Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City, 1930–1966

Chapter 9. The Tashkent Model

234 Throughout the Soviet era, Party leaders made special effort to present Tashkent as an important international center. It was a “model” Asian city and an example of how socialism could be adapted beyond its original European roots to assist “less developed” or even “backward” societies in advancing out of poverty and colonialism. City officials, academics, and Party propagandists endeavored to demonstrate that non-Europeans in the Soviet Union, under the Communist Party’s leadership, could improve themselves and create modern, “civilized,” industrial societies. The achievements of the Uzbek people, often considered one of the more “stagnant” nationalities by Soviet officials, were presented to visitors and Soviet citizens alike as proof of the adaptability of socialism to Asia, the Middle East, and other parts of the colonial and postcolonial world. Central Asia’s public successes—its modern urban centers, large industrial factories, and newly created national art forms (opera and ballet)—supposedly demonstrated that a colonized people could move from oppression to the bright era of socialism tHe taSHKent modeL The young city raised from the ruins Erected with love by the whole country The city became a monument to friendship In it there are sons from all over. Like Moscow, Tashkent is a tall beam of light, A kind guard of the best ideals Moscow, the capital, has an ambassador In the East—our city. —From “Moscow’s Ambassador in the East,” by Khamid Guliam 9 • stronski text i-350/3.indd 234 6/25/10 8:53 AM tHe taSHKent modeL O 235 without ever having to experience the hardship of Western-style capitalism . The “Tashkent model” was the Soviet adaptation of the Marxist creed about the course of history that allowed certain societies to speed through the capitalist stage of development and arrive safely in socialism. Despite many “cracks” in the Tashkent ideal, Soviet propaganda persistently celebrated the physical renovation of the Uzbek capital city into a twentieth-century urban space as proof of the equality of national minorities under socialism. The reconstructed Tashkent—a “fully modern” city—and its residents became diplomatic tools that Soviet officials used to help spread socialism throughout the colonial and postcolonial space during the height of the cold war. In the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras, the Uzbek capital became a prime meeting place for Soviet-sponsored international conferences, cultural festivals, and sporting events that brought delegates from the Middle East, Asia, and elsewhere across the developing world, all regions that allegedly lacked contemporary urban spaces at a time of intense ideological competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. Soviet officials declared these regions to be at approximately the same stage of economic and cultural development as pre-revolutionary Uzbekistan . They subsequently celebrated the equality of Soviet national minorities , the “freedom” from reactionary Islam, the renovation of the Uzbek capital city into a twentieth-century urban space, and the “help” given to the city by other Soviet republics both during foreigners’ visits to Tashkent as well as on Tashkenters’ official overseas trips, mostly to the Middle East and Asia. This Tashkent model of socialist decolonization reached its zenith in the mid-1960s, only to come crashing down during the destruction of the earthquake in 1966. Soviet technological achievement and urban planning efforts had aimed to reorder the physical landscape of Central Asia, but Soviet ideology could not withstand such a powerful force of nature, despite its continual claims to the contrary. A Model City for the Cold War In the late 1950s and early 1960s, cold war Tashkent became a tourist magnet for Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans who traveled to the region on cultural and government exchanges. High-level visitors marveled at the beauty and achievement of Tashkent, or at least the impressive parts of the city—its tree-lined main streets, the Navoi Theater, water diversion projects, and model factories—that state officials arranged for them to see. Tashkent’s newspapers ran full-page cover stories on each visiting delegation, whose members were treated to the best that the city could offer .1 Soviet hosts presented Tashkent’s wide avenues, European-style thestronski text i-350/3.indd 235 6/25/10 8:53 AM 236 O tHe taSHKent modeL aters, modern industrial enterprises, and newly built housing compounds as proof that the Uzbek people, helped by the socialist system, had advanced and achieved modernity. To foreign visitors, Tashkent was supposedly a city of art and...