Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, a steady rise in nationalism has slowly relegated non-Uzbek speakers to the bottom of the educational pile. Every year passes with the threat of non-admission for those who refuse to learn Uzbek, the country’s main language. Despite repeated warnings that their educational future is at stake, Russian language speakers steadfastly spurn pleas to master a tongue they have always considered inferior to theirs and that is part of their feudal past. Uzbek citizens are rapidly being re-educated in the face of a full-scale onslaught on their country’s history. Old Soviet heroes are losing out to a fast-track re-instatement of previously side-lined politicians, writers, and warriors in an attempt to engender a nationalism lost under Communism.

University students, once submerged under shelves of Lenin’s party speeches are now given President Karimov’s treatises to memorize. In a last-ditch move to expunge the Soviet period from the minds and hearts of Uzbek closet patriots, university history papers include only one question out of a possible 850 about the 70 year period that created the Uzbek nation that is now blacking out that period’s existence. The remaining 849 questions concern a mix of revived champions of a long lost Uzbek past whose dates and achievements they fail to memorize at their peril. But Uzbek students have always been told what to believe and this is nothing new. For 70 years God was dead and their allegiance was to the Soviet motherland. With independence in 1991, God was rehabilitated together with everyone else the Soviets had destroyed and a new leader was sitting on Lenin’s throne.

Rebellion, never top of an Uzbek student’s agenda, has not been seriously attempted apart from a small skirmish in Tashkent in 1992. But Karimov read the warning signs enough then to ensure that the measly student grant is now paid on time and always ahead of teacher salaries. Nevertheless, student morale is at a low ebb and the nation’s youth gaze hopelessly at a bleak future. "Who are we now?" they ask. "Once we were Communist and part of the greatest union on earth. We were told that Soviet soldiers never lost a battle and we were the luckiest children on earth. Now no one has heard of Uzbekistan and they invent a new hero every day. "

Those who refuse to learn Uzbek are at the bottom of the pile, but they steadfastly maintain their intransigence in the hope that one day they will escape and get a coveted business opportunity abroad. For them the English language will be their passport out. In the meantime there is no let-up in the creation of the new Uzbek identity and language is but one facet of it. A 19th century Italian politician remarking on the creation of Italy was heard to say: "We have made Italy, now we must make Italians." The Russians made Uzbekistan, but they never made Uzbeks. The Uzbeks have a lot of catching up to do.

Jennifer Balfour, educator, Central Asia