Russian minorities in Central Asia

Résumé du document

As citizens of countries which they consider not to be theirs, the Russians of Central Asia have faced a loss of identity and a collapse of their influence since the end of the USSR. The presence of Russians in Central Asia is a consequence of military conquests which really started in the 19th century with the Tsarist expansions. Russia occupied the basin of the Ural River and the region of the Altai Mountains located at the border of present-day Kazakhstan. The colonization movement accelerated in the second half of the 19th century under the USSR. It was encouraged by economic programs like industrialization and farming in particular after the World War II and the reinstallation of a part of weapons industry in Central Asia. As a highly-skilled population and being the representatives of the cultural and political domination of Russia under the soviet rule, Russians constituted the elites of Central Asian soviet republics until 1991, year when the Central Asia's republics became suddenly and half-heartedly independent.

Extraits

[...] Migrations from Central Asia to Russia began under the USSR. Since the 70th, migratory flows got inverted for many reasons. First, the region became less attractive than before due to other policies of industrial development in the Soviet Union. On the other hand, the policy of nationalities under Brezhnev granted local people more power in the administrative and in political structures. Despite this trend, Central Asia still counted 9.5 million Russians in 1989 which represents 30% of the global population. [...]

[...] The level of coeducation with the domination nationality is very low and Russian minorities have an inadequate knowledge of the national languages. In addition to that, as Russians being Orthodox, it seems more difficult to be fully integrated in Muslims countries where they fear a rise of Islamist extremism. In Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, minorities' political organizations don't have the right to be involved in politics. In Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, Russians associations have a role inside their community but not in the political debate. [...]

[...] Discrimination against minorities as the Russians also exists in the private sector where Russians also get difficulties to have an employ. Indeed, both state-controlled and private companies exclude Russians from high responsibility employs in energy or in other major industries. Thus, Russians were pushed to invest in the commercial sector by owning small shops or trading goods between Russia and Central Asia. This is now the main domain of activities for those who stayed in Central Asia The political involvement of Russians has also strongly decreased since the independences. [...]

[...] At the same time, the situation of Russian language education quickly deteriorated. Even if Russian language can still be studied at school, the drop of education level in the 1990th reduced considerably the part of Russophones among young people. Kazakhstanis state clearly favors Kazakh-language schools ( of the all students) against Russian ones Another example of the decline of Russian language and education system is the situation in Turkmenistan where the number of Russian schools strongly decreased from 2000 in 1991 to 50 in 2005. [...]

[...] Even Moscow seems to prefer to keep rather cordial relations with Central Asian states than protecting the right of its “diaspora”. Russia's diplomatic and economic return in Central Asia is paradoxical given the loss of influence of Russian people in the five Central Asian states who now consider they do not have any future there yet hesitate to migrate to Russia, a country they barely know where they could be victims of discrimination and live poorly. Bibliography Sébastien Peyrouse, The Russian minority in Central Asia Sébastian Peyrouse, Nationhood and the Minority Question in Central Asia. [...]