Title
Stalinist spatial hierarchies : placing the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz in Soviet economic regionalization
Document Type
Journal article
Source Publication
Central Asian Survey
Publication Date
1-2017
Volume
36
Issue
1
First Page
73
Last Page
92
Publisher
Routledge
Keywords
Stalinism, colonization, pastoral nomads, sedentarization, regionalization
Abstract
Based on research in Russian and Kazakhstani archives, this article investigates connections between policies of peasant colonization, the sedentarization of pastoral nomadic peoples, and the economic regionalization of the USSR. After analysing debates from the 1920s, and limited sedentarization among Kazakhs and Kyrgyz during collectivization, the article argues that only by focusing on the economic regionalization of Central Asia, which placed the Kazakhs and the Kyrgyz in two different economic regions with dissimilar priorities, is it possible to explain the radically different outcomes of early Stalinist policies for similar pastoral peoples. The increased central control brought by the Stalinist Great Turn created a new spatial hierarchy directly connecting the bottom of the Soviet social and spatial pyramid, the livestock-breeding regions, to its top, the elite regime cities. The exclusion of the Kyrgyz ASSR from the massive livestock procurements that fed the Soviet political and industrial centres, and which led to the great famine in Kazakhstan (1931–33), can be explained by early Stalinist economic regionalization.
DOI
10.1080/02634937.2016.1221380
Print ISSN
02634937
E-ISSN
14653354
Publisher Statement
Copyright © 2017 Routledge. Access to external full text or publisher's version may require subscription.
Full-text Version
Publisher’s Version
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Pianciola, N. (2017). Stalinist spatial hierarchies: Placing the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz in Soviet economic regionalization. Central Asian Survey, 36(1), 73-92. doi: 10.1080/02634937.2016.1221380
