Friendship under lock and key: the Soviet Central Asian border, 1918–34

This paper addresses early Soviet efforts to secure ‘under lock and key’ its over-5000-km-long Central Asian border with Iran, Afghanistan and Xinjiang. The state sought to build relations of trust and friendship between border dwellers and guards – the pogranichnye voiska – to increase security and to demonstrate the emancipatory nature of the Soviet Union. However, these goals were compromised by the region's geographic extremity, basmachi raids and existing flows of people, goods and flocks across the state border. As a result, the early state pursued a contradictory set of policies in order to discourage indiscriminate crossings and to project an image of friendship – however limited in practice – across the border. Secret police circulars and reports from the Communist Party's Central Asian bureau testify to the difficulty and contradictions of crafting friendship on the border in the Soviet Union's first two decades.