TURNING A DEAD DESERT INTO A FLOURISHING OASIS

The period of the Russian Empire’s domination of Central Asia in the 1960s and 1970s gave impetus, among other things, to the expansion of irrigation construction and the irrigation of previously undeveloped areas.

This was a consequence of the establishment of peaceful life and the cessation of feuds. However, this was at the expense of the continuation of the existing aryks (channels). The increase in cultivated areas achieved in this way could not be large, and the construction of new irrigation channels was necessary to significantly increase irrigated areas.

Invited experts were highly impressed by Turkestan’s potential for agricultural production. One Turkestan journal stated that the region had ‘the possibility of developing… diverse and valuable branches of agriculture, capable of replacing American cotton, French and Hungarian wine and American dry fruits, Italian and Japanese silk, Australian wool and lard, and a mass of other products’.
Although irrigation was the basis of and essential condition for the prosperity of Turkestan’s main industry – agriculture – the area of irrigated land was small in relation to the total area of the region. In all the provinces of the Governor-General’s Office of Turkestan it represented less than 2 per cent.

The construction of new large canals was not feasible for the local population due to the primitive nature of their technical tools. And due to the impossibility of using the previous organisational methods. The expansion of irrigation and the irrigation of new areas planned to make Central Asia the main area of cotton production for the growing Russian textile industry. To solve this problem, water resources had to be studied and possible irrigation areas identified.

One of the most promising areas was the Hungry Degree. This was a fairly large area south of the left bank of the Syr Darya River as it exits the Fergana Valley, reaching as far south as the town of Jizzak. Before 1917, Jizzak was one of the district towns of the Samarkand region, with a population of less than twelve thousand people, where trade was conducted and several handicraft factories were located. It used to be the only relatively large settlement on the edge of the Golodnaya steppe.

The first attempts to develop the Hungry Steppe began soon after the establishment of the Turkestan Governorate. In 1869, at the suggestion of Governor-General K.P. von Kaufmann, a survey party led by Baron Aminov was sent to the steppe. And in 1871 the Tashkent engineer N.F. Ulyanov was sent here to draw up the project directly. The following year, the realisation of his project began.

The first attempt to irrigate part of the Hungry Steppe was unsuccessful; due to a lack of funds and labour, the work was very slow and often stopped for long periods. A few years later, work on the canal, already named the Kaufman Canal, was abandoned until better times.
Among the pioneers of the development, a member of the imperial family, Grand Duke N.K. Romanov, who lived in Tashkent due to a “family disgrace”, occupies a prominent place. In 1883-1885, on his initiative, the Iskander-Aryk canal was built on the right bank of the Chirchik River in the Tashkent district, irrigating 4.5 thousand hectares of land. After this success, in 1886 the Grand Duke began the construction of the Bukhar-Aryk Canal from the Syr Darya River. With the help of this canal it was planned to irrigate the Golodnaya steppe and to transfer the water of the river to the possessions of the Bukhara Emir. The Bukhar-aryk was built in 6 years and dug for 27 kilometres. On 9 May 1891, water was sent through the canal.

Unfortunately, this experience was unsuccessful. Due to technical miscalculations, the canal was soon out of order.

Despite this failure, in the autumn of 1891 N.K. Romanov began to build a new canal in the Hungry Steppe under the professional technical supervision of a group of experienced engineers. Its construction was completed in September 1895 and it irrigated 7.6 thousand hectares of land in the north-eastern part of the Hungry Steppe.

The villages of Dukhovskoye, Konnogvardeyskoye, Nadezhdinskoye, Nikolskoye, Romanovskoye, Spasskoye were established on the irrigated land. The Golodnostepskoe experimental field for breeding research was created on 200 hectares. A considerable part of the developed land was given to representatives of the indigenous population. A little later the Grand Duke ceded the irrigated lands and irrigation facilities to the state under certain conditions.

The authorities’ plans for irrigation in the Turkestan region became more active in the mid-1990s after the visit to Turkestan of the Minister of Agriculture and State Property, A.S. Ermolov. Substantial funds were allocated from the state budget for survey work, and a team of Russian engineers and technicians was sent from the Centre.

Preliminary surveys covered about 655 thousand hectares in the Syr Darya, Fergana and Samarkand regions. As a result of this research, which continued until 1900, eight irrigation projects were drawn up, covering a total area of about 229 thousand hectares and costing about 12 million roubles. The irrigation of the Hunger Steppe was again recognised as a priority.

To this end, a 37-kilometre main canal was to be built from the Syr Darya. A budget of 2.25 million roubles was allocated. The construction of the canal was supposed to be completed in 5 years, but due to numerous problems explained by the novelty of the case, the construction was delayed and the cost estimate increased to 7 million rubles.

Finally, in the autumn of 1913, the works were completed and on 5 October 1913, the canal was ceremonially opened. It was given the name “Romanovsky”. Thanks to this canal 38 thousand hectares were irrigated.

On the day of the canal’s inauguration, F.F. Tolmachev, the canal’s director, said: “Today is a holiday of culture, a holiday of engineering knowledge and art, which this time will serve the cause of unusual, rare – I would say, magical beauty, the cause of reviving the Hungry Steppe, the cause of turning the dead desert into a flowering oasis of the richest breadbasket in the very near future”.

By 1917 there were 17 settlements on the irrigated land of the Hungry Steppe, with 3677 families of new settlers. In addition, water from the Romanovsky canal, renamed the Northern Golodnostepsky canal after 1917, was used by the indigenous inhabitants of the kishlaks of the Begovat district (before 1917 – Nausskaya volost of the Khojent district).

The inhabitants received water free of charge. As a result, the kishlaks of the Begovat district were given an opportunity for more sustainable economic development, their population began to grow and quite settled farms were formed. Life, however was initially quite difficult. Malaria was often rampant. Frequent plagues of locusts were a disaster. New agricultural conditions were unfamiliar, especially the salinity of the soil, hot winds and irrigation. Eventually, thanks to the diligence and patience of the Russian peasants, their famine-stricken farms eventually achieved astonishing success, and life flourished.

The new power established after 1917 did not leave the Hungry Steppe unnoticed. As early as 1918, the country’s leadership passed a law ‘On the organisation of irrigation works in Turkestan’. Despite the civil war and intervention, the central government allocated 50 million roubles for the irrigation of 655.5 thousand hectares of land in the Hungry Steppe, the steppe zones of Dalverzin and Uch-Kurgan, intended for cotton fields.

Sharaf Rashidov made a colossal contribution to the development of the Hungry Steppe. As a result of the tasks of development and irrigation of virgin lands in the 60s and 70s, the economy grew considerably and Uzbekistan achieved a certain economic and social position among the republics of the Soviet Union. There were many difficulties, and the great merit of Sharaf Rashidov was to solve all the organisational problems. He was able to use every opportunity rationally to protect the interests of the people and raise their standard of living. His memories of this project became the basis for his novel “Winners”, which is still relevant today.

Yuri S. Flygin, Historian, publicist. Head of the Department of Historical Disciplines of the Tashkent Theological Seminary.