Item #1625 [WHITE GOLD: COTTON INDEPENDENCE OF THE SOVIET UNION] Khlopkovodstvo [i.e. Cotton Growing]
[WHITE GOLD: COTTON INDEPENDENCE OF THE SOVIET UNION] Khlopkovodstvo [i.e. Cotton Growing]
[WHITE GOLD: COTTON INDEPENDENCE OF THE SOVIET UNION] Khlopkovodstvo [i.e. Cotton Growing]
[WHITE GOLD: COTTON INDEPENDENCE OF THE SOVIET UNION] Khlopkovodstvo [i.e. Cotton Growing]
[WHITE GOLD: COTTON INDEPENDENCE OF THE SOVIET UNION] Khlopkovodstvo [i.e. Cotton Growing]
[WHITE GOLD: COTTON INDEPENDENCE OF THE SOVIET UNION] Khlopkovodstvo [i.e. Cotton Growing]
[WHITE GOLD: COTTON INDEPENDENCE OF THE SOVIET UNION] Khlopkovodstvo [i.e. Cotton Growing]
[WHITE GOLD: COTTON INDEPENDENCE OF THE SOVIET UNION] Khlopkovodstvo [i.e. Cotton Growing]

[WHITE GOLD: COTTON INDEPENDENCE OF THE SOVIET UNION] Khlopkovodstvo [i.e. Cotton Growing]

Moscow: Sel’khozgiz, 1940. Item #1625

[112] pp.: ill. 28,5x22 cm. In original cloth with embossed, gilt and colored image of cotton and colored lettering on front cover; decorated spine and illustrated endpapers. In very good condition. Pale water stain on upper outer corner of some leaves, one boll hand-colored (repaired) on front cover.

First and only edition.One of 4,000 copies.
A photobook documenting the heyday of the Soviet cotton industry and its representation at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition. The edition was compiled by N. Kalugin and most likely designed by E. Smirnova, who is credited as a technical editor. The photobook came out under the supervision of the noted Soviet avant-garde artist El Lissitzky (1890-1941), who was the chief designer of the exhibition.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks seized most of Central Asia. In the territories conquered, the Communists promoted Socialist values and hard labour, the preservation of national cultures, and the liberation of Central Asian women. As a result, in the Soviet period, the agriculture of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan reached extraordinary heights primarily due to the flourishing of the cotton industry.
By the late 1920s, when collectivization was introduced in the Soviet Union, the Ferghana Valley had already been producing cotton for Russian textile mills. In the 1930s, the Soviet Union launched a number of campaigns to alter natural conditions in Central Asia and take cotton growing to the next level. One such undertaking was the construction of the Vakhsh irrigation system in Tajikistan. This first large irrigation project in the USSR ‘turned a dead desert into a green valley’ and allowed the successful cultivation of organic cotton.
This photo book contains photomontages depicting local kolkhozes, the construction of the Ferghana Canal, and the scientists I. Varuntsias and S. Kanashi who developed new species of Gossypium. The edition also includes pictures of machinery used on cotton plantations, portraits of female and male shock workers, various stages and methods of cultivation, harvesting, and transportation, as well as VDNKH pavilions of the countries and regions involved in cultivation.
Promoting socialist values adopted in kolkhozes, the photobook features pictures of likbez sessions held in chaikhanas [i.e. teahouses], healthy children raised in nurseries and schools, women in the process of reading, irrigation systems built or reconstructed in the Ferghana, Vakhsh, Yangi Dargom, Dalverzin areas, machinery, radio receivers, and telephones set up after Sovietization.
Karasik, M. The Soviet Photobook, 1920-1941. P. 536
Worldcat locates two copies of the edition at NYPL and LoC.

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