Student Research Project: Research in Uzbekistan 2004
Barbara Lemberger / Katja Mielke
Self-images of russian men and women in Uzbekistan - on the hint of a collective (diaspora-)identity
Abstract of some interviews (in German only)
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the beginning of the 1990s members of many different groups were to be found outside the territory of their titular nation, e.g. many Russians and Russian-speaking in the newly independent republics of Central Asia. Until this day there live only around several 10 000 Russians in Uzbekistan due to large-scale emigration.
During our research in spring 2003 we compiled biographical interviews and narrations (Oral History approach) of Russian men and women to deduce conclusions of their contemporary circumstances of life and their self-image. While they were seen as colonizers, "russificators" and oppressors of the local population during 70 years of soviet rule, from their own point of view they came as developers and driving force for the modernization of the soviet republics in Central Asia. This positive self-image stays in sharp contrast to the self-image of the marginalized Russians nowadays.
In the Russian cultural center in Bukhara: It is located in the administrative building of the local military base. (Photo: Lemberger / Mielke 2004) |
last update : 05 December 2011