Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-17T10:14:03.776Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Benefits of Marginality: The Great Famine around the Aral Sea, 1930–1934

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2019

Niccolò Pianciola Open the ORCID record for Niccolò Pianciola [Opens in a new window]
Niccolò Pianciola*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Lingnan University, Hong Kong SAR, People’s Republic of China
*
*Corresponding author. Email: niccolopianciola@ln.edu.hk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Based on research in Kazakhstani and Russian archives, this article is a regional study of the 1931–1933 Soviet famine. It compares Soviet policies in the southern and northern “halves” of the Aral Sea region. While the Kazaks in the northern part of the region suffered from the famine, the Karakalpaks in the south did not. The article explains this difference by underscoring the role of the main transportation infrastructure connecting Central Asia to Russia, the Orenburg-Tashkent railway. The railway crossed the northern, Kazak, part of the Aral Sea region and made massive livestock and grain procurements possible, while the absence of any reliable transportation route connecting Karakalpakstan to Soviet industrial centers contributed to shielding the Karakalpaks from the famine. The article also investigates the consequences of the famine for the Aral Sea fishing economy. The famine led to the inversion of the relative economic importance of the northern and southern parts of the sea: if before the famine fishing was concentrated in the former, after the famine it had shifted to the latter. Finally, the article situates the administrative detachment of Karakalpakstan from Kazakstan in 1930 within the context of Stalinist economic policies in Central Asia.

