Uzbekistan

I

INTRODUCTION

Uzbekistan, republic in Central Asia, bordered on the west and north by Kazakhstan, on the east by Kyrgyzstan, on the
southeast by Tajikistan, and on the south by Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. The Qoraqalpogh Autonomous Republic (also known as Qoraqalpoghiston, or Karakalpakstan) occupies 37 percent of Uzbekistan’s territory in the western portion of the country. Toshkent (Tashkent), located in the northeast, is the capital city and chief industrial and cultural center. Uzbeks make up the majority of the republic’s population. In the official state language of Uzbek, the republic is called Uzbekiston Respublikasy (Republic of Uzbekistan).

Uzbekistan was the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1924 until 1991, when it gained its independence. In 1992 Uzbekistan was officially designated a secular and democratic republic with the ratification of its first post-Soviet constitution. However, many of the centralized controls that were characteristic of the Soviet period remain entrenched in the economic and political structures of Uzbekistan. Although the constitution guarantees a multiparty system, the republic’s president, Islam Karimov, has established an authoritarian-style regime that has been intolerant of opposition groups. Karimov has also proceeded cautiously with market-oriented economic reforms, and the government retains control over most sectors of the economy.

II

THE PEOPLE OF UZBEKISTAN

Some 36 percent of the total population lives in urban areas. Toshkent, the capital, is the largest city in Central Asia and the fourth largest in the former Soviet Union (after Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Kyiv). Other major cities, which are concentrated in the more habitable oases in the eastern half of the country, include Samarqand, Namangan, Andijon, and Bukhara. Nukus is the capital of the Qoraqalpogh Autonomous Republic.

A

Ethnic Groups and Languages

Although many different ethnic groups live in Uzbekistan, the population is highly homogeneous. Uzbeks constituted 80 percent of the population by 1996 after their share of the population increased quickly in the 1990s. The group known as Uzbeks includes descendents of Turkic-speaking nomads who settled in the region beginning in the 15th century as well as Persian-speaking inhabitants of the region’s towns and villages. Russians are a large minority group, accounting for 6 percent of the population. This is less than in the 1980s; many Russians emigrated to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. One reason for this emigration is that the government of Uzbekistan has rejected requests to grant Russians dual citizenship. Moreover, many Russians claim that they are subject to discrimination in Uzbekistan. The Russian share has also dropped because of a relatively low Russian birth rate. Other minorities include Tajiks, Kazakhs, and Tatars, followed by Qoraqalpoghs, Kyrgyz, Koreans, Ukrainians, and Turkmens (or Turkomans).

A significant part of Uzbekistan’s non-Russian minority population has also emigrated since the late 1980s. Some of these emigrants are members of ethnic groups that were forcibly exiled en masse to Uzbekistan under the directive of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin during World War II (1939-1945). Thus, the Meskhetian Turks, who had been deported from Georgia, have almost all left Uzbekistan. Other deported peoples who have left in large numbers include Germans and Crimean Tatars. On the other hand, the majority of the deported Koreans have remained in Uzbekistan. Although not members of a deported people, most of Uzbekistan’s Jews have also left, mainly for Israel and the United States. Most Jews arrived on the territory of today’s Uzbekistan only under Soviet rule in the 20th century; however, a small community of Bukhara Jews has lived there for many centuries.

Most ethnic minorities are concentrated in particular areas. For example, the overwhelming share of Russians and Ukrainians live in Toshkent and other industrial centers. Tajiks are concentrated in Samarqand and Bukhara. Qoraqalpoghs reside principally in their home region, the Qoraqalpogh Autonomous Republic, in western Uzbekistan. Kazakhs are concentrated in areas near Toshkent and Bukhara.

Tensions among Uzbekistan’s ethnic groups have the potential to create regional conflict, but ethnic-based antagonisms have not escalated into violence since independence. Clashes did occur between Meskhetian Turks and Uzbeks in 1989; the conflict was attributed to the high levels of unemployment and the shortage of housing in the Fergana Valley.

The official state language is Uzbek. It belongs to the Eastern Turkic, or Karluk, language group of the Altaic language family. There are several Uzbek dialects. The written language that preceded modern Uzbek was written in an Arabic script, and Arabic letters continued to be used for about a decade after the creation of a modern Uzbek language under the Soviets. In the late 1920s, however, the Soviet government decreed that a Latin-based alphabet be used instead. Then in 1940 the government imposed a modified Cyrillic script (the script of the Russian language). In 1993 the government of independent Uzbekistan resolved to gradually revert to the Latin alphabet. Since then there have been significant efforts to increase literacy in the Latin script, especially among grade-school students. Most ethnic minorities in Uzbekistan tend to speak their own native languages. Russian was the preferred language during the Soviet period and is still widely used in the cities.

