Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City – The Home Stretch

Speaking about the Chilanzar apartment block, Paul Stronski claimed that the Soviet government “aimed to transform the city for the benefit of its residents, astonish its foreign visitors, and solidify the power of the state over city residents.” (221) This neatly summarizes the Soviet program in Tashkent as a whole.

Stronski presents evidence in our chapters that the Soviet government struggled to accomplish these goals. The “benefit of the citizens” was not upheld when designing Chilanzar, Stronski claims: “Tashkenters clearly were afterthoughts to these designs…. Once again, cities were not supposed to suit the customs of their inhabitants; inhabitants were supposed to transform their customs to suit the new Soviet city.” (223) One non-Uzbek visitor, Leonid Volynskii, described a scene that would not astonish but appall: “In place of paved pathways and green spaces for the relaxation of the region’s proposed 200,000 residents, garbage, automobile parts, and construction debris constituted the scene Volynskii describes…. residents had little refuge from the heat, noise and dirt of the Uzbek capital.” (221-222) Nor did the Soviet government always succeed in controlling the city residents fully, when, for example, single-family private housing continued to proliferate throughout Tashkent despite the official goal of moving residents into multi-family apartment complexes like Chilanzar. (224) Still, the state was showing signs of adapting policy in the 1960s, to recognize that “Crreating a Soviet city no longer concerned just bricks, mortar, and utopian designs. People, formerly ignored, gained recognition as important components of the urban environment.” (232)

With this in mind, a number of questions could be asked.

  • In instances where the Soviet program conflicted with the byt’ (native ways of life), what measures did the Soviets take, or could they have taken, to try to fulfill the three goals of benefiting residents, impressing visitors, and solidifying power?
  • Looking at the Gallery of Photographs, how did the latest constructions of Tashkent (page 106 and 111, for instance) contrast with models of Tashkent’s possible future development (page 106) and old Tashkent (112-113); and how do these images square up with the descriptions that Stronski gives us textually?
  • And finally, to what extent did the Uzbeks exert their agency to either resist or adapt to the compulsions of the state?
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11 Responses to Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City – The Home Stretch

  1. lernerm says:

    As usual, I will defend the Soviet government. Must we set up the dichotomy as one of struggle between the Soviet government and the Uzbek people? There was that one city plan that focused on transplanting entire neighborhoods into new developments, which in many ways worked well with the community already present. Additionally, the fact that this plan was not fully implemented was not because of a lack of will, but because of an earthquake which caused the Soviet Government to focus on creating as much new housing as possible in as short a period of time.

    • shaswitz says:

      I don’t think it has to be a strict dichotomy but to imply that the desires of the Soviet government and the Uzbek people always fell in line seems like wishful thinking to me. I really liked the line Dagan quoted at the beginning of his post because it exemplifies the competing interest of the Soviet Union in Uzbekistan. The most successful Soviet programs were the ones when all three of those priorities aligned but they didn’t always, and frequently “benefiting its residents” and “solidifying the power of the state” ran into each other, leading to the struggle between the Soviet government and the Uzbek people that we’ve seen not just in this reading but in a number of others as well.

    • Jacob says:

      In my opinion, the Soviet government set up such a dichotomy. The reading indicated at multiple points how Tashkent’s particular history with Russia made it especially difficult to modernize, compared to other regions in the area. Part of this difficulty clearly seemed to stem from soviet social and building policies that deliberately neglected and harmed the health and culture of urban, but especially rural, Uzbeks.

