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Using archival, oral history, and library research, this paper shows how Soviet Central Asian entomologists developed solutions to the environmental and economic impacts of pesticide use in cotton-growing regions. Though they worked with other experts, including epidemiologists, and were aware of the public health impacts of DDT and similar compounds, they focused primarily on the economic costs of declining cotton yields, which they believed would be the most effective argument to the upper echelons of the Soviet state. Tracing the development and fight for recognition and implementation of their “Integrated Method” provides room for comparing the Soviet case with other, non-socialist agro-industrial systems. This presentation will end with some larger reflections on the global history of agricultural development and the environment in the 20th century and consider ways in which the late-Soviet system shared similarities with the US-led Green Revolution unfolding beyond its borders.
Nicholas Seay is a PhD student in Russian and East European History (with minor fields in World History and East Asian History). Based on archival, oral history, and library research conducted in Tajikistan between in 2022 and 2023, his dissertation explores on the development of the cotton sector in late-Soviet Tajikistan, exploring how immense global technological changes in large-scale industrial farming shaped lives, labor, and environment in this former Soviet Republic. His research was funded by fellowships from the Title VIII Research Scholar Program and the Title VIII Combined Research and Language Training Program administered by American Councils for International Education.