Learning the Steppes: Climate Adaptation and Agriculture on the Kazakh Steppe in the Russian Empire, 1880s–1917

Abstract This article analyzes how three different groups (settlers, agricultural scientists, and Kazakhs) attempted to adapt their agricultural practices to the arid Kazakh Steppe. For the settlers and scientists, this meant an attempt at adaptation to a new unfamiliar environment. However, for the Kazakhs, the adaptation was to a new political and economic reality of Russian settler colonialism. In examining how these adaptations were created, deployed, and understood, this article explores the ways that climate, politics, and technology intersected in the context of the late Russian Empire.