Uzbek Uncertainties

In October 2018 Vladimir Putin and Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the president of Uzbekistan, agreed to build a new memorial to World War II in Tashkent, the capital of the former Soviet republic. There was much to commemorate: Uzbekistan played an important part in the conflict. The country had been a hub for evacuees from the Soviet Union, among them a large number of Jews. Many Uzbek soldiers fought in the Red Army; there were more Uzbek military casualties than French, Canadian, or Polish. They were involved in the liberation of the Eastern Front, including Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. 

Yet since independence in 1991, remembrances of World War II in Uzbekistan had been subdued. Islam Karimov, who led Soviet Uzbekistan from 1989 to 1991 and then served as the independent country’s president until his death in 2016, pursued a state policy of strengthening national identity, including by reimagining the war. To “de-Sovietize” national memory he changed how the conflict was described in history textbooks—from “the Great Patriotic War,” the Soviet term, to “World War II”—and banned Soviet-issued war medals from appearing on TV or in magazines or newspapers. In 2010, in the Victory Park the Soviets had opened in Tashkent in 1975, the central monument of a Soviet soldier was replaced by one of an Uzbek soldier kneeling before the country’s flag. Many activists also called for ceasing Soviet-style invocations of the war, seeing them as vestiges of Russian rule and arguing that its narratives of Soviet unity whitewashed Stalinist crimes and undermined Uzbek losses.

Putin and Mirziyoyev’s memorial took the form of a Victory Park with a “Museum of Glory.” It opened on May 9—“Victory Day”—2020. The Victory Park embodies pobedobesie, the “cult of victory” that surrounds Russian state narratives about World War II. Other examples are the enormous parades that take place across Russia on Victory Day, and the proliferation of the orange-and-black striped Saint George’s ribbon—a popular accessory that has become synonymous with support for the invasion of Ukraine. 

I visited Victory Park on a sweltering August day last summer. A song called “The Last Battle,” from the Soviet film series Liberation (1968–1972), played from loudspeakers hidden in the bushes: “We’ll meet tomorrow for a final clash/It’s our last chance to serve Russia/and to die for her is not at all scary/although everyone still hopes to live!” The effect was both kitsch and sinister. If not for the hundred-degree heat, it might have been Moscow.

A painted mural inside the museum showed the local train station as it might have appeared some eighty years ago: women greet refugees as men leave to fight on the frontlines, and workers load up train cars with food and cotton produced for the war effort. Other exhibits tell the stories of Uzbek prisoners of war in Nazi concentration camps and Uzbek soldiers in the Red Army who showed particular bravery, including one who participated in the liberation of Kharkiv.

Yet throughout the museum Russia lurks in the background. The certificates awarded to the Uzbek soldiers are written in Russian, issued in Moscow. The medals in the display cabinets are suspended from Saint George’s ribbons. The exhibition ends with a video showing leaders of Central Asian states alongside Putin at a World War II memorial service in Red Square in 2020. Opposite the projector is a glass case labeled FRIENDSHIP THAT HAS BECOME ETERNAL, inside which are books on Russian history and ornate wooden boxes covered with depictions of Red Square. 

I was the only woman at the museum; the rest of the visitors were Uzbek men in their late teens to mid-twenties. They were, in other words, the very demographic who would have been conscripted to liberate Ukraine from the Nazis three quarters of a century ago—and who are now being conscripted to invade the country. Over the past two and a half years the Russian army has coerced, bribed, and forcibly mobilized large numbers of Central Asians into its ranks, among them Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Kyrgyz. Once again Uzbek soldiers are fighting under Moscow’s command, and once again they are returning home in coffins. 

I spent six weeks in Uzbekistan last summer, hoping to understand why so many people there supported Russia’s war. I wondered what they thought about Soviet rule and how they compared their country’s de-Sovietization to that of Ukraine, Georgia, and other former Soviet republics. I found a country divided between nostalgia for the Soviet past, which many feel brought Uzbekistan greater importance on the global stage, and patriotic hope for an independent future in which Uzbek culture might thrive.

