The Return of the Sea?: Post-Soviet Solutions to Central Asia’s Aral Sea Disaster

• In Event: Politics of Infrastructure across the Soviet/Post-Soviet Transition

Abstract

This paper takes as its starting point the construction of a World Bank-sponsored dam
to “save” Central Asia’s Aral Sea in 2005. Portrayed as a triumph of Western
innovation, the dam project actually drew upon a much longer history of Soviet and pre-
Soviet river management strategies. The dam did allow for a partial rehabilitation of the
Kazakhstani side of the sea. The fishing industry returned in a limited way to the
Kazakhstani side, and people who had left the region moved back to fish again. But the
celebratory atmosphere over the “return” of the sea concealed the full story: Beginning
in the 1970s, the fate of the two sides of the Aral had begun to diverge. By many
metrics, the Uzbekistani side, where the Turkic-speaking Karakalpak minority lived, was
doing worse. The dam cemented these differences. Saving a portion of the sea on the
Kazakhstani side meant sacrificing any possibility of a similar solution on the other half.
It was like cutting off a limb to save a sick patient, a solution to water supply problems
so radical that it even got its own name, “The Aral Sea solution.” This paper explores
the linkages between Soviet and post-Soviet technological solutions to the crisis, as well
as the role of these interventions in accelerating the disaster’s national differences.

Author

• Sarah Cameron, U of Maryland, College Park