  2. Isaiah says:

    I think there’s no doubt that Stronski is drawing a divide between the expediency of Soviet planning and the interests and needs of Uzbek Tashkenters. As we talked about on Thursday, the structure and source material of the book suggests this, as do descriptions like the following: “To show that the state ‘cared’ for the people of Tashkent, urban planners increased apartment construction in the city but lowered safety standards. Ironically, this decision to show the Party’s ‘concern’ for its Central Asian residents put them into buildings that could not guarantee their safety, despite claims to the contrary” (219-220). To Stronski, these events do seem to be characterized by a sharp divide between Soviet authority and local interests, and by a lack of genuine concern for Uzbek Tashkenters. I’m not sure that he necessarily makes them into a “struggle” though. For comparison, we could look at the postwar failures of industrial integration at the beginning of Chapter 7 in which Soviet officials and Uzbeks agreed that it was a problem Russians continued to block Uzbek workers out of industrial sectors (175-177).

  3. Teo Rogers says:

    I think that while it’s important to note that eventually—and briefly once before in the post-war era—the urban planners found more respect for the traditional building styles and techniques for adapting to the desert climate, and certainly at times the Soviet government started to consider the needs and care for the Tashkent citizens themselves, the overall pattern that Stronski lays out is a pattern of failing to consider the needs and wants of Tashkent citizens, especially Uzbek Tashkenters. The Khrushchev era refocusing away from monuments and ideological goals towards raising living standards were certainly a welcome development, but these efforts were again marked by general failures, and were in many cases motivated by things other than the general welfare of Tashkenters.
    In the case of Chilanzar, “Tashkenters clearly were an afterthought to these designs” (223). The buildings were poorly constructed, didn’t have storage space for winter clothes and food (which are pretty big things to overlook), among other issues. Stronsky argues that the point of building many new apartments quickly were once again to ideologically prove the state cared for Tashkenters, in the same way that wide streets and parkland were meant to show care for the citizens in the Stalinist era.

  4. Isa Velez says:

    In my comment, I will respond to your last question: “And finally, to what extent did the Uzbeks exert their agency to either resist or adapt to the compulsions of the state?”

    To answer this question, Chapter 7 is helpful. I think that the Uzbek’s were able to leverage and exert their agency in the post-war era to demand better work and living conditions. Post-WWll was a unique time and a prime opportunity for Uzbeks to assert their agency. I think they both resisted and adapted to the compulsions of the state through exerting their agency. Stronski highlights why post-war time was a unique opportunity for Uzbeks to demand better conditions: “Uzbek veterans and Stakhanovites requested help in feeding and clothing their children, indicating a belief that their wartime service and sacrifice for socialism should be rewarded by the state itself.” (199) Uzbek veterans were not the only ones that felt justified in requesting help due to their wartime efforts. Mothers that took on roles of reproductive labor and factory work when the men were at war also carried the burden of labor during the war. These efforts (fighting in the war and bearing children) gave Uzbeks leverage to exert their agency and demand better conditions. And it seems like the Soviets listened, from these chapters! (It was not without a price though: “Soviet officials in turn made increased demands on their citizens. The state politicized family life, rewarding women who gave birth to numerous Soviet citizens in Soviet hospitals and who reared them in a Soviet environment. In the name of creating a cultured and refined society, the Soviet state denounced adultery and drunkenness and abolished polygamy and arranged child marriages.” (200)

    I think this demonstrates that they both resisted and adapted. The Uzbeks resisted poor living conditions; they resisted Soviet officials not providing child care while they were at work. However, they also adapted. Uzbek women began to work in the factories, when traditionally, they fulfilled the maternal role. This quote was really helpful to me: “The problem was that Russian urban women were often industrial workers but did not meet the conservative image of the Soviet hero-mother. Uzbek women, in turn, fulfilled the maternal role but not the hero-worker model.” (196) This shows an adaptation for both peoples.

