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). However, this figure may not reflect the true number, as many Tajik families have chosen to register their children as Uzbek on official documents, hoping to shield them from potential discrimination. Uzbek families in Tajikistan reportedly do the same.

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. An exception is the Republic of Karakalpakstan – an autonomous region within Uzbekistan – where official websites are often available in four languages: Karakalpak in addition to the above-mentioned three. 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.

“There’s still this Soviet-era mindset that Russians are somehow better workers than Uzbeks – that they’re more honest, more efficient, less likely to steal,” Jakhongir says. “People continue to see them as more trustworthy, more competent, and more deserving of authority.”

Uzbekistan stripped Russian of its official status as the language of “interethnic communication” in 1995, four years into independence. According to the Tashkent office of Rossotrudnichestvo – the Russian Federal Agency for Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation – nearly one-third of Uzbekistan’s population still speaks Russian. To compare, Russian is the second official language in neighboring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, while the Tajik government kept it as the “language of interethnic communication.” Reportedly more than 90 percent of Kazakhstanis and 44 percent of Kyrgyzstan nationals know Russian.

One reason for the enduring presence of the Russian language in Uzbekistan is its inclusion in the national school curriculum. General secondary education is compulsory in the country and runs for 11 years. The country boasts a graduation rate of at least 95 percent. Russian is introduced as a subject starting from the 2nd grade, ensuring widespread exposure from an early age.

“I am against introducing Russian from the primary grades. Up to the 4th grade, Uzbek and English are sufficient. We should consider offering Russian as an optional language later on – perhaps alongside French or another language,” says 25-year-old Saidislomkhon, who currently lives in Germany. He is happy that nowadays some languages other than Russian are available in a small number of public schools. Over 200,000 children study German, another 130,000 study French, while over 6 million take English language classes from 1st grade.

“I work in the tourism sector, and in this field, Russian is still necessary. Whether I’m working with foreign partners or traveling, it’s required. Knowing English has opened many doors for me, and knowing Russian would open even more,” says Dilshodbek, 24, from Jizzakh. He uses a Russian word “и” for “and” instead of the Uzbek “va” throughout the conversation, despite admitting that he does not know Russian proficiently and in fact is taking Russian language classes.

While he does not see any harm in learning Russian at school, he is adamantly against Russian literature classes. “Because literature is always somehow connected to the culture of that nation. I’m not interested in their culture,” he explains.

Removing Russian from the school curricula, however, is not an option for the current government.

“First of all, I do believe that Uzbekistan’s system of education was built in a way that it’s very difficult to transform and change it real quickly, and it will require a lot of effort and resources put into this direction to really make a systemic change,” explains Temur Umarov, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center whose research is focused on Central Asian countries’ domestic and foreign policies, as well as China’s relations with Russia and Central Asian neighbors.

Currently, Uzbekistan is home to 10,163 secondary schools serving over 6.4 million students. Of these, 87 schools offer instruction exclusively in Russian, while an additional 885 schools have Russian-language groups where the curriculum is taught entirely in Russian. In total, 927 schools across the country provide education in Russian fully or partially covering 666,443 students – well over 10 percent. Given that fewer than 800,000 citizens of Uzbekistan are ethnically Russian, it is clear that many of these students belong to other ethnic groups. In fact, alongside Russian-speaking communities, many Koreans, Kazakhs, and other ethnic groups also send their children to Russian-language schools or groups. A significant number of Uzbeks do the same. If Tashkent were to remove Russian from school curricula, the public outcry would be loud. Many Uzbek families are not happy with the quality of education at public schools, so they send their children to private schools if they can afford to. If they cannot, Russian schools or classes are the next best option.

Meanwhile, access to education in other minority languages remains largely confined to areas with concentrated populations of those groups. For example, Kazakh language classes are available in six regions and the Republic of Karakalpakstan, although ethnic Kazakhs are more numerous than Russians – 821,200 or 2.4 percent of the overall population. Over 50,000 ethnic Kazakh children are currently enrolled in school in Uzbekistan, yet access to education in their native language remains uneven across the country. For the 10,785 ethnic Turkmen schoolchildren in Uzbekistan, only in two regions are classes offered in Turkmen. There are no schools or classes in Tatar (despite a Tatar population of around 187,000), Korean (174,000), Belarusian (fewer than 20,000), or Ukrainian (70,000). These and other ethnic groups tend to send their children mostly to Russian-language schools or classes. In many cases, especially if they live in urban areas or the capital, these children grow up without knowing Uzbek – the state language of the country they were born in.

Umarov further explains that the presence of the Russian language in Central Asia is a legacy of the Soviet era, one that the current leadership in Moscow has no intention of changing.