Keywords

StalinismAral SeafamineKazakhsKarakalpaks
Type
Special Issue Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 48 , Special Issue 3: Special Issue on the Soviet Famines of 1930–1933 , May 2020 , pp. 513 - 529
Copyright
© Association for the Study of Nationalities 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abdurasulov, Ulfatbek. 2016. “The Aral Region and Geopolitical Agenda of the Early Qunghrats.” Eurasian Studies 14: 3–36.Google Scholar
Abdurasulov, Ulfatbek, and Sartori, Paolo. 2016. “Neopredelennost’ kak politika: Razmyshliaia o prirode rossiiskogo protektorata v Srednei Azii.” Ab Imperio 3: 118–164.Google Scholar
Allaniiazov, Turganbek. 1999. Kollektivizatsia po-karsakpaiskii: Chimbaiskii variant. Almaty: Fond XXI vek.Google Scholar
Allaniiazov, Turganbek, and Taukenov, Amangel’dy. 2000. Shetskaia tragediia: iz istorii antisovetskikh vooruzhennykh vystuplenii v Tsentral’nom Kazakhstane v 1930–1931 gg. Almaty: Fond XXI vek.Google Scholar
Berg, Lev. 1926. Sovremennoe sostoianie aral’skogo rybnogo khoziaistva. Leningrad: Gosudarstvennyi Institut Opytnoi Agronomii, Otdel Prikladnoi Ikhtiologii.Google Scholar
Bustanov, Alfrid. 2015. Soviet Orientalism and the Creation of Central Asian Nations. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cameron, Sarah. 2018. The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Davies, Robert W., and Wheatcroft, Stephen G.. 2004. The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Davletjarov, Medet, and Günther, Olaf. 2013. “Wasser bewegt – Migration im Amudarja-Delta.” In Aral Histories: Geschichte und Erinnerung im Delta des Amudarja, edited by Dzhumashev, Askar, Günther, Olaf, and Loy, Thomas, 59–74. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.Google Scholar
Dingel’shtedt, Nikolai. 1893. Opyt izucheniia irrigatsii Turkestanskago kraia: Syr-Dar’inskaia oblast’. Sankt-Peterburg: I.N. Kushnerev.Google Scholar
Dzhumashev, Askar. 2006. “Kazakhstan-Karakalpakstan: problemy vzaimoostnoshenii.” In Rossiia i Kazakhstan: Problemy istorii (XX-nachalo XXI v.), edited by Bugai, Nikolai, 133–139. Moskva: Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN.Google Scholar
Glavnoe Upravlenie Zemleustroistva i Zemledeliia, Pereselencheskoe Upravlenie. 1915. Materialy po obsledovaniiu kochevogo i osedlago tuzemnago khoziaistva i zemlepol’zovaniia v Amu-Dar’inskom otdele Syr-Dar’inskoi oblasti. Tashkent: Tipo-Litografiia V.M. Il’ina.Google Scholar
Gorshenina, Svetlana. 2012. Asie Centrale: L’invention des frontiers et l’héritage russo-sovietique. Paris: CNRS éditions.Google Scholar
Gosplan, SSSR 1930. Piatiletnii plan narodno-khoziaistvennogo stroitel’stva SSSR. Tom tretii: raionnyi razrez plana. Moskva: Izdatel’stvo “Planovoe khoziaistvo.”Google Scholar
Haugen, Arne. 2003. The Establishment of National Republics in Soviet Central Asia. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Hirsch, Francine. 2005. Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Jacquesson, François. 2002. “Les parlers karakalpaks dans leur context.” Cahiers d’Asie Centrale 10: 93–138.Google Scholar
Jacquesson, Svetlana. 2002. “Parcours ethnographiques dans l’histoire des deltas.” Cahiers d’Asie Centrale 10: 51–92.Google Scholar
Kalbanova, Evdokiia. 2002. “Les Cosaques de l’Oural au Karakalpakistan.” Cahiers d’Asie Centrale 10: 239–247.Google Scholar
Kamalov, Sabyr. 1968. Karakalpaki v XVIII-XIX vekakh (k istorii vzaimotnoshenii s Rossiei i sredneaziatskimi khanstvami). Tashkent: Fan.Google Scholar
Khalid, Adeeb. 2015. Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Kindler, Robert. 2018. Stalin’s Nomads: Power and Famine in Kazakhstan. Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Nabiev, Zhaugashty. 2010. Stepnaia tragediia: Adaiskoe vosstanie 1929–1931 gg. Almaty: Arys.Google Scholar
Obertreis, Julia. 2017. Imperial Desert Dreams: Cotton Growing and Irrigation in Central Asia, 1860–1991. Göttingen: V&R unipress.Google Scholar
Ohayon, Isabelle. 2006. La sédentarisation des Kazakhs dans l’URSS de Staline: Collectivisation et changement social (1928–1945). Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose.Google Scholar
Omarbekov, Тalas. 1994. Zobalang. Almaty: Sanat.Google Scholar
Omarbekov, Тalas. 1997. 20-30 zhyldardaghy Qazaqstan qasireti. Almaty: Sanat.Google Scholar
Pianciola, Niccolò. 2009. Stalinismo di frontiera. Colonizzazione agricola, sterminio dei nomadi e costruzione statale in Asia Centrale (1905–1936). Rome: Viella.Google Scholar
Pianciola, Niccolò. 2013. “Interpreting an Insurgency in Soviet Kazakhstan: The OGPU, Islam and Qazaq ‘Clans’ in Suzak, 1930.” In Islam, Society and States across the Qazaq Steppe (18th–Early 20th Centuries), edited by Pianciola, Niccolò and Sartori, Paolo, 297–340. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.Google Scholar
Pianciola, Niccolò. 2017. “Stalinist Spatial Hierarchies: Placing the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz in Soviet Economic Regionalization.” Central Asian Survey 36 (1): 73–92.Google Scholar
Pianciola, Niccolò. 2018. “Stalinskaia ‘ierarkhiia potrebleniia’ i velikii golod 1931–1933 gg. v Kazakhstane.” Ab Imperio 2: 80–116.Google Scholar
Salzman, Philip C. 1972. “Multi-Resource Nomadism in Iranian Baluchistan.” In Perspectives on Nomadism, edited by Irons, William and Dyson-Hudson, Neville, 60–68. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Sokolovskii, V. G. 1926. Kazakskii aul. Tashkent: KazTsSU.Google Scholar
Teichmann, Christian. 2013. “»Wasser ist hier wie Gold.« Künstliche Bewässerung und früher Sowjetstaat am Unterlauf des Amudarja.” In Aral Histories: Geschichte und Erinnerung im Delta des Amudarja, edited by Dzhumashev, Askar, Günther, Olaf, and Loy, Thomas, 75–99. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.Google Scholar
Teichmann, Christian. 2016. Macht der Unordnung: Stalins Herrschaft in Zentralasien, 1920–1950. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition.Google Scholar
Teichmann, Christian. 2018. “Leviathan on the Oxus: Water and Soviet Power on the Lower Amu Darya, 1920s–1940s.” In Eurasian Environments: Nature and Ecology in Imperial Russian and Soviet History, edited by Breyfogle, Nicholas B., 97–112. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, Alun. 2017. “The Caspian Disputes: Nationalism and Nomadism in Early Soviet Central Asia.” The Russian Review 76 (3): 502–525.Google Scholar
Tolstov, Sergei. 1962. Po drevnym del’tam Oksa i Yaksarta. Moskva: Izdatel’stvo Vostochnoi Literatury.Google Scholar
Tolstov, Sergei, Zhdanko, Tatiana, Kamalov, Sabyr, Kosbergenov, Rzambet, and Tolstova, Lada, eds. 1964. Ocherki istorii Karakalpakskoi ASSR. Tom I (s drevneishikh vremen do 1917 g.). Tashkent: Nauka.Google Scholar
Tolstova, Lada. 1963. Karakalpaki za predelami Khorezmskogo oazisa v XIX-nachale XX veka. Tashkent-Nukus: Karakalpakskoe gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo.Google Scholar
Ubiria, Grigol. 2016. Soviet Nation-Building in Central Asia: The Making of the Kazakh and Uzbek Nations. London: Routledge.Google Scholar