asian states to the core Soviet Russia was the command economy that depended upon various internal labor migration movements. While Tajik citizens of Nurek were able to preserve their culture, the Tajik economy was not immune to the impact of interstate migration.

Migration into Tajikistan by skilled Russian workers and other young foreign intellectuals created an interdependence between the Tajik and Russian Soviet economies. The core of the Soviet Union received raw materials like cotton from Tajikistan while Tajikistan received resources necessary to build its industrial infrastructure. While it is known that construction projects like the Vaḵš dams brought electricity and other improvements to livelihoods in Tajikistan (increased access to education, healthcare, etc.), it is impossible to quantify the true surpluses and deficits created by Soviet state intervention. It is this interdependence, however, that caused great economic loss after Tajik independence. In the 1980s Tajikistan effectively lost the human capital supplied by migrants. Due to the lack of Soviet investment in Tajik locals, Tajikistan was left with an incomplete economy: an industrial infrastructure drained of skilled workers.

Bibliography

Drake, Carolyn Photograph of Part of Nurek dam, a Soviet Project that Supplies Nearly all of the Nation’s Energy Needs, “Tajikistan Hopes Water Will Power its Ambitions”, The New York Times, Aug. 2008, /www.nytimes.com/2008/09/01/world/asia/01tajikistan. Accessed September 17, 2020.

Electricpulp.com. “ECONOMY Xii. IN TAJIKISTAN.” Encyclopædia Iranica, Encyclopædia Iranica, 2011, iranicaonline.org/articles/economy-xii-in-tajikistan. 

Haas, Hein de, et al. The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World. The Guilford Press, 2020.

Kalinovsky, Artemy M. “Nurek, ‘A City You Can Write About.’” Laboratory of Socialist Development: Cold War Politics and Decolonization in Soviet Tajikistan, by Artemy M. Kalinovsky, Cornell University Press, 2018, pp. 117–293. 

Sahadeo, Jeff. “Friendship, Freedom, Mobility, and the Elder Brother.” Voices from the Soviet Edge. Southern Migrants in Leningrad and Moscow, by Jeff Sahadeo, Cornell University Press, 2019, pp. 35–63.