Renegotiating Identities and Cultural Legacies Chapter Twelve Be(com)ing Uzbek

A Straightforward Nationhood Process
Compared to its Central Asian neighbors, Karimov’s Uzbekistan has enjoyed a relatively straightforward nation-building process. Several structural reasons account for this fortunate situation.
Historical Continuity
The first structural factor is Uzbekistan’s rich history: since the early 1920s, when the Soviet regime constructed the first national entities, Uzbekistan has always presented itself—and has been seen by Moscow—as the heart of Central Asia. Created in 1924, the Uzbek republic took precedence over its neighbors, including all the regions populated by sedentary peoples and almost all the ancient cities of Transoxiana. Uzbek elites successfully lobbied Moscow to include Bukhara and Samarkand in the Uzbek republic over the opposition of Tajik elites.²³ Tashkent became the obvious capital city of the region thanks to its status as capital of the Tsarist province of Turkestan; it maintained this position until the collapse of the Soviet Union. The city hosted prestigious institutions, particularly in academia and higher education, as well as the Spiritual Board of the Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan (SADUM). The Soviet regime also held up Uzbekistan as embodying the alliance between socialism and the Orient, and depicted it as Moscow’s window on the Middle East.²⁴ Uzbekistan was home to the region’s celebrated architectural heritage, interpreted as a sign of its historical centrality and continuity. Even if the local communist elites had not actively sought independence, an independent Uzbek nation-state has been easily erected based on these Soviet and pre-Soviet preconditions.
Demographics
The second reason is demographic. The ethnic makeup of the population did not create tensions or insecurities as it did in Kazakhstan or in Kyrgyzstan. Ethnic Uzbeks comprised 71 percent of the population in the last Soviet census (1989), a figure that has reportedly increased to about 85 percent (there has not been an official census in the past two decades). The authorities have been accused of forcing citizens to self-identify as part of the titular nation in order to reinforce the country’s ethnic homogeneity,²⁵ but even without coercion, Uzbekistan is without a doubt the nation-state of Uzbeks.
The only noticeable tensions have been with the Tajik-speaking segment of the population, mostly located in Bukhara and Samarkand, who were forced to “Uzbekify”: that is, to identify themselves as ethnically Uzbek in their passport and to avoid speaking Tajik in public spaces, administrative buildings, and educational institutions. Several Tajik-speaking cultural centers were closed at the turn of the twenty-first century. Officially, “Tajiks” now account for less than 5 percent of the population, but this number is not relevant, as many families in Bukhara and Samarkand are bilingual and could identify with either group. For their part, the Tajik authorities have never formalized any claim over Bukhara and Samarkand, even if the narrative that Uzbekistan “stole” the two “Tajik” cities is still widespread in Tajikistan.²⁶
Other ethnic groups are not considered to pose any risks. The Russian minority has significantly decreased, from 1.6 million to about 800,000 (again, there is no official data) and is concentrated in Tashkent and in the city of Navoiy, which hosts the country’s main extractive industries.²⁷ Unlike in Kazakhstan, the Russian minority has never claimed any specific rights and has not been associated with any secessionist risks. The Karakalpak minority (about half a million people), located in the northwest part of the country, still formally holds an autonomous status, but this autonomy is almost nonexistent except in some very limited cultural aspects. The city of Nukus and the whole Karakalpakstan Autonomous Region are among the poorest and most remote of the country. Many Karakalpaks have emigrated to nearby Kazakhstan, which offers more economic opportunity and greater linguistic and cultural affinity.