My dissertation examines the production of cultural products in architecture, opera, ballet, and visual arts in Soviet Uzbekistan between the 1930s and late 1940s. It argues that cultural products were not merely imposed by Moscow but emerged from negotiations among local experts, Soviet-trained professionals, and state institutions. By foregrounding these constellations of expertise, the study challenge the view of Socialist Realism as a monolithic style and instead treats it as a mode of production: flexible, contested, and shaped differently across media.

Heritage and local knowledge were constitutive rather than supplementary, informing architectural debates on national style, the training of professionals, and the building opera and ballet on folk traditions. Case studies, including the Tashkent Opera and Ballet Theater, the first Uzbek opera Buron and ballet Shahida, and the 1948 Alisher Navoi Jubilee, reveal how projects were co-constructed through collaboration, translation, and contestation. Drawing on extensive archival and private sources in Russian and Uzbek, the dissertation situates Uzbekistan’s cultural history at the intersection of Soviet and Central Asian studies, showing that the cultural landscape of Stalinist Uzbekistan was heterogeneous, polyphonic, and shaped as much by local agency as by the coercive power of the Soviet state.

Other topics I am working on include the history of architectural restoration, the circulation of images and objects, and environmental history in Soviet Central Asia.