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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Uzbekistan
Index
Population pressures have exacerbated ethnic tensions. In 1995 about 71
percent of Uzbekistan's population was Uzbek. The chief minority groups
were Russians (slightly more than 8 percent), Tajiks (officially almost 5
percent, but believed to be much higher), Kazaks (about 4 percent), Tatars
(about 2.5 percent), and Karakalpaks (slightly more than 2 percent) (see
table 4, Appendix). In the mid-1990s, Uzbekistan was becoming increasingly
homogeneous, as the outflow of Russians and other minorities continues to
increase and as Uzbeks return from other parts of the former Soviet Union.
According to unofficial data, between 1985 and 1991 the number of
nonindigenous individuals in Uzbekistan declined from 2.4 to 1.6 million.
The increase in the indigenous population and the emigration of
Europeans have increased the self-confidence and often the
self-assertiveness of indigenous Uzbeks, as well as the sense of
vulnerability among the Russians in Uzbekistan. The Russian population, as
former "colonizers," was reluctant to learn the local language
or to adapt to local control in the post-Soviet era. In early 1992, public
opinion surveys suggested that most Russians in Uzbekistan felt more
insecure and fearful than they had before Uzbek independence.
The irony of this ethnic situation is that many of these Central Asian
ethnic groups in Uzbekistan were artificially created and delineated by
Soviet fiat in the first place. Before the Bolshevik Revolution, there was
little sense of an Uzbek nationhood as such; instead, life was organized
around the tribe or clan (see Entering the Twentieth Century, this ch.).
Until the twentieth century, the population of what is today Uzbekistan
was ruled by the various khans who had conquered the region in the
sixteenth century.
But Soviet rule, and the creation of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic
in October 1924, ultimately created and solidified a new kind of Uzbek
identity. At the same time, the Soviet policy of cutting across existing
ethnic and linguistic lines in the region to create Uzbekistan and the
other new republics also sowed tension and strife among the Central Asian
groups that inhabited the region. In particular, the territory of
Uzbekistan was drawn to include the two main Tajik cultural centers,
Bukhoro and Samarqand, as well as parts of the Fergana Valley to which
other ethnic groups could lay claim. This readjustment of ethnic politics
caused animosity and territorial claims among Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, and
others through much of the Soviet era, but conflicts grew especially sharp
after the collapse of central Soviet rule.
The stresses of the Soviet period were present among Uzbekistan's ethnic
groups in economic, political, and social spheres. An outbreak of violence
in the Fergana Valley between Uzbeks and Meskhetian Turks in June 1989
claimed about 100 lives. That conflict was followed by similar outbreaks
of violence in other parts of the Fergana Valley and elsewhere. The civil
conflict in neighboring Tajikistan, which also involves ethnic
hostilities, has been perceived in Uzbekistan (and presented by the
Uzbekistani government) as an external threat that could provoke further
ethnic conflict within Uzbekistan (see Impact of the Civil War, ch. 3).
Thousands of Uzbeks living in Tajikistan have fled the civil war there and
migrated back to Uzbekistan, for example, just as tens of thousands of
Russians and other Slavs have left Uzbekistan for northern Kazakstan or
Russia. Crimean Tatars, deported to Uzbekistan at the end of World War II,
are migrating out of Uzbekistan to return to the Crimea.
Two ethnic schisms may play an important role in the future of
Uzbekistan. The first is the potential interaction of the remaining
Russians with the Uzbek majority. Historically, this relationship has been
based on fear, colonial dominance, and a vast difference in values and
norms between the two populations. The second schism is among the Central
Asians themselves. The results of a 1993 public opinion survey suggest
that even at a personal level, the various Central Asian and Muslim
communities often display as much wariness and animosity toward each other
as they do toward the Russians in their midst. When asked, for example,
whom they would not like to have as a son- or daughter-in-law, the
proportion of Uzbek respondents naming Kyrgyz and Kazaks as undesirable
was about the same as the proportion that named Russians. (About 10
percent of the Uzbeks said they would like to have a Russian son- or
daughter-in-law.) And the same patterns were evident when respondents were
asked about preferred nationalities among their neighbors and colleagues
at work. Reports described an official Uzbekistani government policy of
discrimination against the Tajik minority.
Data as of March 1996
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