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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Uzbekistan
Index
The population of Uzbekistan, estimated in 1994 at about 23 million, is
the largest of the Central Asian republics, comprising more than 40
percent of their total population. Growing at a rapid rate, the population
is split by ethnic and regional differences. The Russian component of the
population shrank steadily in the years after independence.
Size and Distribution
Relative to the former Soviet Union as a whole, Uzbekistan is still
largely rural: roughly 60 percent of Uzbekistan's population lives in
rural areas (see Table 3, Appendix). The capital city is Tashkent, whose
1990 population was estimated at about 2.1 million people. Other major
cities are Samarqand (population 366,000), Namangan (308,000), Andijon
(293,000), Bukhoro (224,000), Farghona (200,000), and Quqon (182,000).
The population of Uzbekistan is exceedingly young. In the early 1990s,
about half the population was under nineteen years of age. Experts
expected this demographic trend to continue for some time because
Uzbekistan's population growth rate has been quite high for the past
century: on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union, only Tajikistan
had a higher growth rate among the Soviet republics. Between 1897 and
1991, the population of the region that is now Uzbekistan more than
quintupled, while the population of the entire territory of the former
Soviet Union had not quite doubled. In 1991 the natural rate of population
increase (the birth rate minus the death rate) in Uzbekistan was 28.3 per
1,000--more than four times that of the Soviet Union as a whole, and an
increase from ten years earlier (see table 2, Appendix).
These characteristics are especially pronounced in the Autonomous
Republic of Karakalpakstan (the Uzbek form for which is Qoroqalpoghiston
Respublikasi), Uzbekistan's westernmost region. In 1936, as part of
Stalin's nationality policy, the Karakalpaks (a Turkic Muslim group whose
name literally means "black hat") were given their own territory
in western Uzbekistan, which was declared an autonomous Soviet socialist
republic to define its ethnic differences while maintaining it within the
republic of Uzbekistan. In 1992 Karakalpakstan received republic status
within independent Uzbekistan. Since that time, the central government in
Tashkent has maintained pressure and tight economic ties that have kept
the republic from exerting full independence.
Today, the population of Karakalpakstan is about 1.3 million people who
live on a territory of roughly 168,000 square kilometers. Located in the
fertile lower reaches of the Amu Darya where the river empties into the
Aral Sea, Karakalpakstan has a long history of irrigation agriculture.
Currently, however, the shrinking of the Aral Sea has made Karakalpakstan
one of the poorest and most environmentally devastated parts of
Uzbekistan, if not the entire former Soviet Union (see Environmental
Problems, this ch.).
Because the population of that region is much younger than the national
average (according to the 1989 census, nearly three-quarters of the
population was younger than twenty-nine years), the rate of population
growth is quite high. In 1991 the rate of natural growth in Karakalpakstan
was reportedly more than thirty births per 1,000 and slightly higher in
the republic's rural areas. Karakalpakstan is also more rural than
Uzbekistan as a whole, with some of its administrative regions (rayony
; sing., rayon ) having only villages and no urban centers--an
unusual situation in a former Soviet republic.
The growth of Uzbekistan's population was in some part due to
in-migration from other parts of the former Soviet Union. Several waves of
Russian and Slavic in-migrants arrived at various times in response to the
industrialization of Uzbekistan in the early part of the Soviet period,
following the evacuations of European Russia during World War II, and in
the late 1960s to help reconstruct Tashkent after the 1966 earthquake. At
various other times, non-Uzbeks arrived simply to take advantage of
opportunities they perceived in Central Asia. Recently, however,
Uzbekistan has begun to witness a net emigration of its European
population. This is especially true of Russians, who have faced increased
discrimination and uncertainty since 1991 and seek a more secure
environment in Russia. Because most of Uzbekistan's population growth has
been attributable to high rates of natural increase, the emigration of
Europeans is expected to have little impact on the overall size and
demographic structure of Uzbekistan's population. Demographers project
that the population, currently growing at about 2.5 percent per year, will
increase by 500,000 to 600,000 annually between the mid-1990s and the year
2010. Thus, by the year 2005 at least 30 million people will live in
Uzbekistan.
High growth rates are expected to give rise to increasingly sharp
population pressures that will exceed those experienced by most other
former Soviet republics. Indeed, five of the eight most densely populated
provinces of the former Soviet Union--Andijon, Farghona, Tashkent,
Namangan, and Khorazm--are located in Uzbekistan, and populations continue
to grow rapidly in all five. In 1993 the average population density of
Uzbekistan was about 48.5 inhabitants per square kilometer, compared with
a ratio of fewer than six inhabitants per square kilometer in neighboring
Kazakstan. The distribution of arable land in 1989 was estimated at only
0.15 hectares per person. In the early 1990s, Uzbekistan's population
growth had an increasingly negative impact on the environment, on the
economy, and on the potential for increased ethnic tension.
Data as of March 1996
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