This article analyzes the dual character of Soviet agrarian policy in the Fergana Valley from the 1920s to the 1950s, focusing on irrigation modernization as both an engine of socio-economic transformation and a mechanism of political control. Drawing on historical scholarship and published documentary evidence, the study examines how early Soviet land-and-water reforms, collectivization, and centrally planned procurement targets intersected with large-scale hydraulic projects. The Fergana Valley—already one of Central Asia’s most intensively irrigated regions—became a strategic space where Soviet “development” ambitions converged with the imperatives of cotton specialization, labor mobilization, and administrative consolidation. The article argues that irrigation modernization carried two simultaneous logics: a productive-modernizing logic that expanded cultivated land, stabilized water delivery, and supported new institutional capacity; and an extractive-coercive logic that narrowed agrarian diversity, intensified quota pressures, and reinforced disciplinary governance over rural society. By tracing policy shifts across the interwar years, wartime constraints, and postwar reconstruction, the article clarifies how modernization gains and social costs were co-produced within the same policy framework, leaving a legacy that shaped later ecological and governance challenges in the Syr Darya basin.

Soviet Central Asia, Fergana Valley, irrigation, agrarian policy

Kreutzmann H. From Upscaling to Rescaling: Transforming the Fergana Basin from Tsarist Irrigation to Water Management for an Independent Uzbekistan // Society – Water – Technology: A Critical Appraisal of Major Water Engineering Projects / eds. R.F. Hüttl, O. Bens, C. Bismuth, S. Hoechstetter. Cham: Springer, 2016. P. 113–127. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-18971-0_9.

Society – Water – Technology: A Critical Appraisal of Major Water Engineering Projects / eds. R.F. Hüttl, O. Bens, C. Bismuth, S. Hoechstetter. Cham: Springer, 2016. 295 p. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-18971-0.

Peterson M.K. Pipe Dreams: Water and Empire in Central Asia’s Aral Sea Basin. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 416 p. DOI: 10.1017/9781108673075.

Khalid A. Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015. 434 p.

Ferghana Valley: The Heart of Central Asia / ed. S. Frederick Starr; with B. Beshimov, I.I. Bobokulov, P. Shozimov. London; New York: Routledge, 2011.

Abdullaev K., Nazarov R. The Ferghana Valley Under Stalin, 1929–1953 // Ferghana Valley: The Heart of Central Asia / ed. S.F. Starr. London; New York: Routledge, 2011.

Micklin P.P. The Water Management Crisis in Soviet Central Asia. The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies. No. 905. Pittsburgh: Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 1991.

Micklin P.P. Desiccation of the Aral Sea: A Water Management Disaster in the Soviet Union // Science. 1988. Vol. 241. P. 1170–1176.

Scott J.C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1998.

Bichsel C. Conflict Transformation in Central Asia: Irrigation Disputes in the Ferghana Valley. London; New York: Routledge, 2009.

Great Fergana Canal (1939) [Electronic resource]. Seventeen Moments in Soviet History. Michigan State University. Accessed: 18.01.2026.

Moving the Waters in Soviet Uzbekistan [Electronic resource]. Harvard University, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, 2023. Accessed: 18.01.2026.

Start of the Construction of Great Fergana Canal [Electronic resource]. Environment & Society Portal. Accessed: 18.01.2026.

Hodnett G. Technology and Social Change in Soviet Central Asia: The Politics of Cotton Growing // Soviet Politics and Society in the 1970s / eds. H.W. Morton, R.L. Tökés. New York: Free Press, 1974. P. 60–177.

Starr S.F. (ed.). Introducing the Ferghana Valley // Ferghana Valley: The Heart of Central Asia. London; New York: Routledge, 2011.