Carnegie Mellon University

Socialist Studies Seminar

Making a River Border

Navigating the Frontier of Soviet Economic Life on the Upper Amu Darya


The Socialist Studies Seminar Presents:

Patryk Reid

UCIS Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Russian and East European Studies and Department of History, University of Pittsburgh

Friday, April 13, 2018

3:30- 5:00pm

History Conference Room
Baker Hall 246-A

The Amu Darya River defined socialism’s Asian frontier during the 1920s and 1930s. The upper section of this waterway, forming Tajikistan’s international border with Afghanistan, flowed through a region where Soviet officials sought to police contraband from British India and elsewhere, as well as other international threats. Soviet efforts to engineer the crossing of the upper Amu Darya and facilitate waterborne shipping altered the river’s status from a contested frontier to an observed, aquatic border.

For more information, contact Professor Wendy Goldman.