‘Tajikistan’s Turksib’: infrastructure and improvisation in economic growth of the Vakhsh River valley

This article analyses the paradoxically central role of a railroad in Soviet economic growth in southern Tajikistan’s Vakhsh River valley during the 1930s. Constructed as a secondary service road of the Vakhshstroi agro-industrial complex, it was not meant to support enterprises throughout the region. Because of the republic’s lack of roads, however, unrelated freightage operations gravitated to the Vakhsh Railroad and made it the unintended mediator of the developing geography of Soviet movement. By examining how the narrow gauge line was used in unplanned ways, I find that state building under Stalin was characterized by improvisation in labour and mobility. Furthermore, the material conditions of transportation limited the locations of economic possibility in unanticipated ways. This case demonstrates that studying the use of infrastructure can further historical understanding of causes, effects and chronologies of economic life in the Stalin era.