Uzbekistan is an independent nation in Central Asia. With the capital city of Tashkent, Uzbekistan 2020 population is estimated at 33,469,214 according to countryaah. The area that today constitutes the state of Uzbekistan has probably been populated since 4000 BC. A number of people have since submerged the area: Persians, shooters, Hellenes, females and others. The Arabs brought Islam with them. Only during the 16th century did the uz cup take control. In 1924, the Russians made Uzbekistan a Soviet sub-republic and began a unilateral investment in cotton cultivation. At the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Uzbekistan became independent.
- AbbreviationFinder.org: Comprehensive guide to and popular abbreviations of Uzbekistan, covering history, economy, and social conditions.
The first traces of shepherd culture in Central Asia date to around 4000 BC. The region’s first dynasty was formed by the nomadic business people who lived around the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea. When the business dynasty was at its peak around 800 BC, it ruled all of Central Asia, today’s Iran and part of present-day Turkey. For Uzbekistan political system, please check carswers.
The Sakad dynasty was driven away by the Persians, who for several centuries fought for control of the region against the Scythians, who lived around the Caspian Sea, on the Ukrainian steppes, in northern and eastern Iran, and on the Altai Mountains in Central Asia.
During the 3rd century BC, Macedonian king Alexander made a Hellenistic mark on the area. Around 140 BC it was invaded by nomads from the east. In the 400s AD, the Huns arrived, and as they moved further west, various Turkish peoples from the mountains of eastern Central Asia began to spread across the area.
Arabs bring Islam
The rapid Arab expansion following Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632 AD reached Central Asia a few decades later and brought with it a lasting Muslim influence. Bukhara became a center of Muslim philosophy and religion, surpassed only by Mecca. The Persian Sami dynasty in the 8th and 9th centuries made Buchara its capital. The period was a highlight of Persian language and culture. The economic basis for this culture was the control over the Silk Road, which was a system of trade routes between Europe and China.
In the 11th century, the Turkish cell diseases created an empire that dominated Central Asia, Persia and the Middle East for two centuries. The Seljuks in turn had to give way to the Mongols during the Genghi Khan in the 13th century. He brought together most of Central Asia’s larger peoples in an empire that quickly spread over most of the Eurasian land mass. However, the kingdom fell apart after the death of Djingi’s khan.
Mongol ruler Özbek (Uzbek) khan is regarded as an ancestor of the Uzbek Cups. He ruled over the giant kingdom of the Golden Horde in the early 1300s, forcing the population to convert to Islam.
The last great empire based in Central Asia was founded by Timur Lenk, a chieftain of the Samarkand region. He defeated the Golden Horde at the end of the 1300s, then ruled by Genghis Khan’s grandson Batu, and eventually also conquered Baghdad.
The Russians take power
In the beginning of the 16th century, the Uzbek took power from Timur Lenk’s descendants. For a short period, the uz cups also had control of northern Persia but were soon driven back and their kingdom dissolved. From the rubble arose three so-called khanats, that is, the kingdoms ruled by rulers with the title khan. The Khanate had its center in the cities of Chiva, Buchara and Kokand. After the discovery of the sea route to India in 1498, the Silk Road was lost in importance to world trade and Central Asia fell into oblivion to the outside world.
From the time of Tsar Peter the Great (1672-1725) trade began between Russia and Central Asia. When cotton deliveries from the United States were seized during the American Civil War (1861-1865), Russian traders caught the eye of Central Asia cotton. The military also advanced the Russian positions in Central Asia, while the British were pushing from India. Russia won the Great Game, called the rivalry between the Russians and the British about Central Asia, and gained control of the Khanate. A new administrative unit, Turkestan, was set up with a Russian general governor at the head, but the Khanate retained some autonomy.
After the abolition of living property in Russia in 1861, landless Russians flocked to Central Asia, where they came to dominate the cotton industry. Harvests were improved through irrigation channels, and the nomads’ land is heavily cropped by new crops. By expanding the railways, postal services and telegraphs, the economy became increasingly attached to central Russia. The 140-kilometer railway from the Caspian Sea to Samarkand was of great importance.
Soviet sub-republic
With the Russians also came new impulses that aroused young intellectuals’ interest in modern science, national identity and political freedom and rights. This gave rise to a movement of young reform-minded Central Asians, known as jihadists (new thinkers).
But for the vast majority, the Russian presence did not bring about any improvement. The millennial nomadic culture was threatened as growing land areas were cultivated. The resistance against the Russians was expressed, among other things, in bloody riots in the Fergana Valley in 1898 and an uprising broke out in 1916 in protest against recruitment to the Tsar’s forces during the First World War.
