|
Uzbekistan
Ethnic Composition
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
|
