ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the actual and potential infrastructural linkages between the traditional heartland of Turkestan and points south, most particularly Afghanistan. Like the great majority of the Soviet Union, Soviet Turkestan and Afghanistan suffer from a location that is vast distances away from the sea. Turkestan is characterized by a long, relatively warm growing season that for alfalfa, orchards, and grapes can be year-round. Water is the primary environmental constraint on human activity in Turkestan, but, as far as transportation infrastructures are concerned, the rugged mountains that affect up to one-fourth of the area are also significant. Advancing relatively quickly by means of a unique series of interlocking rivers north of Turkestan, the Russians barely brushed the northern and eastern boundaries of modern Kazakhstan until the 1800s. The economic importance of pre-revolutionary Turkestani railways is evidenced by the fact that three-fourths of Turkestan's cotton exports, which almost doubled between 1905 and 1914, went over the Kazalinsk Railroad.