For more than 1,500 years the lands that comprise modern-day Uzbekistan were, in an almost literal sense, the center of the Silk Road, halfway between China and Rome. In the fourth century Alexander the Great built a desert fortress in the town of Nur; there are mosques from the ninth century. Samarkhand and Bukhara were among the most important stops on the ancient trade route. 

In 1868 the Russian Empire signed a treaty with the Khanate of Bukhara, taking control of these cities; they were governed from Moscow for 120 years. Tsarist rule was harsh on Uzbekistan. Though the country is mostly arid—78 percent of its territory is desert—it was made into the empire’s cotton capital. This agricultural policy originated during the American Civil War, when falling American exports drove up cotton prices. The irony, as one young Tashkent activist wryly put it to me, is that the end of slave labor in the US led to its introduction in Uzbekistan, even though serfdom was technically abolished in the rest of the Russian Empire. Child slave labor was prevalent in Uzbek cotton fields until the mid-2010s.

The tsarist agricultural system dramatically expanded under Soviet rule. Uzbekistan produced as much as 70 percent of the USSR’s cotton, with devastating environmental consequences. Cotton production requires some 1,320 gallons of water per pound. From the 1960s onward the state constructed canals to meet that need, eventually drying up the Aral Sea, once the fourth-largest lake in the world. The region’s fishing industry was decimated. Dried fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides from the lake bed became airborne and settled in people’s lungs, leading to an exponential rise in chronic illnesses.

Soviet cultural and social policy was hardly kinder. As part of Stalin’s population transfers, ethnic Koreans from the Russian Far East, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, and other groups labeled “dissenting” were sent into exile in Uzbekistan. At the same time, Russians arrived: many were assigned to work in the factories or attend universities, a large number of which were built after the revolution. Russian was also promoted: in the late 1930s Moscow imposed the Cyrillic script on local languages. There were Uzbek-language schools, but parents who wanted their children to succeed knew not to send them there. 

Most former Soviet states implemented de-Sovietization policies after independence, but Uzbekistan’s were notably ambitious—if only partially effective. In the 1990s statues of Lenin, Marx, and other Communist leaders were pulled down and replaced by figures such as the fourteenth-century Mongol conqueror Timur. Street and square names were changed from Moskovskaia and Lenina to Osiyo (Asia) and Mustaqillik (Independence). The state also played up the history of the Silk Road, encouraging tourism to Samarkand and Bukhara.

In 1995 Karimov ended Russian’s status as the “language of inter-ethnic communication” but it continues to be the lingua franca in a country where many people’s first language is not Uzbek but Tajik. In Tashkent one hears as much Russian as Uzbek, in part because many ethnic Russian moved there during the Soviet period. Sending your child to a Russophone school remains a status symbol. The Cyrillic alphabet is banned in advertising and public signs, but the law is not enforced; the streets of every major city are still lined with Cyrillic. The same Tashkent activist put it bluntly when I asked why the art exhibition he had curated about cotton slavery featured Russian and not Uzbek wall text: “We are still a Russian colony.”

Karimov ruled as a dictator, thwarting all movements for democratization. Following sham elections, he was succeeded by Mirziyoyev, a former prime minister, who has implemented some reforms, including ending child labor in the cotton industry. Activists I met generally said they feared arrest less than before, though the country has suffered democratic backsliding in recent years. In 2022, following the state’s move to end Karakalpakstan’s status as an autonomous republic, mass protests broke out in the far western region. Brutal crackdowns ensued. The Uzbek authorities claimed that twenty-one protestors were killed and 270 injured, though the real figures are likely higher. Leading activists remain imprisoned. 

There has not been sufficient economic progress; the average wage nationwide is three hundred dollars per month. For the general population outside of Tashkent or Samarkand, making ends meet is a daily struggle. A fundamental problem is that Uzbekistan has failed to diversify its economy, which remains dependent on cotton. The mass emigration of young people further hinders growth. In 2022 remittances from the diaspora, most of it based in Russia, made up around a fifth of GDP. 

