ABSTRACT
Technical innovation and agricultural expansion during the second half of the twentieth century brought the foothills into the range of irrigated agriculture. Customarily, they were the realm of permanent nomads or of peoples who practiced seasonal migration. However, a long process of converting these peoples to a sedentary way of life, which the policies of the tsarist Russian Empire and the Soviet Union intensified, has changed the lifestyle of these populations. As previous chapters have pointed out, agriculture and animal husbandry never have been mutually exclusive practices in the Ferghana Valley, but frequently were, and are, complementary and closely interrelated strategies for earning a livelihood. Hence, it is useful to focus on the history of irrigated agriculture in the Ferghana Valley, which is central to the region’s social, economic, and political development,2 inasmuch as the valley currently accounts for 45 percent of the total irrigated area within the Syr Darya basin.3
