Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas:  jgo.e-reviews 5 (2015), 3 Rezensionen online / Im Auftrag des Instituts für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung in Regensburg herausgegeben von Martin Schulze Wessel und Dietmar Neutatz

Verfasst von: Claus Bech Hansen

 

Paul Stronski: Tashkent. Forging a Soviet City, 1930–1966. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010. XI, 350 S., 25 Abb. = Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies. ISBN: 978-0-8229-6113-0.

Nowhere was the Soviet civilizing mission more visible than in the Muslim republics of the vast state. Deemed backward by the Marxist-Leninist developmental scheme, the communists invested enormous efforts in modernizing state and society in order to transform it into a breeding ground for the new Soviet Man. In his book Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City, Paul Stronski analyzes this process from the perspective of Soviet urban development during the middle period of Soviet power from 1930 to 1964 (p. 3). Based on documents from Uzbek and Russian archives, the book is a welcome contribution to an under-researched period of Soviet Central Asian history and portrays a vivid picture of the thorny road that changed Tashkent into the metropolis it is today.

Analytically Stronski has structured his narrative around two main arguments that understand Soviet urban development, firstly, as a modern state policy aiming to overcome feudal backwardness by sculpting environment and citizens according to utopian ideals, and, secondly, as a means to facilitate state control over the populace (p. 3, 8). Armoured by this premise, Stronski delivers an account of ten largely chronologically ordered chapters (including introduction and epilogue) that describe the capricious nature of architectural trends in the Soviet Union as well as the problems that urban planning confronted in the Central Asian periphery.

On the eve of the October Revolution, Tashkent was a divided city. The majority of Uzbeks lived in the old city marked by a lack of modern sanitation and clean water supply, with dusty roads and shielded-off one-family houses; next to it lay the new city, initially created as a provincial administrative centre under the rule of Imperial Russia that subsequently housed the Russian population. Much of the Soviet efforts were focusing on how to overcome this duality and create one integrated socialist city. The two first chapters of Stronskis book are devoted to the pre-war period and discuss the disparity between Soviet propaganda and Soviet reality. While Tashkent was hailed as the beacon of Soviet power (p. 40) in the East, Uzbek and Russian planners were busy trying to fit into the image of a model Soviet city the reality of a mud-brick city with high crime rates. The result was the Mosoblproekt, a massive reconstruction campaign that, on the example of Moscow, favoured (European style) socialist monumentalism, gave precedence to apartment blocs for nuclear families, big boulevards and large open squares (p. 56). This stood in sharp contrast to the traditional Uzbek urban environment, which considered the hot Central Asian climate and local customs: small public squares and narrow alleys provided shade and comfort while the sizeable Uzbek houses offered space for extended families.

The Mosoblproekt, as well as urban development at large, was effectively shelved during the Second World War, when the evacuation of hundred thousands Soviet citizens to Tashkent and industrialization were given top priority. The two chapters devoted to life in Tashkent during the war provide a good in-depth analysis of the incredible hardship that fell upon city life. Evacuees and refugees overcrowded the city, crime increased and low food supply challenged citizens survival. Despite the deterioration of city infrastructure, Stronski illustrates how the wartime evacuation of factories and the increasing investments laid the groundwork for future industrial expansion, thus considerably boosting Tashkents economic output during and especially after the war (p. 145).

In the remaining four chapters, Stronski shows how the need for reconstruction and cheap housing sparked ideas on adaptation of traditional Central Asian city structures during the immediate postwar period. Accordingly, debates surfaced in which the Tashkent City Architect M. Bulatov considered the possibility of adopting the traditional micro society of the mahalla into socialist plans and create Soviet micro-districts (p. 151). These ideas were eventually trumped by Moscows tightening of the reins in the late 1940s and during the massive construction campaigns initiated under Nikita Khrushchev (p. 216). This process was not least due to the foreign political interests in the midst of the Cold War. As a showcase example of Soviet development, Tashkent became an important tool to attract to the communist camp the formerly colonized people in the Third World (p. 235). Nevertheless, the division between the old and new city persisted and it was only due to the earthquake of 1966 that urban planners were able to make a clean slate and forge a united, socialist city centre, bare of the old city structures (p. 254).

The architectural unification of Tashkent did not overcome the ethnic divisions between Uzbeks and Russians/Europeans that had characterised the old town / new town bisection. Instead, Stronski convincingly argues that segregation persisted not only because many Uzbeks were reluctant to move into apartment complexes but also because new apartments were distributed to skilled workers, the majority of which were Russian/European, while the unskilled labourer workforce was mainly Uzbek (p. 270). Although this sort of segregation is bound to have produced anti-Russian sentiment among the Uzbeks, it is questionable that it ever rose to the degree of ethnic hatred as Stronski suggests (pp. 143, 182) and the question would have deserved a more profound analysis.

While the book offers an extensive account of an understudied period, it is not free from flaws. A study of Soviet modernizing goals with simultaneous heavy reliance on Soviet institutional sources runs the danger of reproducing a discourse that is predominantly emphasizing deficiencies regarding Soviet modernization. In Stronskis case this results in two problems. First, insufficient material supply, the slow indigenization progress and a general under-fulfilment of planned targets are reiterated throughout the book. Second, the narrative is biased toward the history of the new city and the reader gets little sense of the Uzbeks experience of Soviet urban development scheme. Surprising for a study on urban development, Stronski provides neither statistical evidence nor explanations of the low level of urbanization in Uzbekistan, maps are entirely absent and Stronski only insufficiently factors in Central Asian culture as an arguably decisive factor for urban behaviour.

Despite these problems, the book is rich on material and information, which offers a view into the troubled history of todays Uzbek capital and a good starting point for anyone concerned with the history of Soviet rule in Central Asia.

Claus Bech Hansen, Berlin

Zitierweise: Claus Bech Hansen über: Paul Stronski: Tashkent. Forging a Soviet City, 1930–1966. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010. XI, 350 S., 25 Abb. = Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies. ISBN: 978-0-8229-6113-0, http://www.dokumente.ios-regensburg.de/JGO/erev/Bech-Hansen_Stronski_Tashkent.html (Datum des Seitenbesuchs)

© 2015 by Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropastudien in Regensburg and Claus Bech Hansen. All rights reserved. This work may be copied and redistributed for non-commercial educational purposes, if permission is granted by the author and usage right holders. For permission please contact jahrbuecher@ios-regensburg.de

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