Grand Soviet Scheme for Water...

Grand Soviet Scheme for Water in Central Asia Is Foundering: " Forty years ago, when Uzbekistan was part of the Soviet Union, the Kremlin ordained a colossal task: to turn this heat-puckered land and four of its neighbors, a swath of desert and scrub as big as Western Europe, into an irrigated cotton plantation. Improbably, it succeeded. From the mountainous Chinese border to the Caspian Sea, the Soviet Union remade the two grand rivers of Central Asia, building 20,000 miles of canals, 45 dams and more than 80 reservoirs. The government turned sand and dust into one of the world's great cotton-growing regions. But the Soviet Union is long dead. And here in western Uzbekistan and in areas of its four neighbors, one of socialism's most grandiose schemes is being sundered by capitalism, nationalism and a legacy of waste."