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Uzbekistan
Population
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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