THE TEXTURE OF DAILY LIFE: EVERYDAY LIVING CONDITIONS AND SOCIAL WELFARE IN THE FERGANA VALLEY IN THE 1980S

Abstract

Accounts of the interethnic violence that struck the Fergana Valley in June 1989 have concentrated on the sequence of the events and on the economic and demographic forces that produced them. Far less attention has been paid to the everyday material conditions in which the valley's population actually lived — the food on the table, the space in the home, the water in the tap, the availability of a school place or a repair service. This article reconstructs that everyday texture (maishiy turmush) for the Andijan, Namangan and Fergana provinces during the 1980s, drawing on Soviet statistical collections, regional archival materials, the contemporary press and oral testimony. It examines per-capita food consumption, the paradox of an agricultural region unable to feed itself, the provision of consumer goods and everyday (maishiy) services, the quality of housing and communal amenities, and the state of health care, schooling and childcare. The evidence shows that across nearly every measure of daily welfare the valley lay below both the Uzbek and the all-Union averages, and that its rural population was doubly disadvantaged relative to its towns. Everyday consumer services in the valley's villages, for example, amounted to 28.4 roubles per person per year against an all-Union figure of 87 roubles. The article argues that this pervasive deprivation of daily life was not a peripheral hardship but a central component of the accumulated grievance that made the region combustible, and that its recognition is essential to a full understanding of the 1989 crisis and of the reforms that followed.