Upon arriving in the freezing capital of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, my priorities were to get a local SIM card and book a cab to my hotel — tasks I assumed would be straightforward. Little did I know that braving the cold in a country where no one spoke my language would become a recurring challenge throughout the trip.
Booking a cab through Yandex Go (an Uber equivalent) was just the start. Upon leaving the arrival terminal, I was approached by several taxi drivers as I walked toward the pickup spot. Most of them requested I employ their services at an exorbitant markup of at least five times the price of Yandex. However, my frugal sensibilities took over, I willed to forego the inconvenience and high cost. After 30 minutes of booking and re-booking, my cab arrived, and I boarded at a rather busy intersection in front of the airport terminal. So far, the experience felt super chaotic — from hawking taxi drivers to busy traffic-laden intersections — it made me feel right at home.
My chaotic introduction came to a much-awaited end when we finally left the terminal premises. Order set in as we drove past the busy intersection, and 15 minutes later, I checked into my hotel. The next morning, I set off to explore the beautiful city of Tashkent. The first monument that I came across was the statue of Amir Timur in the Amir Timur square. Visually, Timur stood tall on his horse, ready to conquer. He stood in a place where a statue of a little someone had once stood before him. Amir Timur Square, previously called Revolution Square, had hosted a statue of Karl Marx, which was replaced post-independence.
That is not just the only historically significant part of this structure in the heart of Tashkent. When observing Amir Timur’s statue, one can see the Soviet modernist architecture in the periphery. This came in the form of the Soviet luxury hotel — Hotel Uzbekistan. Such symbolic contradictions wouldn’t leave me throughout my travels from Tashkent to Bukhara, as I saw Soviet-built mass housing apartments on one side and the statue of a 14th-century Islamic scholar on the other.
To me, this juxtaposition was evidence of a country in transition. The transition from the U.S.S.R to a post-independence reality. One championed communism and the Soviet national identity, and the other championed the “greatest” time of the Uzbek people’s territorial history — the Timurid dynasty.
As a student of sociology, my instinct was to examine what the people of Uzbekistan felt about this. So, I set out on my mini project. Armed with the mighty Google Translate, I spoke to cab drivers and random folk at the supermarket (Korzinka) and restaurants. A cab driver I spoke to made a rather moving remark: “During Soviet times, the common people lived well." He expressed nostalgia for life back then, talking about people enjoying Disco music and living fulfilled lives for their nation, which reformed my former view of the U.S.S.R. as just being a bigger and hungrier North Korea. Perhaps a more nuanced perspective was needed to fully capture the essence of the Soviet Union — one that goes beyond the contemporized image of disgruntled, malnourished people waiting in long bread queues.
After meeting people born in independent Uzbekistan, I realized they saw the Soviet Union as colonizers. As oppressors who suppressed the Islamic identity of the Uzbek people. They see today as history being rewritten, rightly so, to celebrate the great Uzbek leaders and scholars in history.
Thirty-odd years are in no way enough to transform a nation’s identity. One may assume that after the fall of the Soviet Union, it was imperative to take a path that rejected the Soviet identity — it happened in post-independence India when Indians reclaimed their country from the Brits through systemic changes like adopting a more socialized economy to symbolic ones like renaming train stations and streets. So, Uzbekistan adopting such a policy was not much of a surprise to me. What sparked my curiosity was whether this change had any public support. I say this because Uzbekistan is a de facto dictatorship; it has been since its inception. Building a national identity after the collapse of the previous one naturally favors the concentration of political power. Why would they allow such a system to continue and such an identity to pervade every life in Uzbekistan? Here, I am not attempting to portray the Uzbek people as a uniformly fatalistic population, nor am I suggesting that their desires and views are insignificant. Rather, I am curious about the role of fatalism in their collective consciousness. This is merely a point of inquiry, not a definitive assertion about Uzbek culture or attitudes.
During my conversations with the Uzbek people, I was surprised by their love for Bollywood. As soon as they learned I was Indian, they would break into songs like “Jimmi Jimmi” from the Indian movie “Disco Dancer.” Their admiration drove my attention back to India. I realized that the Uzbek story was a tale of caution to what is happening in India. There is an attempt to create a Nationalist identity in India, glorifying the past and rejecting the institutions set post-independence. The same question echoed in my mind of whether the people want it or not.
After this experience, that question has no answer. I have come to understand that identity is a complex issue. It can be mended and twisted to favor political ambition, but I am confident that there is an essence of identity that allows communism and Timurid to exist on the same land. There is an essence that lets Hindu nationalism and secularism exist on the same plane. What that essence or a lack thereof is, I may never know but I am glad that I got to explore this wonderful jewel of Central Asia — Uzbekistan.
Advait (he/they) is a sophomore studying economics and sociology.
