Central Asia's Retention of Russian Language for Social Identity

The Uzbek word for "hello" and "thank you" are respectively "salam alaykhum" and "rakhmat," but in part of Tashkent, one will only hear "zdrastvuyte" and "spasiba," their Russian equivalents. Bring a foreigner makes hearing Russian more likely, as it is the "high" language used for communication with foreigners (just like French in Arabic-speaking Morocco), but unlike Morocco, many people in Uzbekistan, even if they are not ethnically Russian, choose to speak among themselves in the high language.

It goes without saying that the prevalence of Russian in Central Asia, as in other parts of the former USSR, has much to do with the region's recent history. Under Soviet rule, Russian was the language of government and higher education, and people who wanted to advance their careers as skilled labor had to more or less be fluent in the language. The fact that the elites in the Soviet periphery were either ethnically Russian or raised Russian-speaking only made the language more important.

However, the dominance of Russian in Central Asia is made even more important by the region's fractured social identity. An East German traveling in Central Asia would recognize much similarity in architecture, political systems, and the attitudes of the locals toward the past and their struggles with the post-Soviet market economy, but the East German would find themselves much less distant from Russian culture and language than Central Asians, given East Germany's strong German identity shared with the West.

Central Asians, in comparison, had to rely on Russian language and people not just for political and economic organization, but to define who they are. Indeed, the Soviet attempt to split "Turkestan" into competing social groups led to the manufacturing of distinct identities and ethnic homelands with clear-cut borders. Today's Central Asian countries are created by the Russians, just like African countries are created by European colonial masters.

And like many Africans, Central Asians have struggled to shape their own identities post-independence, beyond as lines drawn on the map by foreigners. Each country created national myths centered on historical conquerors, literati, and other person of note, seeking to inspire national unity based on a story of past greatness and glory. One just have to overlook the fact that the ethnicities of today did not even exist when those famous historical persons lived centuries ago.

And because the ethnicities and the borders of "ethnic homelands" are so haphazardly drawn (often deliberately for political purposes by the Soviet authorities), the question of regional, local, and even personal identities cannot be simply answered using the frameworks of a few manufactured national myths. Many people are products of a complex cultural mixture thanks to the coming and going of traders and conquerors on the steppes and caravan routes of the Silk Road. They cannot just put them exclusively in one box.

So people fall back on Russian. Admittedly colonial, the Russian language allows people to sidestep the sensitive and convoluted question of who they are, allowing them to become something more than just member of one race. If they feel uncomfortable with the often heavy-handed, monument-and-pomp-filled narratives of government-sponsored historical myth-building, people who still want to belong and not feel foreign through and through can only use Russian.

Do not expect Russian to go away. As local elites are busy looking to the past to define the nation. The region's Russian speakers are looking to the future. Tashkent's famed Ilkhom Theater, exploring progressive social issues like LGBT and race, are conducted exclusively in Russian language, partly to escape the conservative social mores of many Uzbeks. As the Russian language quietly transform itself from an elite language to a socially progressive one, expect it to retain popularity among a younger generation not satisfied with government-, race- and religion-designated definitions of who they are.