China, South Korea, and Turkey have tried to gain a foothold in the region by investing in development projects. But ultimately Russia remains the biggest foreign influence. The Russian taxi app Yandex GO, banned, as a result of Western sanctions, by Apple’s App Store and Google Play, is the best way to get around. The Russian cell phone operator Beeline is the most widely used. Russian media is omnipresent: the Kremlin propaganda channel Pervyi Kanal (Channel One) plays on every TV. 

References to the war in Ukraine are conspicuously absent in Uzbekistan. The blue and yellow flags that now fly in most European and American cities are nowhere to be found. There is no official polling, but everyone I spoke to agreed that, outside of relatively highly educated urban demographics, the majority is indifferent or supports the Russian side. The Russian tricolor billows outside major hotels; Russian music plays in restaurants and bars. Soviet nostalgia is a powerful force among the older generation—who are the likeliest to support Russia—and only strengthened by the country’s persistent economic struggles. 

When I mentioned to Uzbek taxi drivers and service industry workers that I’m based in Ukraine, their first question, invariably, was whether I had come across many Nazis there—a central talking point of Putinist propaganda. Generally, though, after initial curiosity, people were merely apathetic. Officially Uzbekistan remains neutral. The government has neither recognized Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territories nor condemned its aggression. 

In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, antiwar Russians moved en masse to Uzbekistan, but people I spoke to last summer reported that even by then the majority had left, either returning or moving on to Europe. Rents in Tashkent and Samarkand, which increased when they came, have since fallen. Activists talk about solidarity between Uzbeks and Ukrainians, both victims of Russian oppression; no former Soviet state, they stress, can be truly free from Russia until they all are. But these conversations can feel limited to private homes in big cities, where people can gather without fear of repression. 

The activists I met were generally from the same social circles; almost all had lived abroad— many in Russia, others in Europe—and returned home. They said their progressive views, particularly their antiwar stances, had alienated them from their families. Many had been arrested for protesting against the Uzbek government and in 2014 some were detained for demonstrating in solidarity with Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution. 

Other Uzbeks, meanwhile, are fighting for Russia. Working at my guesthouse in Samarkand was Ruslan, a middle-aged native of the city who walked with a limp owing to a club foot. One morning, as he served me traditional Uzbek somsas, he noticed the Ukrainian charm hanging from my bag, which led him to recall that a former neighbor of his, a construction worker, was in Ukraine. I asked him why, and his answer was bleak: masked men had abducted the man from his dormitory in suburban Moscow, confiscated his passport, and made him sign a five-year contract with the Russian military or risk prison. A few months later, in eastern Ukraine, he stepped on a mine and lost his leg. As of last summer his passport had not been returned; he was expected to see out his contract. 

This is a glimpse of a vast source of manpower. I heard many such stories of kidnapping and coerced conscription. Illegal and unregistered labor makes exact numbers hard to come by, but an estimated three million Uzbek citizens had entered Russia between January and September 2021. They generally hold poorly paid jobs in construction or work as delivery drivers. It’s illegal for Uzbek citizens to join foreign militaries, a crime that carries a prison sentence of up to ten years. The government has spoken out against its citizens fighting in Ukraine. But once men are in Russia, this makes little practical difference. 

Some Uzbeks have also joined the army willingly; the Kremlin has promised fast-tracked citizenship for anyone who serves a year. (Until 2022 the law was three years.) In other cases, Uzbeks imprisoned in Russia—after Tajiks, they are the largest foreign group incarcerated—joined the Wagner Group in exchange for early release. 

Lawyers and activists told me that the precise numbers of Uzbeks fighting in Ukraine are elusive. A zinc coffin will arrive back to a village, and the news might spread, but nobody knows how many are fighting or how many have died. In neighboring Kyrgyzstan, a documentary filmmaker sought out the families of people killed fighting for Russia in Ukraine.¹ He counted 140, of which forty were in the Wagner Group. Uzbekistan is five times the size of Kyrgyzstan—it is the most populous Central Asian country, with over 35 million people—and far more Uzbek citizens live in Russia. 