The Communist Revolution in Russia in 1917 led to civil war. In Tashkent, Russian workers and soldiers established a governing council – a Soviet. Revolutionary-minded Muslims, together with the Diocese of Kokand, created an independent government, which was later brutally defeated by the Soviets. This led to the emergence of a guerrilla movement, Basmati, who for several years fought the new rulers.
After the Bolsheviks victory in the civil war, Turkestan was divided in 1924. Uzbekistan became a Soviet sub-republic, ruled by the local Communist Party under Moscow directives. Thus, for the first time, Uzbekistan became a geographical and political entity. Its present borders were given to the Republic in 1936, when the Karakalpakstan was transferred to Uzbekistan from Russia.
Famine during the Stalin era
The first decades of the new Soviet Republic meant severe hardship for the population. The population had declined sharply during the civil war, and the livestock herds and farmland had been decimated. However, under President Fajzulla Chodzhayev, called the founder of the republic and “Lenin of Uzbekistan,” some improvements were made, such as a campaign for increased literacy.
But when Josef Stalin came to power in Moscow, the stance of the central power hardened. Agricultural collectivization was carried out by brutal methods, the harvesting decreased and severe famine occurred in 1932–1933. In the late 1930s, Uzbek communist leaders and intellectuals were cleared. Chodzhayev was brought to trial and arched. A large part of Central Asia’s population was put to death by starvation and persecution in 1920–1945. At the same time, Russian party officials were placed on key posts in the Uzbek Communist Party.
Uzbekistan was industrialized according to centrally prepared five-year plans. At the same time, new investments were made in cotton cultivation. During World War II, entire industries were moved from European parts of the Soviet Union to Uzbekistan, which was now experiencing a period of good economic growth.
Large investments were also made in reading education, and the government expanded communications and health care. The woman would be freed from her traditional role while fighting Islam and the Muslim culture. The legislation was purged from religious elements and contacts with the rest of the Muslim world were limited. Mosques and religious institutions were closed and the believers gathered in secret.
During World War II, Stalin changed tactics and tried to gain support by referring to the religion of the people. A certain religious activity was allowed and in Tashkent a spiritual leader, mufti, was appointed for Central Asia.
Environmental disaster and corruption scandal
Cotton production quadrupled between 1940 and 1980, but behind the figures hidden growing environmental problems. Extensive irrigation reduced the flow of water in the rivers. Too little water reached Lake Aral, which began to dry out and shrink. From the dry seabed, salt was spread with the wind over the earth, which was destroyed with reduced yields as a result. In order to meet the production targets, new areas were constantly placed under the plow.
However, when harvests declined in the early 1980s, Uzbekistan’s party chief since 1959, Sharof Rashidov, chose to falsify production figures. At the same time, he and his relatives seized money Moscow paid for cotton that was never produced. The cheat was revealed when Soviet satellites photographed Uzbek cotton crops. Rashidov was allowed to resign, the Minister of Agriculture was sentenced to death and thousands of Uzbek party officials were imprisoned. Rasjidov died before the trial against him ended.
Following the corruption scandal, the Moscow government took a firm grip on Uzbekistan and once again placed Russians on leading positions in the sub-republic. As a result, Moscow-hostile and nationalist sentiments grew among the Uzbek Cups. Nationalism was further strengthened when President Mikhail Gorbachev launched his reform policy in the Soviet Union, which enabled open debate on, for example, environmental problems.
Uzbekistan becomes independent
The environmental degradation and Uzbek identity were central issues for the first republic’s first opposition movement, Unity, which was founded in 1988. Unity grew rapidly and in 1989 passed its demand for Uzbek language to become official language. However, the party was not allowed to stand in the elections for Uzbekistan’s highest Soviet (parliament) 1990.
Like other Soviet republics, Uzbekistan suffered from ethnic unrest when the Communist Party’s grip on power began to release. In 1989, violence erupted in Tashkent and in the Fergana Valley between the Uzbek and Mescheter, a Turkish people’s group displaced from Georgia during World War II. About 150 people were killed and the Meschetes moved to other Soviet republics.
When the Soviet Union was disbanding in 1991, Uzbekistan was among the sub-republics that wanted to form a new Russian-led union, but with greater freedom to the regions. The day before the Union Treaty was signed, conservative members of the Soviet Communist Party leadership in Moscow tried to seize power in a coup d’etat. At first, Uzbek President Islam Karimov was pending, but when it became clear that the coup had failed, he summoned the Supreme Soviet of the Republic and declared Uzbekistan independently on August 31, 1991.