  5. whitec says:

    Regarding your first question, the Soviets seemed unconcerned with their buildings not fitting with Uzbek byt. It seems that the Soviet focus on cities shaping their residents (Tutuchenko’s claim on 217) meant that Soviet administrators more or less wanted Uzbeks to be uncomfortable in their new apartments because by changing their living situation they believed they could make Uzbeks into “Ideal Soviet Citizens”. To the Soviet Union, Uzbeks wanting apartments to reflect there lifestyle, which Soviets considered backwards in the first place, would have meant that Uzbeks were not yet the Ideal Soviets that the Union wanted to create. This isn’t to say that Soviets did not start to consider Uzbek byt in building apartments later on (in this I’m mostly thinking about the Mahalla micro district around p231), but their effort may have been too little, too late. In terms of impressing visitors, Soviets seemed to do a pretty bad job, from the grandiose Stalin era monuments to listing a factory in a dangerous area as a tourist attraction (p184). It seems to me that a far better way to impress visitors to Tashkent would have been to fix the issues of contaminated water and lack of any water rather than building fountains (p181), as workers in Tashkent pointed out. I believe the issue of impressing visitors is tied pretty closely to the Soviet issue with aesthetics vs practicality that we see in this book especially around p228, in that at times the Soviet government seemed to be more concerned with aesthetics than with practicality, leading to bad urban planning.

  6. Alystair Augustin says:

    In response to your last question, I think the alternate economies that Uzbek Tashkenters created and participated in is a good example of agency that resists the state. Rather than being oppositional, these ‘black markets’ served to provide dependable food where it could not necessarily be accessed otherwise. The state was not functioning to feed its citizens, especially not citizens who didn’t eat pork, or want cabbage and potatoes, so Uzbek Tashkenters found means that would serve them.
    Similarly, I see the way Uzbek women would have children and stay with them by depending on other economic means rather than having them be poorly cared for not as direct resistance, but as agency in practicing culture outside of what the Soviets prescribed. I feel like this probably wasn’t so much an attempt to subvert the system, but an attempt to continue culture practice as close to what was previously known as possible.

    • Jacob says:

      I think another “attempt to continue culture practice” that fits here was the paying of soviet doctors by Uzbeks to medically clear their younger daughters for marriage. A lack of soviet administrative oversight was to blame for this, and seemed to be a loophole that Uzbek families relied upon to preserve their cultural marriage practices.

  7. Corey says:

    With regard to your last question, I think there are a number of examples in chapter seven that show both resistance and adaptation to the state. On page 181, Stronskii contrasts Soviet and Uzbek factory workers, suggesting that the Uzbek workers were more likely to protest their working conditions because they had the option of leaving the modern city. The also had the advantages of ethno-national minority status, which gave them more power. I think this show both adaptation and resistance to the state. The Uzbeks here take advantage of the national minority status while their familial or local ties allow them the opportunity to protest. This can also be seen through a number of other examples in chapter 7, like child marriages and circumcision. Although there was a system in place to prevent these practices, these practices managed to persist. The Uzbeks went along with some of these policies, like doctor’s certificates and circumcision requests, but would use things like the nikon or arguments about grandparents arranging circumcision to maintain their existing cultural practices.

  8. Connor says:

    I’m really interested in how Stronski technically crafts a history that critiques imperialism. Much of his analysis in these chapters focuses on the ways Uzbeks were forced to adapt to the Russified Soviet system imposed on them. While there were individual acts of kindness (as in allowing the single mother to stay in the factory from Chapter 7) and some Uzbeks profited, that does not change the myriad systemic injustices Stronski clearly wants to document. It’s also important to note that Stronski attributes much of the worst injustices to Stalinism, noting that “people became increasingly vocal in their dissatisfaction with persistently poor living standards.” (203) I think in comparing these two chapters, Stronski effectively demonstrates how even though people had a great deal of affection and admiration for Stalin (which he attributes in no small part to state-sponsored cults of personality), his death and the changing of the guard resulted in a pretty different government. I think Stronski locates the violence of the imperial relationship at the imposition of Russified state power rather than in the actions of individuals. Because he spends time talking about the Uzbeks who were able to succeed or profit under the regime, I am more inclined to trust his analysis that is explicitly critical of the Soviet state.

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