National-state construction and its impact on the formation of the ethnic composition of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic

• Published in: Историческая этнология Vol. 10; no. 1; pp. 56 - 66
• Main Author: Kamola D. Saipova
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, Marjani Institute of History 01.03.2025
• Subjects: industry; labor resources; national personnel; national-state construction; voluntary and spontaneous migration
• ISSN: 2619-1636
• DOI: 10.22378/he.2025-10-1.56-66

The article focuses on studying the influence of employment policy of the Soviet regime in Central Asia on the formation of the ethnic composition of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR). Based on archival sources, stratistical data and fundamental works, the author concludes that the delimitation process was carried out on the basis of a narrow approach, while very little attention was paid to the historical, geographical, socio-economic characteristics of the peoples of the region. The paper outlines differing interpretations of migration processes in the Uzbek SSR: discourse of the Soviet Union government had been formed driven by the optics of the need to carry out forced industrialization of the region, which required saturating the local labor market with personnel for the industry. Integration of the Uzbek SSR into the all-Union political space was carried out based on the idea of overcoming the heavy colonial legacy and implementing the course of “eliminating actual inequality”, including in the Uzbek SSR.