The formation of mono-ethnic Central Asian states is almost complete
We are used to the fact that, despite about 160 different nationalities living in our huge state, Russia is a mono-ethnic state - more than 80% of its population is Russian. Countries such as Armenia, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, North and South Korea, Egypt, Japan, as well as many Arab countries of the Arabian Peninsula are also mono-ethnic.
This state of affairs has developed over many years or even centuries due to social and cultural development, wars, agreements and, of course, migration processes.
Migration processes have not spared us either. The period of collectivisation, repression, development of virgin lands, the vast expanses of Central Asia with the construction of industrial giants was accompanied by the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. Representatives of European and other ethnic groups who had not previously lived there moved to the territories of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.
With the collapse of the USSR, everything went in the opposite direction. After gaining independence and opening the borders of the Central Asian country, many people moved to their historical Motherland. This process was massive, but it lasted a relatively short amount of time.
The basis of the new round of migration was Russia's initiation of a state program for the resettlement of compatriots living abroad. Along the way, this was spurred on (and is being spurred on) by the peculiarities of national construction. It can be assumed that all these processes will lead to the return of the designated countries to their ethnically original state. Whether this is true or not, what are the pros and cons of mono-national states, and what this will mean for Russia - we will try to understand these issues in this article.
Migration processes
The main factors influencing the increase or decrease in the share of one nation in the total population of a country are migration and birth rate. The overwhelming majority of Russians are involved in migration processes. By the time of the collapse of the USSR, 9.4 million Russians lived in the already independent states of Central Asia (Kazakhstan - 6.1 million, Uzbekistan - 1.6 million, Kyrgyzstan - 917,000, Tajikistan - 388,500, Turkmenistan - 333,900).
Most of them are descendants of immigrants of the 19th-20th centuries, that is, people who are indigenous to the countries of Turkestan. Due to circumstances, they appeared here and stayed alive. They gave birth to children and grandchildren, for whom these countries became their Motherland. This is eloquently evidenced by the fact that as of 2007, about 60% of Russians who lived in Central Asia at the time of the collapse of the USSR remained in Central Asia.
Now their number has significantly decreased. Thus, about 3.5 million Russians live in Kazakhstan (-43%), 650,000 in Uzbekistan (-60%), 364,500 in Kyrgyzstan (-61%), and 34,800 in Tajikistan (-91%). There is no local statistical data for Turkmenistan, but according to the Russian Foreign Ministry, by 2005 the number of Russians in the country had decreased from 9.5% to 3.5%.
Let's move on to the number of state-forming nationalities:
- Kazakhstan: 69% Kazakh, 23% Russian, 8% other
- Uzbekistan: 84% Uzbek, 8% Russian, 8% other
- Kyrgyzstan: 73% Kyrgyz, 14% Uzbek, 6% Russian, 7% other
- Tajikistan: 84% Tajik, 12% Uzbek, 6% other
- Turkmenistan: 91% Turkmen, 9% the rest
As can be seen from the table, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are already mono-ethnic states (91% and 84% each). At the same time, in Tajikistan, Uzbeks make up more than 10% of the total population, and their number is growing. This is partly due to the proximity of Uzbekistan itself, which has a significant human resource, to Tajikistan. Therefore, it is unlikely that the percentage presence of Tajiks will go beyond 90%.
In contrast, the number of other ethnic groups in Uzbekistan is steadily decreasing. There is every reason to believe that at this rate they will assimilate and turn Uzbekistan into another mono-national state in the region.
Change in the number of major ethnic groups in the permanent population, millions of people: (from left to right) Uzbeks,Tajiks, Karakalpaks, Russians, Kyrgyz, Turkmens
In Kyrgyzstan, in fact, the Kyrgyz themselves occupy 73%, the next largest ethnic group is the Uzbeks.
Kazakhstan stands out among these countries with a large presence of Russians, who make up 23% of the population (about 3.5 million). However, the number of Russians is steadily decreasing. Every year, about 30,000-40,000 people leave the country. In the medium term, we can expect a decrease in the presence of Russians to 10% of the population. At the same time, the number of Kazakhs is also increasing due to the influx of “Kandas” - ethnic Kazakhs living in other countries.
It turns out that the share of the European population in the countries of Central Asia is slowly but surely declining, as well as other nationalities. There is clearly a tendency to strengthen only one ethnic group.
Birth rate
From 2002 to the present day, all Central Asian countries (with the exception of Turkmenistan) have experienced an average population growth of 24%:
- Kazakhstan: 2010 - 15.3 million; 2020 - 18.7 million (22% increase)
- Uzbekistan: 2010 - 27.4 million; 2020 - 34.2 million (24% increase)
- Kyrgyzstan: 2010 - 5.3 million; 2020 - 6.6 million (24% increase)
- Turkmenistan: 2010 - 5.4 million; 2020 - 2.8 million (49% decrease)
- Tajikistan: 2010 - 6.9 million; 2020 - 9.5 million (34% increase)
Separately in this scheme, Turkmenistan is singled out, which is quite difficult to talk about objectively due to the secrecy of information from this state. However, based on various insider sources and indirect data on the number of Turkmens staying in other countries, we can say that there is a decline in the population. The main reasons are a sharp drop in the standard of living, which leads to moving to more prosperous countries, a decrease in the birth rate, and an increase in mortality.
