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Soviet Union [USSR] Tadzhiks
Unlike the other nationalities of Soviet Central Asia who are
ethnically Turkic, the Tadzhiks trace their origins primarily to
the Persians who settled the area as early as the sixth century
B.C. and were part of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. From the
seventh century A.D. until the fourteenth century, the Tadziks were
overrun, as were the other people of Central Asia with whom the
Tadzhiks developed a common civilization, first by the Arabs and
then by other invaders. By the fourteenth century, the Tadzhiks
were distinguished from the other peoples of Central Asia primarily
by their language and the fact that they were sedentary, not
nomadic like their neighbors. The name Tadzhik is derived
from a word used to distinguish the Turkic people from Iranian
subjects of the Arab Empire. By the sixteenth century, however, it
had come to mean a trader from Central Asia or simply a sedentary
person.
Beginning in the fifteenth century, the Tadzhiks were under
Uzbek rule, and by the eighteenth century most of Tadzhik territory
was under the khanate of Bukhara. The Afghan conquest of Tadzhik
territory from the south began in the mid-eighteenth century, and
Russian expansion into Tadzhik lands from the north followed a
century later. By the end of the nineteenth century, northern
Tadzhikistan was under Russian rule, southern Tadzhikistan
continued under the khanate of Bukhara, and the remaining Tadzhik
territory was within Afghanistan.
Russian conquest of Tadzhikistan and subsequent immigration of
Russian settlers had a minimal effect on traditional Tadzhik
society. The revolutionary movement in Tadzhikistan was composed of
Russians, not Tadzhiks. Therefore, Soviet power was established in
1918 with little resistance, and northern Tadzhikistan was included
in the newly created Turkestan Autonomous Republic. Nevertheless,
when the Red Army invaded the khanate of Bukhara in 1921, it met
with fierce resistance from the growing basmachi movement.
The movement continued until 1924 when the Tadzhik Autonomous
Republic was created and incorporated into the Uzbek Soviet
Socialist Republic. In 1929 the Tadzhik Autonomous Republic was
made a union republic.
In 1989 the Tadzhiks numbered about 4.2 million, three-fourths
of whom lived in the Tadzhik Republic. They were divided into the
Tadzhiks proper (the Tadzhiks of the plain) and the Pamiris (the
Tadzhiks of the mountains). Most of the Pamiris lived in the GornoBadakhshan Autonomous Oblast, located in the western Pamirs in the
southeastern Tadzhik Republic. The Soviet census of 1989, however,
did not distinguish between the two groups. Over 900,000 Tadzhiks
also lived in the Uzbek Republic. In 1989 the Tadzhiks made up only
about 62 percent of the Tadzhik Republic's population. The largest
national minority living in the Tadzhik Republic was the Uzbeks,
followed by the Russians.
The most distinguishing characteristic of the Tadzhiks is their
language, which is closely related to Persian and belongs to the
Southwest Iranian group of languages. The Tadzhik alphabet, like
the alphabets of Turkic languages, was Arabic until 1930, Latin in
the next decade, and finally Cyrillic in 1940. Almost 98 percent of
the Tadzhiks regarded Tadzhik as their native language.
The Tadzhiks were among the least urbanized of all the
nationalities in the Soviet Union. In 1987 about 67 percent of the
Tadzhik Republic's population lived outside urban areas. It was
also the only republic to show a decline in the percentage of urban
population between 1970 and 1987. The Tadzhik Republic had only two
large cities in 1989, the capital, Dushanbe (595,000), and
Leninabad (165,000).
The Tadzhiks rated very low in their level of education.
Although they had officially achieved 99 percent literacy by 1971,
the Tadzhiks ranked sixteenth among the seventeen major
nationalities both in the number of students in institutions of
higher learning and in the number of scientific workers per
thousand.
In 1983 the Tadzhiks were the most underrepresented among the
nationalities in their share of CPSU members and very
underrepresented in the Central Committee of the party.
Data as of May 1989
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