Tong Jahoni, an NGO that supports migrants in Russia, claims that 15,000 foreign citizens, among them Uzbeks, are working in occupied areas of Ukraine. Some were lured by the promise of high wages but most were deceived, offered jobs in Russia only to be transferred. An Uzbek scam contracting firm, for instance, might tell a migrant laborer to relocate to Ukraine under threat of deportation. The “construction work” there may turn out to be digging trenches or clearing landmines. These tasks are often done unarmed, without protective clothing. 

In Ukraine I worked in a village that had been occupied for six months and then liberated. The abandoned Russian checkpoint at the entrance was graffitied, in Cyrillic, with the word “UZBEK-MAN.” Locals told me there were many Central Asians among the occupying forces. Uzbek activists see a direct line from cotton slavery to this forced deployment.

In the first year of the invasion, many migrant workers—as many as 50 percent—returned home from Russia, fleeing economic uncertainty and unlawful mobilization. Here too there are no reliable statistics, but everybody I spoke with agreed that emigration to the US has increased markedly in this period. Between October 2021 and October 2023, US Customs and Border Protection claims to have detained over 13,000 Uzbek citizens crossing the border without papers. Though Russia remains the main destination, for a growing number an American migrant camp is preferable to the Donbas front line. 

I heard many stories of forbidding journeys to the US. Ruslan’s cousin, for instance, had sold his business, house, and car, and, along with his wife and two small children, reached Mexico. They planned to cross the border, hoping the Uzbek community in Brighton Beach would support their resettlement. A taxi driver I spoke to had returned to Uzbekistan from Kaliningrad, Russia’s exclave between Lithuania and Poland, and was now considering the same journey. Even in Tashkent, an artist mentioned two friends who had recently gone to the US this way. 

Despite all of this, Ruslan did not question Russia’s narrative of the war. He believed that Putin had to “de-Nazify” Ukraine, just as the Soviets kept the Nazis out of Samarkand. For him Russia was a symbol of a past greatness, beside which the West felt alien and suspicious, a sentiment nourished by his voracious consumption of Russian TV. Russian-funded development in Uzbekistan and the language’s ubiquity likely shored up this perspective. The US may be a better emigration prospect, but Ruslan’s worldview was firmly pro-Russian. 

On my final night in Tashkent I went to a Ukrainian film festival at 139 Documentary Center, a cultural space based in a converted warehouse that could have been plucked from Brooklyn or East London. It had been uncertain whether the police would preemptively close the festival down for its pro-Ukrainian stance. Ukrainian refugees and embassy staff sat alongside Russian political exiles and Uzbek activists. The movie shown was Nariman Aliev’s Dodomu (Homewards, 2019), about a Crimean Tatar family’s travails after Russia’s 2014 annexation of the region. It follows a father as he tries to return home with the body of his son, killed fighting for the Ukrainian army in the Donbas. 

The film had particular relevance in Uzbekistan, where many Crimean Tatars, including the directors’ ancestors, were exiled by Stalin in 1944 under false charge of Nazi collaboration. After the screening there was a discussion about home and exile. The Uzbeks and Russians stayed quiet; the Ukrainians reminisced about childhood holidays in Crimea, the smells of home they longed to experience again, and their hatred of the state that displaced them as it once had displaced Crimean Tatars. 

That was a year ago. There has since been a clampdown on civil society and media, with a spike in arrests of bloggers and journalists. 139 Documentary Center has been charged for screening films to a mass audience without a license. The center’s founders say the allegation is an attempt at censorship and are appealing it to the Supreme Court. 

This development speaks to the fragility of democratic hopes in Uzbekistan, which to this day has never had a fair election. The work of local activists notwithstanding, it’s hard to feel optimistic about the country’s future. Without some dramatic change, coffins will trickle back to Uzbek villages from the Ukrainian steppes, families will sell their possessions and fly to Mexico, money will be wasted on World War II memorials, and young men will move to their former metropole and risk being drafted into a war being waged to recreate the empire from which Uzbekistan gained independence just over thirty years ago.