Latest / The Story of Uzbekistan: Silk Road Kingdoms and Soviet Legacy — Fexingo History
Soviet Uzbekistan's Red Desert: Cotton and Ecological Collapse
While previous episodes traced the ancient Silk Road trade routes and the violent Russian conquests of the 19th century, this episode turns to a different kind of empire: the Soviet plan to turn Central Asia into a single-crop monoculture. We follow the story of 'White Gold'—cotton—and how the directive to make the USSR self-sufficient in cotton led to the catastrophic drying of the Aral Sea. Lucas and Luna explore the lives of collective farmers, the role of figures like Sharof Rashidov in navigating Moscow’s demands, and the environmental disaster that still echoes today. From the…
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