Man’s War with Water: The Hydroaesthetics of Socialist Realism in Central Asia

• In Event: Modernity and Environment in the Literature and Cinema of Uzbekistan

Abstract

This paper considers the intersection between hydrology and aesthetics in the context of the parallel development of Soviet irrigation systems and Socialist Realism in Central Asia. The paper brings visual and cinematic representations of irrigation from the long 1930s into conversation with Sadriddin Ayni’s epic Persian-language poetic dāstān about the Vakhsh river, “Man’s War with Water” (1937). The paper asks how attending to hydroaesthetics might complicate narratives about Socialist Realism and its relationship to Soviet “ecocide.”

Author

• Claire Nadine Roosien, Yale U