“Turksib Was Not Just a Railroad for Me”: Visualizing the Anthropocene as a Transit

This article examines the Turkestan-Siberia Railroad (Turksib) through its visual culture, exploring how film, painting, and print media portrayed its role in reshaping the Kazakh steppe. Analyzing Victor Turin’s Turksib (1929), American maps, Soviet periodicals, and paintings by Victor Ufimtsev and Abilkhan Kasteyev, it investigates how these works framed perceptions of infrastructure and environmental transformation. Situating Turksib within global infrastructural imaginaries and Soviet kolonizatsiya politics, the article interrogates its relation to forced modernization, nomadic sedentarization, and environmental degradation. It argues that Turksib’s visual history aestheticized industrial expansion while desensitizing audiences to its human and ecological costs, solidifying the railroad’s status as a symbol of Soviet modernity.

ARTMargins, Volume 14, Issue 2, pp. 39-59.

doi:10.1162/artm_a_00412

https://direct.mit.edu/artm/article/14/2/39/131439/Turksib-Was-Not-Just-a-Railroad-for-Me-Visualizing

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