“I think Uzbekistan and as well as other Central Asian countries do understand that this is a sensitive question in their relationship with Russia,” continues Umarov, noting that the political elite still speaks Russian along with their mother tongue. “[President Shavkat] Mirziyoyev’s family – they all speak Russian. Both of the daughters have graduated from Russian universities very recently, actually. The amount of ties that Mirziyoyev has with elites from Russia also tell kind of a lot about his own perspective on the role of Russian language and what role it’s playing in Uzbek society.”

Moscow has long worked to maintain the Russian language in Central Asia, primarily through investments in mass education. Today, school textbooks for grades 2 through 11 are developed in partnership with Herzen University – formerly known as the Russian State Pedagogical University named after A.I. Herzen – under the “Zo‘r!” (Russian “Klass!” meaning “Super!” and “Classroom/Lesson!”) project, an initiative of the Russian Ministry of Education and the charitable foundation of Alisher Usmanov, an Uzbek businessman with a Russian passport. Uzbekistan now hosts 14 campuses of Russian universities – the highest number among all CIS countries. Apart from that, 63,000 Uzbekistani students are currently pursuing higher education in Russia, twice as many as just five years ago. 

“In theory, it is a very important tool in Russia’s soft power to really gain a lot of, to kind of win a lot of hearts in Central Asia and to make Central Asian countries to act in a manner that will be playing in Russia’s interest,” Umarov notes.

The concept of “soft power” was formally introduced into Russian foreign policy in the 2013 Foreign Policy Concept and has been increasingly instrumentalized under President Vladimir Putin.

“But the current leadership in Russia sees its soft power instruments and its presence in language differently,” Umarov says. “I don't believe that the current leadership in Moscow looks at the presence of the Russian language in Central Asia as a tool that it can use, but rather they see it as a result itself –  as a proof of Russia’s power or Russia’s influence in the region. So in a way, the amount of people who speak Russian is already transformed in the eyes of the Kremlin as the amount of influence that it has in Central Asia.”

In other words, the Kremlin interprets the widespread use of Russian not as a means to an end, but as evidence of its geopolitical relevance. What matters to Russia is simply the fact itself – it’s seen as a marker of power.

However, this presence might be slowly waning as more young people grow uninterested in the Russian language. Their interest lies with English or Chinese -- languages that offer better career prospects, not just a future of labor migration to Russia.

While about 10 percent of all schoolchildren in Uzbekistan study in Russian and graduate with relative fluency in the language, others do not master it – despite a decade studying it in school. Many attribute this to the poor quality of Russian language instruction in particular. But, the reality is that the overall quality of education is generally lacking, especially in rural areas. As the number of schoolchildren continues to rise rapidly, Uzbekistan faces significant challenges in ensuring access to quality education in any language.

“I speak entirely in Uzbek, and most of my peers don’t speak any other languages. I myself don’t know Russian at all,” says Madina, a 25-year-old journalist from Bukhara. “In our school, we had only two hours of Russian language classes per week, while we had five hours of English. Our Russian language teachers didn’t engage us or spark any interest in learning Russian. If they had, at least a few students in the class might have been able to speak some Russian. But in reality, no one in school spoke Russian.”

“I studied Russian in school, but it hardly plays any role in my life,” says Fayzullo, 22, from Fergana, who currently studies at a university in Tashkent. “I’ve even boycotted the Cyrillic alphabet; I stopped reading books in Cyrillic and only read those in Latin script. The same goes for the Russian language.”

He is clearly frustrated that many organizations, banks, hospitals, and other public services still provide documents and forms in Russian along with Uzbek, and when they are in Uzbek, they are often still in Cyrillic letters.

The Cyrillic alphabet was introduced in the Uzbek SSR in 1940, following the adoption of the Latin alphabet two decades earlier. Tashkent decided to transition back to the Latin alphabet in 1993, two years into independence. However, this transition has still not been completed. Government websites, news outlets, and legislation databases – anything on a national scale – are available in both Latin and Cyrillic scripts. A sudden complete switch would have rendered much of the older generation illiterate; those who studied before 1993 would have had to re-learn how to read in an entirely different alphabet. Consequently, the switch from Cyrillic to Latin has dragged on. Even private publishing houses, based on demand, still publish about half of their books in Cyrillic.

“I think teaching [Russian at schools] has been a good thing up to this point,” says Nurmuhammad, 31, stressing that the necessity to know Russian is slowly waning as more materials become available in Uzbek and more young people know English. “Back then, we were forced to obtain important literature and knowledge in Russian, as there were no other options. There was almost no information available in Uzbek.”

He is happy that even scientific articles are now available in Uzbek as he recalls a time when even Uzbek scholars had to publish their scientific papers in Russian.  

Among the 30 young people from various parts of Uzbekistan interviewed, what stood out was the absence of open hostility toward the Russian language. Many emphasized, time and again, that “a language should not be condemned,” and saw fluency in any language – including Russian – as a valuable skill.

