Alex Ulko - Uzbekistan - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture

This book is available for special discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions or premiums. Special editions, including personalized covers, excerpts of existing books, and corporate imprints, can be created in large quantities for special needs.

For more information contact Kuperard publishers at the address below.

ISBN 978 1 85733 852 2

This book is also available as an e-book: eISBN 978 1 85733853 9

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library

First published in Great Britain

by Kuperard, an imprint of Bravo Ltd

59 Hutton Grove, London N12 8DS

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8446 2440 Fax: +44 (0) 20 8446 2441

www.culturesmart.co.uk

Inquiries:

Series Editor Geoffrey Chesler

Design Bobby Birchall

Printed in Malaysia

Cover image: Traditional Uzbek embroidery. Arkady Chubykin, Adobe Stock

Photographs on pages 17 (right), 34, 39, 56, 87, 94, 110, 112, 127, and 153 by courtesy of the author.

Images on the following pages reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license: 19 Yunuskhuja Tuygunkhujaev; 52, 54, 70, 116 (middle) Ji-Elle; 66 Ymblanter; 126 .

Reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license: 21 Patrickringgenberg; 93, 102, 104 Shuhrataxmedov; 65 oc; 92 Thomas Falk (living in Uzbekistan and Germany); 105, 132, 135 Guidecity; 117 Sigismund von Dobschtz; 119 Ekrem Canli; 125 RIA Novosti archive, image #21541 / V. Kiselev /CC-BY-SA 3.0; 131 Gennady Misko; 137 mos.ru ( ) ; 142 Or2008; 156 Nataev.

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license: 17 (left) https://www.flickr.com/photos/gusjer/; 33, 115 upyernoz from Haverford, USA; 45 Tim Griffin; 63, 68, 76, 124, 164 Jean-Pierre Dalbra from Paris, France; 106 David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada; 116 (bottom) Ramn from Llanera, Espaa; 139 Peretz Partensky from San Francisco, USA.

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 France license: 20 Stomac.

Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication: 29 (top) Jam123.

ALEXEY ULKO is a linguist, art critic, filmmaker, and writer who lives in Uzbekistan. A First Class Honors graduate in English Language and Literature from the University of Samarkand, he taught English there for ten years and became the first Hornby Scholar from Uzbekistan to obtain an M.Ed. TTELT degree from the University of St. Mark and St. John, Plymouth, in the UK. Since 2003 he has been an independent consultant in English-language teacher training, a translator, and a writer on contemporary Central Asian culture and art. He has made several short films and spoken at conferences on the subject. He is a member of the Association of Art Historians and the European Society for Central Asian Studies.

The Culture Smart! series is continuing to expand.

For further information and latest titles visit

www.culturesmart.co.uk

The publishers would like to thank CultureSmart!Consulting for its help in researching and developing the concept for this series.

CultureSmart!Consulting creates tailor-made seminars and consultancy programs to meet a wide range of corporate, public-sector, and individual needs. Whether delivering courses on multicultural team building in the USA, preparing Chinese engineers for a posting in Europe, training call-center staff in India, or raising the awareness of police forces to the needs of diverse ethnic communities, it provides essential, practical, and powerful skills worldwide to an increasingly international workforce.

For details, visit www.culturesmartconsulting.com

CultureSmart!Consulting and CultureSmart! guides have both contributed to and featured regularly in the weekly travel program Fast Track on BBC World TV.

Uzbekistan, like its Central Asian neighbors, is not particularly well known to the outside world. For about seventy years it was one of the fifteen republics of the USSR, then commonly referred to as Russia, and few Westerners knew much about the cultural and ethnic differences within this huge country. In 1991, after Independence, Uzbekistan joined the family of other stans, of which the most internationally prominent are Afghanistan and Pakistan. At the same time, the names of Uzbekistans oldest cities, Samarkand and Bukhara, are often instantly recognizable and evoke glamorous associations with the Great Silk Road and The Arabian Nights. Which of these impressions is the right one? All and none, for Uzbekistan is an exciting mixture of different cultural traditions, from Persian to Turkic, from European and Russian, to the contemporary globalized amalgam.

When you arrive in Uzbekistan you immediately discover how multicultural its society is, which you may see as something to celebrate as well as cause for a certain disappointment.

Those who expect to find a stereotypically drab post-Soviet country with dull concrete buildings and hapless people will be rewarded with the chance to dip into a vibrant, colorful, and exotic Central Asian life. Uzbeks are open, hospitable, emotional, and positive people, but they also like a certain order. Travelers expecting to face the kind of chaos that overwhelms the urban labyrinths of such cities as Cairo or Delhi will be pleasantly surprised by careful city planning, wide tree-lined streets, and well-kept architectural monuments.

On the other hand, visitors should be prepared for some Soviet-style restrictions and bureaucracy and the lack of certain features of the globalized world such as cash machines, McDonalds, Starbucks, and broadband. You will also notice a distinct urbanrural divide and different cultural patterns and rules used in different communities. The ethnic and linguistic mixture may be confusing, but getting to know the people of Uzbekistan can be a hugely enjoyable experience.

This short guide aims to raise awareness of the complexity of Uzbekistans culture, to equip you with the knowledge of how to make the most of your visit, and to help you to avoid or handle the occasional difficulty. It sets out to guide you through a spectrum of local subcultures, from the traditional rural Uzbek through a mix of Russian, European, and Soviet cultures to the modern cosmopolitan community.

As a native Russian-speaking citizen of Uzbekistan, I am aware of the inevitable subjectivity of my own perspective. To compensate for this bias, I have sought advice from both Uzbek-speaking friends and foreign friends who have spent time in Uzbekistan in different roles and positions. They have shared their insights with me and greatly enriched my own understanding of Uzbek culture.

Welcome to Uzbekistan!

Hush kelibsiz Ozbekistonga!