B

Religion

As in the other Central Asian states, the predominant religion in Uzbekistan is Islam. Uzbeks and other Muslim peoples of Uzbekistan are primarily Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi School. There are small, yet growing, communities of Muslims whom government authorities allege are fundamentalist Wahhabis. The Russian and Ukrainian minorities are traditionally Orthodox Christians.

Islam first appeared in the area of present-day Uzbekistan with Arab invaders in the 8th century. Sufism, a mystical form of Islam, became a strong influence in the political and economic life of the region between the 11th and 13th centuries. Sufi travelers brought Islam to non-Muslim conquerors of the region, who used the faith to increase their legitimacy among the local population. During the 14th and 15th centuries, the Naqshabandiya became the dominant Sufi order. Naqshabandiya Sufis such as Khoja Ahrar (1404-1490) became wealthy landholders and powerful political brokers, maintaining this position until the Russian conquest of Central Asia in the 19th century. Sufis participated in and occasionally led revolts against Russian and Soviet rule, such as the revolt led by Dukchi Ishan in Andijon in 1898.

During the Soviet period, the officially atheistic Communist regime sought to restrict Islam, and most of Uzbekistan’s mosques were forcibly closed in the 1920s. Since 1989, when Islam Karimov rose to the leadership of Uzbekistan, restrictions on Islam have been relaxed. Since then many mosques have been restored or built in Uzbekistan, and religious literature has become much more accessible. Nevertheless, Uzbekistan's leaders have made it clear that the government will not tolerate the mixing of religion and politics by independent groups.

C

Education

Education is compulsory in Uzbekistan from age 6 until age 15. Nearly the entire adult population can read and write. Illiteracy was high before the Soviet period but was virtually eliminated by 1970 as a result of the Soviet Union’s emphasis on free and universal education. Since gaining independence, Uzbekistan has embarked on a gradual and costly reform of its education system, which was based on the Soviet model, to bring it up to modern and internationally recognized standards. Among other changes, the government has introduced new curricula and textbooks, new teacher-training programs, and a multitiered degree system for higher education. The government has also opened new primary and secondary schools to serve the growing population of the country, as well as science and technology institutes to meet the needs of a developing nation. Schools play an integral role in the process of nation building. For example, textbooks now place a greater emphasis on Uzbek history and literature, and both the Arabic and Latin scripts are taught in schools.

Institutes of higher education include Toshkent State University (founded in 1920), Toshkent Islamic University (1999), Samarqand State University (1933), and Nukus State University (1979), all named after the cities of their location.

III

ECONOMY

The economic policies and structures of the Soviet period left Uzbekistan poorly prepared for independence. In the 1960s Soviet planners implemented the Virgin Lands campaign, which initiated farming of export crops on vast tracts of uncultivated land in Central Asia. As a result, cotton became the chief crop of Uzbekistan, making the republic highly dependent on imports of food from elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Uzbekistan’s natural resources, including gold and natural gas, were extracted without regard for the republic’s economic development. Instead, raw materials were transported to other Soviet republics for processing, leaving Uzbekistan with an undeveloped industrial sector.

Today, the legacy of the Soviet period is felt in many ways. Uzbekistan’s economy remains dependent on cotton exports and therefore rises and falls as world prices fluctuate. A poor cotton harvest due to drought is devastating to the economy. Industries such as textile mills that could process the country’s raw materials are still underdeveloped. The government has sought foreign investment to help develop and diversify the industrial sector. As a result, the country became a regional center for the automotive industry, and mining operations increased to make exports of gold and other metals second only to cotton in value.

In 2006 Uzbekistan’s total gross domestic product (GDP), which measures the value of goods and services produced in the country, was $17.2 billion. Agriculture accounted for 26 percent of the GDP; industry (including mining, manufacturing, and construction) accounted for 27 percent; and services (including social services and the financial sector) contributed 46.5 percent.

A

Agriculture

Agriculture remains the mainstay of the economy. The sector employs 34 percent of the workforce. Cotton is the primary crop; Uzbekistan is among the world’s largest producers and exporters of seed (unginned) cotton. Such production has come at a high price. Although only 10.8 percent of the country’s land area is arable, crop yields are kept high through intensive use of chemical fertilizers and extensive irrigation. Growing cotton requires large amounts of water, but Uzbekistan has very limited water resources. The country continues to use an inefficient irrigation scheme that was developed during the Soviet period. Intensive irrigation has depleted regional water resources, caused the Aral Sea ecological disaster, and reduced the fertility of the soil through salinization (a process whereby underground salts rise to the surface).

