Flexibility and design

Soviet architecture is always and everywhere the same. So it seems. In fact, cities like Kiev, Riga and Tbilisi (picture) have Soviet- era neighborhoods that are well- designed, pleasant, green, modernist but not monotonous. In other places, cookie- cutter developments scatter high- risers over gloomy landscapes.

Soviet republics were fighting over resources, all the time. Kiev usually got more than Tashkent. Sometimes, disparities were incorporated in the building codes and norms (SNIP), so the standards fo Siberian apartment were very different from one in the Baltics. Some places were allowed to buildr a more, but got relatively few resources, and the other way around. In some places, resources were used more efficiently than elsewhere.

Then there is the issue of monotony. Some cities, regions, republics, were not especially eager to deviate from the norms, or to improve the norms. As long as the development machine kept running, with some spoils here and there, things were ok. While other areas asserted their individuality, and wanted to adapt the standards to local conditions and tastes, to increase the importance of design. In this game, regions were not always pitted against each other or the center; rather, state organizations faced each other. Large construction firms, kombinats, were pushing for uniformity, easier for them. Some academics were stressing the importance of norms for ‘correct’ building. But other academics, planners, architects, in the regions and in Moscow, asserted that flexibility was important and not necessarily more expensive.

One of the architects we spoke, had a career spanning Kiev, Moscow, Tashkent, and Urgench, and told stories about lively discussions in the 70’s on this topic. He was arguing for flexibility, and found allies and foes in all places. In newspapers and architectural magazines, the discussion raged on. In practice, what recreated the more boring development patterns was not so much pressure from political actors, as habits and routines in a chain of organizations, and with users. Standards became important because they were easy. Sleek architects used scientific arguments to be creative: no, we cannot follow the standards, because of the local climate, the geology, the seismic situation. Science, a force behind standardization, was also a tool to force flexibility.

(My days in Urgench are coming to an end. Wednesday, to Tashkent. I heard they have coffee places.)

Fish in the desert

Today, I was in Ashirmat, my favorite village on the Turkmen border. Interesting interviews, but also a good, hearty lunch: fried carp with onions, vinegar and bread -eerily close to fish 'n chips.

My friend Erik- Jan, resident fisheries engineer in Norway, already indicated that we're probably dealing with grass carp, introduced to clean up the irrigation canals. And indeed, that is what the Uzbek colleagues confirmed, and what I found in an FAO study: introduced in 1958 for weed control, taking over most native species in the freshwater bodies (in Korezm, 36 species still hanging in there). People here acquired a taste for fish, and the collapse of Aral Sea fisheries meant more pressure on inland waters.

That's why currently every little swamp, each insignificant irrigation canal, minute pond or drainage lake (if not too salty) is used for fishing, for carp, and sometimes catfish -an omnivorous predator of the abundant carp. Even rice fields are used for fishing. I saw people pushing tiny boats through swamps with barely a stretch of open water, kids hauling up nets from ditches, and every now and then a man on a bridge, proudly showing a trophy carp.

For many villages in Khorezm, the lakes and wetlands, especially natural ones, are symbolic places; fishing there is an almost ritualized activity, more important than an extra acre of farmland. In the heyday of Soviet land reclamation, this local attachment was probably as effective a protection as their functionality as drainage reservoir.

And the grass carp? He was a bit too successful, cleaned up the weeds, but apparently didn't appreciate ranunculus species (like buttercups) so one group of weeds replaced another one. Luckily, the locals do appreciate the grass carp.

Local knowledge

Talk about local knowledge mostly implies that local perspectives are somehow dismissed or ignored or simply not observed by decision- makers. High modernist states are assumed to be among the worst here, and the worst of the worst has to be the hyper- planned Soviet Union. That is the standard story, at least. The fact that the U.S.S.R. does not exist anymore, is seen as the proof of the pudding, and also makes sure that very few will come to its defense.

After spending some time in Uzbekistan, and reflecting on my experiences in a few other places, I tend to believe that over- planning was not the problem, and that local knowledge was everywhere. One of the difficulties, I think, was the enormous gap between formal and informal, the difference between the official self- descriptions and the actual functioning of the Soviet state.

That meant that in some places, and for some issues bottom- up initiatives were existing but not acknowledged, while in other cases, the opposite was true, and pseudo- local knowledge figured in fake participation. Kolkhoz workers could convince their chair of a better land use, and he could get it done. Local party leaders could jump directly to Moscow to plea their case. Local actors did their own thing, based on their insights, without even telling. Sometimes, this was simply a way to make the system work, sometimes a way for local players to enrich themselves.

