Satire and Silence Under Authoritarian Rule: Cotton and Pesticide Perceptions in Tajikistan

ABSTRACT

Over the past 70 years, agricultural chemicals have become a mainstay of cotton farming in Central Asia. This growing reliance on agrochemicals has not remained uncontested. This article analyses the politics of pesticides in Soviet and post‐Soviet Tajikistan by examining how, and to what extent, pesticides have featured in graphic satire, an important vehicle for contention and social critique, across the caesura caused by the break‐up of the Soviet Union. Whereas pesticides were presented positively in the early‐postwar years, coverage became more ambivalent between the mid‐1960s and mid‐1970s, becoming bleaker and more sporadic in the 1980s. In contemporary Tajikistan, pesticides do not feature prominently in satire nor in public debates. Waxing and waning attention to pesticides reflects distinct sociopolitical and socioeconomic changes—with censorship a constant. Covertly expressed disquiet over pesticide use in the Soviet era, and the salient silence about agrochemicals in contemporary Tajikistan, may explain the continuity in chemical‐intensive farming practices, but do not imply society's consent or compliance. By focusing on the “repertoire of contention” of pesticide use, we offer an original method to unpack the political dimension of the global pesticide complex.