Christian Teichmann's monograph, The Power of Disorder: Stalin's Rule in Central Asia, 1920–1950 is published in line with other works inspired by the group of scholars including Joerg Baberowski, Bernd Greiner, and Michael Wildt, whose work addresses the Stalinist period of Soviet history and the brutal social nature of its campaigns. Such a vision is not news per se. A group of revolutionaries, profiting on social chaos and mobilization, is a well-known pattern for social revolutions, while the Bolsheviks' tyranny has been previously exposed for Central Asia as well, by Marco Butino, for example. Teichmann refers to these works, but touches upon no theory of revolution. Instead, he conceptualizes the early years of Soviet rule as the establishment of state structures, although recognizing their weakness and controversy. Even troikas, with their extra-legal function, represent the new Soviet statehood, in Teichmann's opinion. Thus, after reading a detailed author's description of land reforms and water policies in the Uzbek SSR in the second part of the 1920s through the beginning of the 1930s (the author is at his strongest about this republic and this period), one would still wonder about the principle novelty of the monograph.
The book stands in opposition to the chorus of rediscoveries (and even rehabilitations) of Iosif Stalin's legacies in present Russia. Volumes on Stalin are in abundance at central places in Moscow bookstores. Many are of populist nature, addressing the Russian public's need to restore the great power, quasi-imperial state under strong leadership. Their authors highlight the achievements of Soviet modernity, industrialization, and victory in WWII. Next to this populist literature there are revisionist research trends (in Russia and in the west) drawing the purges of the 1930s not as staged by one man or a group in the Politburo, but as a manifestation of society undergoing cold civil war (Vladimir Buldakov 2012, Paul Flewers 2011, van den Linden 2007). Surprisingly, Teichmann skips the historiographical sketch, leaving the reader in darkness about his interpretation of these trends. Still, his key research questions echo them: to what extent was the irrigation plan in Central Asia engineered from Moscow and who were the local figures to implement this Soviet modernity? Could the central leadership have full control over it? On what information did they base their epochal decisions? The author's answers reveal a substantial gap between his multiple findings and conclusions at the meta-level.
On the one hand, Teichmann presents new evidence to the statements by his colleagues (Beatrice Penati, Askar Jumashev) on the impossibility of adhering to one rigidly-centralized course of reforms in Central Asia in the 1910–20s. On the other hand, he persistently remarks on an overarching colonial plan of the Bolsheviks. The 1920s, however, at least until the end of NEP in 1928, can be characterized as not yet totally dominant by Iosif Stalin's policies. The newly-published sources witness that top-level decisions in the early Soviet years often resulted from the controversy of personal friendship and rivalry (I.M. Maiskii, 2015).
Teichmann describes in detail the politics of the first industrial-agricultural projects and the harsh conditions in remote parts of Central Asia. He writes insightfully on the dominance of Uzbek activists in the power structures established between Central Asia and Moscow and focuses on the alliance between local party leaders and professionals, such as engineers, during the land reform of 1926–28. Other scholars have been conducting similar studies: Julia Obertreis has published on Soviet engineers as “poets of infrastructure” in Central Asia (232–34). Highly troubling, however, is the author's neglect of the whole repository of literature on industrialization in Central Asia published in the USSR. Even if the author is convinced in the complete bias of this literature, silencing it limits our perspective of the views of Central Asians on the meaning of industrialization.
The main value of Teichmann's work is its richness in archival evidence: having conducted many years of archival research in Moscow and in some Central Asian capitals, the author's work has the potential to shed fresh light on the politics and structure of the Soviet archives. Unfortunately, he does not provide a comprehensive description of his approach to this massive data.
Although the book claims to tell the history of the 1920–50s, WWII is covered in ten pages and the eventful years 1945–50, in three. The author applies the same approach to war history as to the pre-war period, explaining the deteriorating social conditions in Tashkent, evacuations, deportations, and hunger as the result of Soviet leaders' mismanagement. The gap between different levels of analysis becomes apparent again: Teichmann's case study vaguely connects to the impact of the Nazi invasion upon Soviet mobilization. Thus, the history of Central Asia in the 1940s is still awaiting scholarly attention.
