To Tame, Improve, Protect: Environmental Discourse in Soviet Graphic Satire, 1950s-1991

What might prompt the general reading public to empathise with cows? Can Soviet citizens still celebrate dams, once these are viewed from the perspective of fish or frogs? This chapter charts representations of the natural world, and the genesis of an environmental discourse in Soviet Central Asia, through the pages of a Communist Party-funded satirical magazine (1950s-1991). The satirical genre and rich full-colour illustrations allow for polyvalent, potentially subversive messaging, although for decades the main emphasis remained is on didactic exposition of the current policy priorities. Over the years, the Tajik-language Khorpushtak (Hedgehog) promoted cotton cultivation and the correct diet of dairy cows, but wasting water and industrial pollution also emerge as pressing concerns. The Khorpushtak cartoons offer a far more nuanced, introspective, and engaged reflection of human responsibilities towards the natural world than one might assume, and remind us of the power of images to spark empathy and shape collective imaginaries.