“The Drought Does Not Cause Fear”

This paper seeks to further recent reflections by scholars on whether James C. Scott’s concept of “high modernism” provides a useful framework to analyse Soviet irrigation schemes in Soviet Central Asia. Empirically, it looks into the irrigation development and land reclamation project of the Hungry Steppe in Soviet Central Asia during the post-Stalinist period with a focus on the Tajik SSR. Two aspects of the Hungry Steppe project are examined: the discursive shift which enabled to reframe the steppe as arable land, and the changes in resettlement policies for populating the newly reclaimed areas. The paper concludes that despite the manifold criticism voiced towards the concept of “high modernism”, it proves nevertheless productive in explaining the big discursive shifts related to post-Stalinist large-scale Soviet irrigation schemes such as the Hungry Steppe project. At the same time, it fails to account for, let alone explain the complexity of these shifts.

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