Showing how things really worked was difficult because officially, all Soviet citizens were the same, wanted the same, and the State knew the needs of the collective. Showing how things worked would reveal the limits of central planning, it would reveal local differences and knowledges, and cliques thriving on black markets. But, it would also show where in fact more planning would be useful, where more coordination between interests (once acknowledged) could bring the common good closer.

(The house is empty now. In the summer, I had to wait in line for hours to take a shower, now I have three bathrooms for myself. One has hot water, so the choice is easy)

Sovkhoz and chicken

Today and yesterday, I got to visit two other places in the region, Shavat and Amir Timur.

In Shavat, we were hosted by a retired kolkhoz chief in a most sumptuous manner, with pomegranates and other fruits from his garden, sweets, vodka, salads, vodka, bread, vodka, and a rather intriguing chicken dish. The chicken is cut in pieces, browned in a pan, then quince, turnip, onions, coriander seed and garlic are added, and the whole slowly simmers. Our host quoted at length from the Avesta, the book of Zoroaster, who presumably lived in this area ca 1000 BC.

Once I got over my fascination with the chicken and Zarathustra, the conversation went well, and I learnt quite a few things about the relations between kolkhoz, collective farms, and sovkhoz, state farms. The two were much more interwoven than I thought, and some of the stories we heard before, made more sense.

A sovkhoz could be initiated by players at all levels: the military could order their establishment to provide food security for bases in the republics, industrial ministries could push for state farms producing inputs for manufacturing, regional and local leaders could lobby for farms in their areas. And kolkhoz managers could move the idea forwards. If the sovkhoz was dropped from high up, the chances for success were usually lower -people were less motivated to work, more motivated to secretly privatize some assets.

If local party leaders or kolkhoz people wanted them, then they usually were part of an economic development strategy that actually made sense for the locals. Sometimes a kolkhoz director wanted a sovkhoz next door in the hope to take over the state- financed enterprise later, to expand his own business, sometimes he thought it would be important for a next generation of farmers. Local party people were interested in employment opportunities, in infrastructural investment, in synergies with other assets and activities.

These Soviet bottom- up development strategies, I believe, are not so different from what you can find in the U.S. right now: local communities have to lobby continuously with higher levels of government and with businesses for investment, to cover even the most basic needs. In the U.S.S.R., competition was as fierce as anywhere else, it is just that all players were officially under the label 'state'.

Rais

A rais is a kolkhoz director. The kolkhoz, the Soviet collective farm, does not exist anymore, but the rais is still prevalent in the collective imagination. Arguably, it is the most important public figure that has disappeared with the Soviet Union.

A kolkhoz could be home to 500 people, but also 20.000. For all practical purposes, the kolkhoz leadership was local government. Leadership styles could vary, from quite democratic -listening to the farmers- to quite undemocratic -focussing on the Party, on self- interest. With the gradual privatization of land came the dissolution of the kolkhoz, a fragmentation of ownership and decision- making, a scattering of responsibilities over a host of successor- organizations.


The tasks of the collective farm, supervised by the rais, were distributed over water user associations, machine tractor parks, district architects and surveyors, and mahalla chiefs (leading formalized neighborhood associations). Most of the real decision- making power moved to the district hakims, the political/ administrative leaders. At the village level, a role remained for the rural chairman, in name almost a new rais, in practice a low- level legal servant.

In the last few weeks, we were finally able to meet a fair number of ex- rais. Very helpful. Some of them climbed the ladder in one kolkhoz, others moved around a bit, in different positions in the agro- system, others were specifically appointed for having no local connections at all -like the podesta in Italian city- states. Most of them had an agricultural engineering background. Degrees in law, economic or politics were non-existing or irrelevant for these future super- mayors. The official image of the kolkhoz was that of a production machine; its functions as local government were secondary. Not only land-use, also the community itself was considered mono- functional.


Talking about land use and planning, it struck me once more how virtually everything was presented as planned, sanctioned and approved by others, by the State, by a long list of other organizations. At the same time, decisions were presented as purely democratic, emerging from the ranks of the workers, the families taking care of a few hectares each. That many, if not most, ideas relating to planning and development came from the kolkhoz leadership, remains out of sight first, becomes apparent only after long conversations. Farm managers could decide on many things, if the budget was there and the cotton targets were not touched.

(Saturday, my first wedding party in Uzbekistan. In fact, it was a pre- wedding party, organized by the family of the bride, primarily for women, part of a long list of ritualized events spanning about a week. Excellent food and drinks, conducive to traditional Uzbek dance- I got some practice.)

Cotton research, cotton landscapes

In the last few days, we talked to a number of people at the regional cotton research institute, just outside of town. More interesting than I thought.

