Aral-88: Catastrophe, Critique and Hope

Environment and Post-Soviet Transformation in Kazakhstan’s Aral Sea Region

“…41 My analysis is based on the published accounts in Novy Mir (Reznichenko 1989;Seliunin 1989). See further Obertreis (2017), Wheeler (2016). 42 The expedition's analysis tallies with the accounts of Micklin (1998), Obertreis (2017) and Weinthal (2002).…”

“…As a 'matter of fact', the regression was addressed in a limited, circumscribed way, as we will see in Chapter 2. However, during perestroika, environmental activists, building on those earlier efforts, turned the Aral into a 'matter of concern' (Latour 2004): a proliferation of interconnected crises involving humans, water, salt and dust, far beyond scientific and bureaucratic control (Obertreis 2017;Wheeler 2016). Environmental protests were erupting across the USSR and, alongside Chernobyl, the Aral catastrophe became a cause célèbre.…”

“…44 Seliunin's proposals should not be approached uncritically: assuming a sharp distinction between society and the state, he arguably placed too much hope on instating the family as a unit of production. Purporting to speak for the Soviet public, he relied on a romantic image of the Central Asian family as a vehicle for utopian hope (Wheeler 2016). 45 Dynamics thus differ from capitalist uneven development, where, as Smith (1984) describes, space is, on the one hand, homogenised by the market and, on the other, differentiated through the investment of capital where it is most profitable.…”

The USSR as a hydraulic society: Wittfogel, the Aral Sea and the (post-)Soviet state

“…8 For Gestwa (2010), hydraulic infrastructure promised a dream of progress, a hopeful future to mitigate a bleak present. When the dreamworld turned into catastrophe – and as the escalating damage to ecology, economy and human health became widely known during perestroika – this became, as I argue elsewhere, a means of critiquing the whole Soviet project, re-reading its past through the catastrophic outcomes of irrigated agriculture (Wheeler, 2016). But what, several decades after the USSR’s demise, do these dreams look like today?…”

“…His explanation for the sea drying up was much more political than that of other inhabitants. Indeed, it became clear that Iura had read widely on the sea’s desiccation, and his account echoed perestroika-era intellectuals’ critiques of Soviet attitudes to nature and their environmentally catastrophic effects (see Obertreis, 2017; Wheeler, 2016). William: Did you know why the sea was going away?Iura: Yes of course.…”