1995-10-01a- CIA Conference Report: THE CHALLENGE OF ETHNIC CONFLICT TO NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ORDER IN THE 1990S GEOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVES 01-Oct-95

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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 (18.5) 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) 1,541 (35.5) 562 (36.5) 153 (10.0) 600 (39.0)
Uzekistan 14,142 (71.4) 5,668 (28.6) 1,653 (29.2) 412 (7.3) 2,067 (36.5)
Kazakstan 6,535 (39.7) 9,930 (60.3) 6,228 (62.7) 1,123 (113)
Kyrgyzstan 2,230 (52.4) 2,028 (47.6) 917 (45.2) 695 (34.3)
Tajikistan 3.172 (62.3) 1,920 (37.7) 388 (20.2) 1,282 (66.8)
Turkrnenistan 2,537 (72.0) 986 (28.0) 334 (33.9) 411 (41.7)
Georgia 3.787 (70.1) 1.613 (29.9) 341 (21.1) 260 (16.1) 745 (46.2)
Azerbaijan 5,805 (82.7) 1,216 (17.3) 392 (32.3) 391 (32.1) 186 (15.3)
Armenia 3.084 (93.3) 221 (6.7) 52 (23.3) 86 (39.0)
Lithuania - 2,924 (79.6) 751 (20.4) 344 (45.9) 325 (43.4)
Latvia 1.388 (52.0) 1,279 (48.0) 906 (70.8) 158 (12.3)
Estonia 963 (61.5) 602 (38.5) 475 (78.8)
Note: Indigenous minorities include those ethnonational communi- Source: Goskomstat SSSR,Ilogi Vsesoiuznoi PempisiNasele-
ties with autonomous territories in the Union republics of the nila 1989 Goda, Volume 7, parts 1 and 2. Minneapolis: East
former USSR. In addition, in Moldova the Gagauz are included, View Publications, 1993.
and in Ukraine the Crimean Tatars are included. The category
"Neighbors" includes the members of the titular nations of the
Union republics whose borders arc adjacent to the republic in
question.
Asian republics, demographic indigenization rather groups. Under these conditions, in-migrating "for-
than greater demographic Russification has been the eigners" tend to be blamed. Because Russians and
trend for most of the postwar period. other European groups occupy the higher status posi-
tions in Central Asia's urban/industrial sectors, this
Social Mobility and Relative Deprivation tendency is not unjustified. These socioeconomic con-
Ethnoterritorial conflict tends to be more violent in ditions provided the catalyst for sporadic antiforeigner
places where indigenous access to upward mobility is violence in Central Asia, often conducted by unem-
blocked by socially mobilized outsiders, creating a ployed educated indigenous youths against a vulnera-
condition of "aspirational deprivation" (that is, where ble population that was depicted as receiving
a group's rising aspirations go unfulfilled) (Gurr preferential access to scarce economic goods such as
1970). This is particularly apparent in Central Asia, housing, jobs, and food (for example, Meskhetian
where dramatic increases in the levels of indigenous Turks in Uzbekistan, Armenians in Dushanke). 4
educational attainment during the 1970s and 1980s
resulted in equally dramatic increases in aspirations. ' Byron Weiner (1978) found these same conditions underlying the
These aspirations were not met due to economic stag- rise of indigenous nativism among India's so-called sons of the
g- soil. Nativism is defined by Weiner as "intense opposition to
nation and more recently economic depression in the minorities because of their foreign origin."
region, resulting in rising unemployment, especially
among the young educated members of the indigenous
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