A research station, like this one, was basically a kolkhoz + research institute. That meant that budgets were partly coming from the state (for research) and partly generated by the collective (the farm). Decisions on improvement, expansion, and other planning- related things were taken more or less like in a kolkhoz, with the director of the institute in a role similar to that of the rais, the kolkhoz leader. Like a kolkhoz, a research station could be very extensive, and could be seen as de facto local government.

In this case, the station at its peak covered over 600ha (making it smaller than an average kolkhoz) and included a village and a plethora of technical, scientific, and farm buildings. Its location was not perfect, close to a growing city and dotted with marshlands, ponds, lakes, and tugai floodplain forest, but a sustained reclamation campaign, lasting until the late 80's, turned it into a model farm. In the last decade, the cooperation with our research project, with ZEF/ Unesco has been intense. Only recently, outsiders were allowed to settle in the village, hard to avoid with Urgench so close.


When the Soviets came, they were serious about cotton, and already in 1922, right after arrival, they established a cotton research station in Khiva. It was moved to Urgench in 1929. New varieties had to be developed; the known ones preferred warmer and wetter regions, like the American South, the main rival in the eyes of the Soviets. At the Urgench site, different directors brought their own visions of the perfect cotton plant and the perfect cotton landscape to the model farm. Varieties like Khorezm 126, 127 and 150 were developed here, suited to the specificities of the region. Farmers were informed and advised.

We talked to an 88-year old gentleman, still busy with the development of ever more productive cotton varieties. In a slightly delapidated concrete building, housing, among other things, a library devoted to cotton, he showed us various cotton plants, and told a story of continuous pressure to improve, with different requirements taking precedence at different times. For the Soviets, productivity was everything, and nobody paid too much attention to the cost of inputs, of labor, land and water. With independence, the loss of Soviet subsidies, and the seeping in of market principles, accounting practices changed, and everything taken for granted, suddenly had a price tag. Efficiency and sustainability became real concerns.


That implied a reduction of 'agro- technical works', a catch- all for everything involving machinery. New cotton varieties are supposed to require less water, less fertilizer, less ditches and seasonal canals. The cotton landscape now is reportedly less messy, less fragmented, and more stable because of that. On the other hand, the countryside is more multifunctional now than in the past, with large cotton or wheat parcels and smaller vegetable plots alternating in many areas; moving rice fields and their levies change the topography almost yearly. In other words, the cotton landscape might be more stable, but many places are not cotton landscapes anymore.

Farmers, knowledge and land

Yesterday, I was at a symposium on agricultural extension in Central Asia. Quite interesting.
Farmers need to know things to do their job, and keeping up with the latest innovations requires a lot of knowledge.

In the U.S., this is made easier by a web of agricultural extension services, usually linked to state universities and based at counties. In Europe, some countries have specialized agricultural universities and their institutes for applied research and extension, or farmers unions active in this field, or both. In the USSR, there was a host of applied agricultural research institutes, at universities, at the ministry of agriculture and the ministry of land reclamation and water resources, under the umbrella of the academy of sciences, and later more and more under a separate academy for agricultural sciences. They went from centralization to decentralization and back, and the late Soviet centralization under the agricultural academy created problems, even according to the Soviets themselves. Knowledge was produced too far from the farmers and their practical problems and limited resources; much of it was never applied, and the collective farms had problems responding to changing circumstances. Yields did not rise for decades in some areas, and even fell in others.

After the breakdown of the Union, the system of institutes fell apart. Connections with the main research centres in Moscow were lost, resources dwindled, and many surviving state- level institutions became empty shells. If one connects this with the break- up of the collective farms and their managing corps of specialists, and with a chronic scarcity of resources in higher education, it is easy to see the clouds gathering. N.g.o.'s cannot take up the challenge by themselves, and neither do the farmers.

For land use and planning, this has too many consequences to describe here, but we can point out that it makes economically and environmentally rational land use very hard to achieve. It also makes it harder for farming communities to formulate shared visions, even on basic issues, yet another reason to assume that bottom- up land use planning is a remote prospect. It makes it harder for farmers to see the advantages of self- organization, and it makes it harder for state organizations to function properly. In an area where it is already difficult to develop long- term visions, to think of investment and investment in knowledge, such amounts to a formidable obstacle for planning, for land reform, and in the end for economic development.

Time might bring solace, and e.g. here in Khorezm the new generation of farmers, often people with different professional backgrounds, is learning the trade. The government invests in experimental farms, in greenhouses and new irrigation techniques. Young Uzbek ngo's combine local knowledge with foreign expertise. And there is production and marketing potential. Attention to land use planning might help to tap that potential.

(Highly recommended: ping- pong for three, where one takes turns to jump out, drink beer, to come back reinvigorated and take the game to a higher level. It might help to change the rules during the game, at unexpected times)