Laboratory of Socialist Development

Artemy M. Kalinovsky is Professor of Russian, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Studies at Temple University and the Principal Investigator of the ERC funded project Building a Better Tomorrow: Development Knowledge and Practice in Central Asia and Beyond, based at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of Laboratory of Socialist Development and A Long Goodbye. He has co-edited a number of volumes on Soviet and Cold War history, including The End of the Cold War and the Third World, with Sergey Radchenko, and, most recently, Alternative Globalizations, with James Mark and Steffi Marung.

Laboratory of Socialist Development grapples with how universal ideas were negotiated locally and ultimately reshaped. Throughout the book, Kalinovsky demonstrates how the modernizing paradigm changed, as large-scale investment failed to yield the hoped for result for both European and Soviet modernizers, who sought to recreate European style modernity in the Third World and Central Asia.(Europe Now) Laboratory of Socialist Development leaves a certain nostaliga for the more hopeful times of the Soviet 1960s and early 1970s. The book's mediations are wide-ranging and fascinating.(Russian Review) This book is not only highly informative to readers familiar with the Soviet realm, but its references to 'modernisation' and 'development' projects around the world also make the book relevant to readers not familiar with the context of Tajikistan. Kalinovsky offers a very rich and multidimensional account of the way in which Tajikistan was developed under Soviet rule.(Inner Asia) A pleasure to read, and it has given me the rare opportunity to write a review in which praise does not have to be accompanied by criticism. Scholars in several different fields will likewise read this book with profit.(Central Asian Affairs) A towering achievement. It is by far the best existing study of the Soviet approach to development at home.(H-Diplo) Historians in many fields will appreciate the strength of this book for Kalinovsky's respect for oral histories and memoirs, his close attention to international and domestic political intrigues, and his concern with the less closely studied latter half of the Soviet era in Central Asia... This is a book I would be pleased to assign in any level of undergraduate and graduate history class.(American Historical Review) Its major merit [is] to inscribe Central Asian and Soviet history into the broader post-war and post-colonial history of development. It will provide inspiration and food for thought for further considerations about what socialist development was... Besides, the book provides the first coherent political, social, and intellectual history of Soviet Tajikistan and is thus an important contribution to Central Asian studies.(Slavic Review)

• Introduction: The Promise of Development 1. Decolonization, De-Stalinization, and Development2. Ayni's Children, or Making a Tajik-Soviet Intelligentsia3. Defining Development 4. Plans, Gifts, and Obligations 5. Nurek, "A City You Can Write About"6. Shepherds into Builders 7. The Countryside Electrified8. "A Torch Lighting the Way to Progress and Civilization"9. The Poorest RepublicConclusion: A Dream Deferred