The Cotton Symbol (Uzbekistan)

Commentary
The Cotton Symbol (Uzbekistan)

The “Uzbek SSR” Pavilion at the “All-Union Agricultural Exhibition” which opened in August 1939 in Moscow (later the famous “Exhibition of the People’s Economic Achievements” or VDNKh) was an impressive piece of architecture. It attracted visitors’ attention with its rotunda featuring artisanal engravings and rising above the pavilion. The rotunda’s octagonal wooden roof with a complex structure rested on slim columns which encircled a fountain. The pavilion itself was a flat white U-form building decorated with young female figures in national costume, carrying large amounts of cotton and fruit with their arms aloft. Other architectural “Uzbek” features were a garden next to the pavilion with almond and pomegranate trees and a tea house. The whole ensemble was “replete with motives of the people’s art and typical features of the national architecture of Uzbekistan” as a 1939 guidebook explained.

The pavilion was designed by Stefan N. Polupanov about whom we know little. It was situated near to the main pavilion and formed the entrance to the “Kolkhozes’ Square” thus taking a rather prominent position among the more than 40 pavilions the exhibition was composed of. In its interior, cotton was the dominant subject and symbol and the central room was the “cotton room.” Its ceiling and walls were decorated with ornaments and carvings and decorative columns supported the ceiling. Statues of Lenin and Stalin were sitting in the midst of a sea of cotton. Everything was white: the two statues, the cotton fibre used as decoration, the lamps imitating open cotton capsules, and the big cotton pyramid behind the sculptures. The latter consisted of more than a dozen little pyramids, each with a figure representing the harvest successes of a certain kolkhoz. The biggest figure at the top said “1,504,200,” which was the overall cotton harvest in tons in Uzbekistan in 1938. In the remaining four showrooms, too, cotton was used as a decorative element in several places, such as next to a stand about the cotton sovkhozes where showcases were stuffed to the brim with cotton seeds. In the Karakalpak department decorative vases were filled with the “fluffy snow-white cotton”.

For Uzbekistan as well as for the other Central Asian republics, the exhibition was a cornerstone in what was a program of Soviet nation-building and national “design.” After the “national delimitation” in Central Asia was completed and in order to gloss over and forget the violent conflicts of collectivization and terror, the exhibition painted a peaceful picture of a rational order of Soviet republics and institutions that each contributed to the Union’s economic system and welfare. Every republic was associated with a certain agricultural product or even several that it delivered to other republics, and mainly to Russia. For Uzbekistan, this was clearly cotton. The Republic was supposed to be the “cotton base” of the whole Soviet Union. This was not only a role and task assigned by Moscow but also become part of the national identity that shaped people’s self-perception in the long run. The cotton symbolism that was so pervasive in the 1939 exhibition lived on and found new expressions.  In architecture this was seen, for example, in the beautiful fountain in form of a cotton capsule that was opened on the square in front of the newly erected Alisher Navoi Theatre and Opera in 1947. On a more everyday level, to this day cotton garlands decorate modern apartment houses and protective gratings in streets. Cotton also features prominently inside many houses: The Uzbek tea set “Pakhta” (cotton) with its elegant blue-white design and golden edging has become a classic and an export hit.  It reflects the central economic and symbolic meaning of cotton for Uzbekistan that lasts well over the end of the Soviet period.

Julia Obertreis is a Professor of Modern History with a focus on East European History at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. She is the author of Imperial Desert Dreams. Cottong Growing and Irrigation in Central Asia, 1860-1991 (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2017) and Tränen des Sozialismus. Wohnen in Leningrad zwischen Alltag und Utopie 1917-1937 [Tears of Socialism. Living in Leningrad between the Everday and Utopia 1917-1937] (Köln/Weimar/Wien 2004).