Their frustration, however, lies in the politicization of Russian; in how it has become a tool of Moscow’s influence. More deeply, they expressed disappointment with the status of their own national language. In a country where the majority of the population is ethnically Uzbek, not enough has been done to elevate the Uzbek language in the eyes of the country’s younger generation. Russian remains a language of the “elite.”

“I have no objection to the language being taught. What I’m against is when, in some cases, it’s placed above our own native language,” complains 21-year-old Muxlisa from Navai. She is unhappy that in urban areas, especially in employment, proficiency in Russian holds the same importance as speaking in the Uzbek language.

Coming from a rural area herself, like many of her peers, she was not taught Russian well at school. “We learned a bit of grammar, memorized some poetry (in Russian literature classes), but there wasn’t any active usage. Since we lived in a rural area, the local population mostly spoke either Uzbek or Tajik. Russian wasn’t widely spoken in our region,” Muxlisa says.

“But now, if you want to get a job in Tashkent or in major cities of other regions, Russian is often a required skill,” she continues with frustration. “That’s the part I criticize. I’m not against the language being taught. I’m against it being placed above Uzbek or treated as equal to Uzbek in terms of official status or job requirements.”

Russia’s overall reputation among young Uzbeks isn’t what it once was. While the war in Ukraine has certainly influenced public perceptions, another important factor has been the example set by neighboring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, where efforts to promote native languages and push back against Russian linguistic influence have resonated with many young people in Uzbekistan.

This sentiment has reached Uzbek policymakers as well. A leading voice on this issue often comes from the leader of the Milliy Tiklanish party, Alisher Qodirov. In response to Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin’s May 2024 rant that labor migrants coming to Russia must know Russian, Qodirov demanded that every Russian in Uzbekistan should speak the state language.

“In our laws, alongside creating conditions for citizens of other nationalities to learn their native language and values in preschool and primary education, the Uzbek language should be established as a mandatory language to be learned,” Qodirov wrote on his Telegram channel. “We need to ensure that individuals who do not know the Uzbek language are unable to work in public service or access state services.”

Unlike many other Uzbek politicians who are comfortable using Cyrillic, Qodirov not only writes in the Latin script but deliberately uses Turkic letters, such as “ş” instead of “sh” and “ç” instead of “ch,” signaling his alignment with the Turkic world over Russian influence.

Earlier he had called for reducing the use of the Russian language in public education and mass media.

His most recent rebuke of Russian linguistic entitlement in Uzbekistan followed the official visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in April 2025. While at the Motamsaro Ona (Grieving Mother) memorial in Samarkand, Lavrov remarked that the memorial inscriptions were in Uzbek and English, but not in Russian.

“Russian politicians seem to be trying every possible way to portray Uzbekistan as disrespectful to Russian language and culture… Lavrov surely understands that forced respect and invented needs only create the opposite effect,” Qodirov wrote on his Telegram channel, reacting to Lavrov’s comment.

While this may seem like the position of just one politician, in a country where political figures rarely make bold statements, Qodirov’s remarks signal a degree of approval from higher levels of the political elite.

Recent rhetoric from Russian officials regarding labor migrants – including Uzbeks – has not gone unnoticed either. As Moscow  pushed for stricter requirements, such as mandating that the children of migrants speak Russian to enroll in school, Tashkent introduced a new policy: starting this year, all secondary school graduates – regardless of the language of instruction – must pass a mandatory exam in the Uzbek language. Currently almost a million students in Uzbekistan are studying in Russian, Tajik, Karakalpak, and other minority languages, accounting for 14.5 percent of all schoolchildren in the country.

The Russian language remains deeply woven into Uzbekistan’s institutions, urban landscapes, and educational system – not because of ethnic representation, but due to historical legacy and enduring soft power. Yet, the generational tide is turning. For Uzbekistan’s youth, Russian is no longer a symbol of prestige or modernity, but a relic of an unequal past that often overshadows their own language and identity.

As the internet age develops, young people have also taken the matter into their own hands and are creating more content in Uzbek. Their end goal is not to eradicate Russian in Uzbekistan – none of those interviewed blame the language – but rather to promote their native tongue.

“Previously, there was very little in Uzbek,” Nurmuhammad says. “Now, I wouldn’t say the same, and maybe in five or six years, it will be time to remove Russian from schools.”

This shift is not about rejecting multilingualism or linguistic diversity; it’s about rebalancing the scales. Uzbekistan’s Gen Z are not calling for Russian to be erased, but for Uzbek to be elevated.

The interviews were conducted as part of the author’s Ph.D. research at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz (JGU), Germany, studying contested Soviet social memories and Central Asian youth. The author thanks everyone who participated in the interviews.