Water and Empire*

• Main Author: Josephson, Paul R.
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University PressNew York 2024
• Subjects: Arctic; Siberia
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197698396.003.0004; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/58152114/oso-9780197698396-chapter-4.pdf

Abstract Ambitious waterworks projects are paradigmatic for Russia. Tsarist engineers advanced dam, canal, and basin transfer projects to accelerate industrialization and settlement. Under the Soviets, projects to alter river basins and reclaim wetlands took off in number, grandeur, and financing. The impressive list of Russian waterworks projects covers all kinds of engineering projects in every geography and climate imaginable: dams, canals, hydroelectric power stations, irrigation systems; above the Arctic Circle, in arid Central Asia, and in the deep frosts of Siberia. The descendants of those ministries and design institutes have begun to assemble a portfolio of similarly ambitious projects in Russia in the twenty-first century. If big engineering projects fell on hard times after the breakup of the USSR, under Putin they have been reborn: stations on Siberian rivers to power the oligarch’s extractive industries and interbasin water transfer projects to Central Asia and China to sell yet another commodity—water.