The Alien Republic: Narratives of Deterritorialization in Imaginations of Turkmenistan from the Late Nineteenth to the Late Twentieth Century

Turkmenistan holds a special place in the Russian and Soviet imagination. At turn of last century, especially, appeared as an imaginative object shaped by both nineteenth century tropes images steppe modernist's revaluation displacement these very tropes. This article traces this intellectual history from late to fall empire elicits three main narratives through which republic was rendered alien: “republic outer space,” “arctic desert,” whose southern border is constantly threatened various forces that can never be successfully defeated. Based on wide body literary works films, mainly 1920s–30s period, paper points intertextual references betray shifts continuities within narratives. The analysis shows how notions political integration climatic transformations were countered alternative imaginary boundaries, contributing “imaginative geography” way perceived. development such “alien republic” thereby inextricably linked its desert geography, marked threefold dialectic between concrete rhetoric appropriation alienation, present mythical time.