(Estimated Pub Date) the Challenge of Ethnic Conflict to National and International Order in the 1990S: Geographic Perspectives- October 1995

Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268
Table 1
National Composition of the Population, 1989
Population in thousands (and percentages)
Republic Titular Nontitular Of Nontitular:
Russians Indigenous Minorities Neighbors
Russia 119.866 (81.5) 27.156 (rs.5)9999 9 99 17.283 (63.6) 6,765 (24.9)
Ukraine 37.419 (72.7) 14.033 (27.3) 11.356 (80.9) 47 (0.3) 1,282 (9.1)
Belarus _
7.905 (77.9) 2,247 (22.1) 1.342 (59.7) 716 (31.9)
Moldova '
2,795 (64.5) 9919.541 (35.5) 95629"999(§6.5) 15939999 (109.0) 600 (39.0)
Uzbekistan 14.142
9
5.668 (22.6) 1,653 (29.2) _412 "(7.3) 902,067 (36.5)
Kazakstan 96.535
(71.4)
9.930 (60.3) 6,223 (-62.7)
9 9
9.123 (11.3)
Kyrgyzstan .
2,230
(39.7)
2.028 (47.6) 917 '(45.z)” 9 ” 9
695 (34.3)
Tajikistan 3.172
(52.4)
(62.3) 1,920 (37.7) 388 (20.2) g
1.282 (66.8)
Turkmenistan 2.537 (72.0) 986 (28.0) 334 (33.9) 411 (41.7)
Georgia '
3.787 (70.1)
' 999(2§.99Y9999ill99999(21.1) 260 (169.1)
9
745 (46.2)
Azerbaijan 5,805
1.613
(82.7) 1,216 (17.3) 392 (32.3) 391 (32.1) 186 (15.3)
Armenia 3.084 (93.3) 221 (6.7) S2 (23.3) 86 (39.0)
Lithuania '
2,924 (79.6) 751 (20.4) 344 (45.9) 325 (43.4)
Latvia 1.388 (52.0) 1279* (48.0) 906 (70.8) 158 (12.3) if
Estonia "963 (61f59)” 602 (32.5)
9 9 475 99958.8)
Note: lndigenous minorities include those ethnonationa1communi- Source: Goskomstat SSSR,Itogi Vsasaiuznoi Perepisi NaseIe-
ties with autonomous territories in the Union republics of the
former USSR. in addition, in Moldova the Gagauz are included,
and in Ukraine the Crimean Tatars are included. The category
“Neighbors” includes the members of the titular nations of the
Union republics whose borders are adjacent to the republic in
question. .
Asian republics, demographic indigenization rather
than greater demographic Russification has been the
trend for most of the postwar period.
Social Mobility and Relative Deprivation
Ethnoterritorial conflict tends to be more violent in
places where indigenous access to upward mobility is
blocked by socially mobilized outsiders, creating a
condition of “aspirational deprivation” (that is, where
a group’s rising aspirations go unfulfilled) (Gurr
1970). This is particularly apparent in Central Asia,
where dramatic increases in the levels of indigenous
educational attainment during the 1970s and 1980s
resulted in equally dramatic increases in aspirations.
These aspirations were not met due to economic stag-
nation and more recently economic depression in the
region, resulting in rising unemployment, especially
among the young educated members of the indigenous
niia I 989 Goda, Volume 7, parts l and 2. Minneapolis: East
View Publications, 1993.
groups. Under these conditions, in-migrating “for-
eigners” tend to be blamed. Because Russians and
other European groups occupy the higher status posi-
tions in Central Asia’s urban/industrial sectors, this
tendency is not unjustified. These socioeconomic con-
ditions provided the catalyst for sporadic antiforeigner
violence in Central Asia, often conducted by unem-
ployed educated indigenous youths against a vulnera-
ble population that was depicted as receiving
preferential access to scarce economic goods such as
housing, jobs, and food (for example, Meskhetian
Turks in Uzbekistan, Armenians in Dushanke).‘
‘ Byron Weiner ( 1978) found these same conditions underlying the
rise of indigenous nativism among lndia’s so-called sons of the
soil. Nativism is defined by Weiner as “intense opposition to
minorities because of their foreign origin.“
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Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268