Reasons for migration
The leitmotif of moving from the countries of residence is a higher standard of living in the countries of relocation. It is impossible not to mention the language issue and the presence of interethnic conflicts.
Any ethnic group wants to talk, learn, and use their native language in everyday life. Attempts to inculcate the language of another ethnic group instead lead to resistance. If it is impossible to influence the situation, people will leave for places where their native language is, at least, an official one, and at most a state one. If there are several large ethnic groups in the country, this is solved by officially recognising two state languages. Example: Canada, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, Turkey, Finland.
In Central Asia, they decided to go the other way. In Tajikistan (and until a certain time in Kazakhstan), Russian is the language of interethnic communication. However, because of this vague status, there have been (and still are) conflicts on linguistic grounds, especially in Kazakhstan.
In the Kyrgyz Republic, Russian is mentioned as the official language.
In Uzbekistan, both the official and state languages are the same – Uzbek. However, the use of Russian is allowed.
There is the desire to focus on the following: for Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, with their large number of Russians, this is justified. However, in Kyrgyzstan, and especially in Kazakhstan, Russians make up a significant proportion of the population. At the same time, all attempts to consolidate the status of the Russian language fail.
In addition to the issues of language adaptation, there are difficulties in the centuries-old system of tribal ties in Central Asia, which, to a certain extent, closed the social elevators for Russians during the construction of national states.
It would be unfair to say that nationalist and anti-Russian tendencies are dominant in Central Asia, but ordinary citizens of Russian nationality sometimes feel like strangers and doubt whether they have a future in their Motherland.
Interethnic conflicts are a separate topic. Only in recent years can we recall (on the example of Kazakhstan):
- January 2019. Conflict in the cafe "Ancient Rome" in Karaganda, where an Armenian killed a Kazakh guy. The events were widely publicised, and several cafes and restaurants across the country were attacked. A rally was held in the city calling for the expulsion of Armenians from the country.
- February 2020. 11 people were killed, more than 50 were injured, 25 houses, 30 rural objects, 40 cars were burned in the villages of Masanchi, Sortobe, Aukatty and Bulan-Batyr. A conflict between Kazakhs and Dungans.
- June 2020. Shonzhi village, Uyghur district, Alma-Ata region. A knife fight between Kazakh and Uyghur youth.
- July 2020. Kosmezgil village of Shornak rural area, Turkestan region. Local residents reported a "conflict" between Kazakh and Uzbek youth. The case escalated into a mass brawl. Four people were injured.
- On October 27, in the village of Panjim, Panfilov district, Alma-Ata region, a fight broke out between schoolchildren. In the evening, adults intervened and broke out the windows of houses and cars in a number of villages.
Conflicts in the territories of other republics occurred somewhat earlier. In 1989, clashes between Uzbeks and Meskhetian Turks broke out in Ferghana, then part of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1990, a mass riot of Russian neighbourhoods took place in Dushanbe (Tajikistan). 1990 and 2010 - Kyrgyz Osh: conflicts between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks.
Many Russian people in the early 1990s almost had to flee the republics of Central Asia, abandoning their property or selling it for nothing. Buyers often set the price for the apartment themselves, emphasising that otherwise they would take it away for free.
Until now, there are no statistics on the number of killed, maimed, missing, and raped Russians and Russian-speaking people in the republics of Central Asia. Thus, there are a lot of reasons for moving, the main ones are the language, standard of living, and interethnic conflicts.
What is the result
The bottom line is that there are already mono-national states in Central Asia. A little later, the same fate awaits Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. As far as Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are concerned, this is justified by the circumstances that developed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which were influenced by the socio-economic situation, mass migrations to the "historical Motherland", and simply the percentage of nationalities.
With Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, everything is much more complicated. Kyrgyzstan can remain a poly-national country, being somewhat dependent on Russia and having a large Uzbek diaspora inside, the number of which is only increasing. The same cannot be said for Kazakhstan, where the outflow of Russians continues. Here you can see both official and unofficial ideology aimed at forming a nation with the Kazakh language as the foundation.
Given the large number of interethnic conflicts, including on language issues, events similar to those that occurred in the 90s can be repeated. This will lead to forced migration of Russians, possibly a civil war like in Ukraine. Even if this does not happen, there will be assimilation of living Russians with the loss of cultural and linguistic identity. This will happen if Russia continues to take a passive position regarding the exodus of Russians from Kazakhstan.
For Russia, this is fraught not only with the need to strengthen border protection in the face of interethnic clashes. As already mentioned, this will affect the decline in trade turnover.
Strategic interests will also be under threat: Russia participates in the extraction of uranium on the territory of Kazakhstan, there is also a spaceport, anti-missile weapons testing grounds. In Kyrgyzstan - participation in the extraction of precious metals, which are necessary, among other things, for high-precision production.
Humanitarian aid to countries that are a natural barrier to religious extremism is unavoidable. In the case of military defence alliances of mono-national states with different cultural and linguistic traditions (for example, with Turkey, Afghanistan) this can create a real threat directly on our borders.
Thus, for our country, and for our neighbours in the face of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, it is not a mono, but a multi-ethnic structure of the state that is beneficial. But for mutually acceptable results, we need good will and desire not only on the part of Russia, but also on the part of our southern neighbours.