Russian Without Russians: The Politics of Language in Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan's Gen Z is tired of the Russian language's privileged status in the country. According to government statistics, approximately 2.1 percent of the country's 37.5 million people are ethnically Russian (less than 800,000). However, Russian is widespread both in the public and private sphere, especially in urban areas.
'I speak polnyy (fully) in Uzbek,' says 23-year-old Azizullo from Andijan, seemingly unaware that his sentence includes a Russian word. For most people in Uzbekistan, mixing Russian into everyday conversation is normal. 'A lot of things need to be removed – just completely erased. For example, all the Russian-language signs. I see it even in my own city, Andijan. There are still so many Russian signs on the streets. Even in places where only Uzbeks live and no Russians at all, you still find signs in Russian — like on barrier gates.'
Russians are not the only minority group in Uzbekistan, and they are no longer the largest. Of the 1.6 million Russians living in the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) in 1989, more than half left the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A formal census has not been conducted since then, but according to official estimates, around 84 percent of the population of Uzbekistan are ethnically Uzbek. The largest ethnic minority is Tajiks, who make up nearly 5 percent of the population (approximately 1.7 million people).
Uzbekistan is home to over 130 ethnicities and nationalities, yet, after Uzbek, Russian remains dominant in public life, sometimes among upper-class Uzbek families too. Those families are locally referred to as yevropozirovanniy or Europeanized. All government websites operate in Russian along with the state language, Uzbek, and sometimes English. Even state legislation in the national database is available in Uzbek and Russian and only sometimes in English. Almost all local mobile applications operate in Uzbek and Russian. Major local online news outlets in Uzbekistan – though privately owned – publish content primarily in Uzbek, Russian, and occasionally in English. While media outlets in other local languages such as Tajik, Karakalpak, and Kazakh do exist, they are limited to regional platforms and lack a national presence.
'The official state language is Uzbek, but if you don't speak Russian, it's hard to get a job in the public sector,' says Jakhongir, a 25 year old student from Khorazm who is himself a state employee. He sees the continued dominance of Russian as a lingering legacy of the Soviet era, when high-ranking officials – particularly party secretaries – were often ethnically Russian. In the Uzbek SSR, to make a career in the public sector, one needed to be fluent in Russian; knowing the language thus became a status symbol.
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