Soviet Hydrology between the Uzbek SSR and Egypt: From Marxist Political Economy to Scientific Geo-Engineering

• In Event: Soviet Internationalism at Home and Abroad

Abstract

Large-scale utopian irrigation projects were central to Soviet and earlier Russian imperial state-building in Central Asia. This paper focuses on transformations in hydrological science, engineering, and pedagogical training in these disciplines during the period of the Thaw after Stalin's death. How did new freedoms for researchers to choose their subject of investigation and the expansion of the Soviet Union's international aid agreements, including commitments to co-construct massive hydroelectric complexes in Aswan, Egypt, shape the possibilities in these fields in Uzbekistan from the interwar period to the 1960s?

Author

• Masha Kirasirova, New York U Abu Dhabi (UAE)