While a focus on growing cotton remains, the government has encouraged a shift to grain production. As a result, wheat, rice, and barley harvests have risen. The country also produces fruits and vegetables, as well as jute and tobacco. Still, much of the food consumed in Uzbekistan must be imported. Uzbekistan is the largest producer of silk and Karakul pelts in the former USSR.

B

Mining

Uzbekistan has abundant mineral wealth, and developing the country’s mining industry is an economic priority. The export of metals is now second only to cotton. Uzbekistan is among the world’s leaders in gold production, extracting 93 metric tons in 2004. Almost all of the gold is exported. Uzbekistan’s Muruntau gold mine, located in the Qyzylqum desert, is one of the world’s largest open-pit gold mines. The country also produces quantities of copper, silver, tungsten, molybdenum, and uranium.

Uzbekistan has major reserves of fossil fuels. The country produces large quantities of natural gas, some of which it exports. The country’s petroleum reserves produce enough for domestic consumption. Unlike some other countries in Central Asia, Uzbekistan has not sought to become an exporter of oil. Government subsidies keep domestic prices for oil and gas low. Uzbekistan also has significant reserves of coal, about one-third of which is highly valued anthracite.

C

Manufacturing

Little industrial development occurred in Uzbekistan under Soviet rule besides that related to the cotton industry, such as fertilizer production and ginning. Since independence, however, Uzbekistan has begun to develop its industrial base. Textile manufacturing, which was limited in the Soviet era, is expanding. Automobiles and trucks are assembled through agreements formed in the mid-1990s with German and South Korean manufacturers. Transport and passenger aircraft are produced near Toshkent. Industry, including mining, manufacturing, and construction, employs 20 percent of the workforce.

IV

HISTORY

The area of what is now Uzbekistan was incorporated into the eastern satrapies (Persian provinces ruled by a satrap) of Cyrus the Great’s Persian Empire in the 500s bc. These satrapies were known as Sogdiana, Bactria, and Khorezm. Macedonian leader Alexander the Great conquered the region in the early 300s bc, but Macedonian control lasted only until Alexander’s death in 323. In the 100s bc, part of present-day Uzbekistan was included in the vast empire of the Kushānas, descendants of a tribe from western China. At this time the region became an important part of the overland trade routes, known collectively as the Silk Road, which linked China with the Middle East and imperial Rome.

In the 3rd century ad the Sassanid dynasty of Persia gained control over the region of Central Asia. Nomadic tribes from the north invaded between the 4th and 6th centuries, and the Western Turks gained the most extensive control over the region. In the 7th and 8th centuries Arab invaders conquered present-day Uzbekistan and introduced Islam. Then in the 9th century a Persian dynasty, the Samanids, emerged as local rulers and developed Bukhara as an important center of Muslim culture. The Samanid dynasty declined in the 10th century, however, and a number of Turkic hordes vied for control until the great conquest of Mongol emperor Genghis Khan in the 13th century. In the 14th century the area was incorporated into the empire of the Turkic conqueror Tamerlane (Timur Lang), who established the Timurid dynasty. Tamerlane made Samarqand the capital of his vast empire in 1369, fashioning it into a magnificent imperial capital. Tamerlane’s grandson Ulug Beg emerged as the ruler of Samarqand in the early 1400s.

During the 14th century, the nomadic Turkic-speaking tribal groups of Orda, Shiban, and Manghit, who inhabited the steppes of what is now Kazakhstan, formed what is often referred to as the “Uzbek” (also “Uzbeg” or “Ozbek”) confederation. From 1465 to 1466 a group under the Uzbek chieftains Janibek and Keray launched a rebellion against the khan of the confederation, Abul Khayr (1428-1468). The rebellion lasted until 1468, when the khan was killed. This group began to call themselves Qazaqs (or Kazakhs). In part because of the defeat of Abul Khayr, nomadic clans from the Uzbek confederation began to move south into what is now Uzbekistan (known then as Mawarannahr) in the late 15th century. These groups not only engaged in raids on sedentary areas but also conducted a substantial amount of trade and furnished military forces that local rulers could draw upon. The Kazakhs remained in the north.

In the first decade of the 16th century, Timurid authority collapsed when Mohammed Shaybani, grandson of Abul Khayr, seized Khorezm, Samarqand, Bukhara, and Toshkent. The conquered lands became two separate khanates, one centered in Bukhara, seat of the Shaybanid dynasty, and one in Khorezm, seat of the rival Yadigarid dynasty. The Shaybanid dynasty reached its zenith of power in the late 16th century under Abdullah Khan. After Abdullah Khan’s death, power in Bukhara passed to the Janid dynasty.

