Zone of Silence, “Adylov Case”: Central Asia as a Soviet Other

Abstract

The article frames socialism in the USSR as a discursive regime and examines how it was changing in the late Soviet years. Using the life story of Akhmadzhon Adylov, the Uzbek manager of a Soviet agrarian company, I demonstrate that in the 1980s this regime underwent an ideological transformation, one of the forms of which was the criticism of Central Asian socialism as the Other. Analyzing various official narratives of Adylov’s successes and crimes, I illustrate how placing Central Asia within the socialist project was a pillar of the universal idea of “socialist progress.” I also show how participation in the Soviet modernization project was seen differently in Central Asia and how the local elites used the vocabulary of progress to negotiate with the Center new ways to transform the local economy and strengthen their decision-making agency. I show how the orientalist critique of the inadequacy of Central Asian socialism, including the repressions during the notorious “cotton affair” in the 1980s, triggered the ideology shift and the attitudes toward socialism as such.