During the 17th century Uzbeks continued to settle in present-day Uzbekistan, primarily in the oasis areas of the east that were already inhabited by Turkic and Persian-speaking people. In the west, a Turkic-speaking people called Qoraqalpoghs inhabited the Amu Darya delta by the 18th century; a new dynasty in Khiva (as Khorezm had come to be known) forcefully incorporated the Qoraqalpoghs’ homeland into its khanate in 1811.

A

Russian Conquest

During Qŭqon’s expansion northward, imperial Russian forces were conquering Kazakh territory north of the Syr Darya and pushing farther south. Although the Uzbek khanates waged an armed resistance against the Russian incursion, Russian control was extended over present-day Uzbekistan in the latter half of the 19th century. Russian forces began advancing on Qŭqon’s frontier fortresses in the north in the 1850s, capturing Ak-Mechet (present-day Qyzylorda, Kazakhstan) in 1853. After the conquest of Toshkent in 1865, the khanate’s influence was limited to the Fergana Valley. Bukhara was conquered in 1866 and forced to become a vassal state in 1868, and then Khiva fell in 1873. The Russian conquest was complete in 1876, when Qŭqon was formally annexed. Under Russian rule, Khiva and Bukhara maintained some measure of autonomy as semi-independent states, although they were ultimately subordinate to the Russian Empire.

Russian rule introduced new tensions into Central Asian society. The development of a commodity economy brought profits to some farmers, while it deprived others of their land. Many Central Asians resented the new, corrupt local administration as well as the increasing incursion of Russian colonists into areas such as the Golodnaya Steppe. Moreover, they perceived the new rulers as non-Muslim infidels. In 1916, already overburdened with requisitions of livestock and produce to support Russia’s involvement in World War I (1914-1918), the local populace revolted against a decree making them subject to a draft for construction battalions behind the front lines. The imperial government brutally suppressed the revolt.

B

Soviet Period

The Russian Empire collapsed in the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the Bolsheviks (militant socialists) seized power in Russia. During the Russian Civil War (1918-1921), the Bolsheviks sought to reclaim the territories of the former Russian Empire. They established, by force, a new set of political entities in Central Asia that were ruled by local Bolshevik soviets, or councils. In 1918 the Bolsheviks made much of the southern part of Central Asia, including part of present-day Uzbekistan, into the Turkistan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) within the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Other areas of present-day Uzbekistan were still under the administration of Khiva and Bukhara, whose traditional leaders were overthrown in 1920. These latter territories became the Khorezmian People’s Soviet Republic and the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic, which still maintained nominal independence. In 1924 the borders of political units in Central Asia were changed, and the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) was formed from territories of the Turkistan ASSR, the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic, and the Khorezmian People’s Soviet Republic. The same year the Uzbek SSR became one of the republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which had been created in 1922. Bolshevik rule was opposed by a Central Asian guerrilla movement known as the basmachi starting in 1918. Although the basmachi were largely put down by 1923, they reappeared in some areas of Uzbekistan during the collectivization of agriculture at the end of the 1920s.

The Uzbek SSR included the Tajik ASSR until 1929, when the Tajik ASSR was upgraded to the status of an SSR. At this point, the Tajik SSR received some additional territory that had belonged to the Uzbek SSR since 1924. In 1930 the Uzbek capital was changed from Samarqand to Toshkent. In 1936 the Uzbek SSR was enlarged with the addition of the Karakalpak ASSR (present-day Qoraqalpogh Autonomous Republic), taken from the Kazakh SSR. Territory was transferred several times between the Kazakh SSR and the Uzbek SSR after World War II (1939-1945). The present-day borders of the Central Asian states are a result of the territorial units that the Soviets circumscribed during this period.

The Soviets imposed many changes in the Uzbek SSR. In 1928 land was forcibly collectivized into state farms. Another land-related development, one with a catastrophic impact, was the drive initiated in the early 1960s to substantially increase cotton yields in the republic. The drive led to overzealous irrigation withdrawals from the Amu Darya and the subsequent ecological disaster in the Aral Sea basin.

During World War II many industries were relocated to the Uzbek SSR from more vulnerable locations in western regions of the USSR. They were accompanied by large numbers of Russians and members of other nationalities who were evacuated from areas near the front. Because so many Uzbek men were fighting in World War II, women and even children began to take a more prominent role in the economy. Some local women even began to work in urban industries, although the Uzbek population remained overwhelmingly rural. Also during the war the Soviet authorities relocated entire ethnic groups from other parts of the USSR to the Uzbek SSR and elsewhere in Central Asia. Stalin suspected these groups of being in collaboration with the Axis powers against the USSR.