Latest / The Story of Uzbekistan: Silk Road Kingdoms and Soviet Legacy — Fexingo History / The Soviet Toponymy Project: How Moscow Renamed Uzbekistan
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about the Soviet Union's physical transformation of Uzbekistan — the cotton monoculture, the canals, the famines. But there's another layer that's less visible but just as intentional: the renaming of places. Maps are political, and Moscow knew that. Luna: Renaming — like changing city names? Lucas: Exactly. In the 1920s through the 1950s, the Soviet authorities launched a systematic project to replace the region's Persian, Turkic, and Arabic place names with Russian or ideologically Soviet ones. Tashkent, for instance, comes from the old Turkic 'Tash' meaning stone and 'kent' meaning city — it was once called Chachkent in Persian sources. But the Soviets didn't change the city name itself, because Tashkent was already familiar. Instead, they renamed streets, districts, and smaller towns. Lucas: Samarkand is an ancient name — it goes back to Sogdian 'Samar' meaning 'stone' or 'fortress', and 'kand' meaning 'city'. The Soviets didn't touch that either, because it was too famous. But they renamed countless other places. For example, the city of Yangiyo'l was created from scratch in the 1930s as a model Soviet town — its name literally means 'new road' in Uzbek, but that's a rare concession. Most new towns got names like Komsomolsk, Sovetsk, or Krasnogorsk. Luna: So they were basically rewriting the map to erase local identity. Lucas: That's the core of it. The Soviet Academy of Sciences had a toponymy commission that reviewed every place name for 'feudal' or 'religious' connotations. A town called 'mazar i sharif' — named after a Sufi saint — might be renamed to something neutral like 'Oktyabrsk' to celebrate the October Revolution. In the Ferghana Valley, the ancient city of Khojand was renamed Leninabad in 1936 — that's in modern Tajikistan, but similar things happened in Uzbekistan. The city of Bukhara, originally Numijkat in Sogdian times, kept its name, but its streets were renamed: 'Bukhoro ko'chasi' became 'Lenin ko'chasi'. Luna: I've seen photos of Tashkent with huge statues of Lenin and streets named after Marx. It's like they were trying to impose a Russian visual language. Lucas: Exactly. And it wasn't just visual — it was linguistic. Soviet authorities insisted on Cyrillic script for Uzbek, and all new street signs were in Cyrillic. The old Arabic-derived names were literally written out of existence. In the capital, Tashkent's main square was renamed from 'Registan' — which we've talked about — to 'Lenin Square'. The city's oldest district, 'Chachkent', was officially called 'Sverdlov district' after Yakov Sverdlov, a Bolshevik leader. Luna: Was there any resistance? Lucas: Not much open resistance, because the repression was severe. But there were quiet acts of defiance. Some local historians and linguists tried to preserve old toponyms in their writings. For example, the scholar Hadi Zarifov collected local place names in the 1920s, documenting the original Turkic and Persian names before they were replaced. His work was suppressed, but it survived in archives. After independence in 1991, many cities and streets were renamed back — but not all. Some Soviet names are still in use, especially in smaller towns. Lucas: Take the city of Navoi, named after the 15th-century poet Alisher Navoi. That name was actually a Soviet invention — it was a small settlement called Kermine, renamed in 1958 to honor Navoi as part of a cultural campaign to promote 'progressive' national figures. So even the reclaiming of Uzbek heritage was carefully managed by Moscow. They chose which historical figures were acceptable — poets like Navoi were okay because they predated Islam's arrival in some interpretations. But a name linked to a Sufi shrine would be unacceptable. Luna: So it's like they were curating Uzbekistan's history. Lucas: Precisely. And this toponymy project had a practical side too. The Soviet Union was a vast, multilingual state, and they wanted uniformity. All maps were produced in Moscow, in Russian. Local names were Russianized in spelling and pronunciation. For instance, the Uzbek word 'qishloq' — meaning village — became 'kishlak' in Russian, with a different vowel. That Russianized form was then used on maps, even in Uzbek-language documents. So you had a double erasure: the original name was lost, and the Russian version became standard. Lucas: One of the most striking examples is the town of Guliston — which means 'flower garden' in Uzbek. That's actually a post-Soviet name. Under the Soviets, it was called Mirzachul — a Russian adaptation of 'Mirzacho'l', a desert region. The name change was part of the 'Virgin Lands' campaign, where the Hungry Steppe was irrigated and settled. So the new name erased the old desert toponym and replaced it with something more pleasant. But the original Mirzacho'l was a centuries-old geographic term. Luna: So even the new names were chosen to fit Soviet narratives. Lucas: Right. And not just names for cities — even rivers and mountains were renamed. The Syr Darya and Amu Darya kept their names because they were too big to change, but smaller rivers like the Chirchiq — which flows through Tashkent — was sometimes called 'the Tashkent River' on Soviet maps, as if its local identity didn't matter. The idea was to make the landscape legible in Russian, to any Soviet citizen anywhere in the union. Lucas: After the collapse of the USSR, Uzbekistan's government launched a massive renaming campaign. Tashkent's Lenin Square became Mustaqillik Maydoni — Independence Square. The street 'Lenin ko'chasi' was renamed 'Shota Rustaveli ko'chasi' after the Georgian poet, in a gesture of post-Soviet internationalism. But many Soviet-era names remain, especially in provincial towns. In Samarkand, there's still a 'Kommunistov' street — named after communists. So the map remains a palimpsest, with layers of different regimes. Luna: A palimpsest — that's such a good word for it. So the names we see today are like a battlefield history. Lucas: Exactly. And it's not just about names — it's about memory. When you rename a street, you're telling people what to remember and what to forget. The Soviet toponymy project was a kind of memory engineering. And it's a little-known chapter of Uzbek history, but it speaks volumes about how power works through maps. Lucas: You know, it's strange to think that we can talk about something as dry as street names and have it reveal so much about colonial power. But that's what history is — small details that unlock big stories. And this show is all about those details, without any ads breaking the flow. We chose to keep it ad-free because it lets us focus on the substance. If you find value in that, you can support the show at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo — that's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It helps us keep doing episodes like this one. Luna: And it's a way to keep the stories coming without any commercial interruptions. Lucas: Right. So back to toponymy — one fascinating case is the town of Toyloq, near Samarkand. Its name comes from the Turkic 'toy' meaning 'celebration', and 'loq' meaning 'place' — so 'place of celebration'. The Soviets renamed it to 'Oktyabr' in the 1930s, after the October Revolution. After independence, it reverted to Toyloq. But in the local dialect, people still called it Toyloq throughout the Soviet period. So the official name was ignored by locals. That's a quiet form of resistance. Luna: So the people kept the memory alive themselves. Lucas: Yes. And that's true across much of Uzbekistan. In rural areas, older residents still use the pre-Soviet names for their villages. The Soviet maps may have said 'Kolkhoz imeni Lenina', but the old folks would say 'Qishloqimizning eski nomi Xo'ja' — 'our village's old name is Khoja'. So the Soviet project wasn't fully successful. But it did create a generation of Uzbeks who grew up with Russian names for their own places, and that has lasting psychological effects. Lucas: One particularly sad case is the disappearance of the city of Shakhrisabz's old district names. Shakhrisabz, Timur's birthplace, had quarters like 'Kuk Gumbaz' and 'Dorut Tilovat' — named after medieval monuments. The Soviets renamed them 'Proletarsky' and 'Krasny' — 'Proletarian' and 'Red'. After independence, the old names were restored, but the Soviet-era buildings and street layouts remain. So you have a city that visually still looks Soviet, even though the street signs say something else. Luna: So the renaming was part of a larger Sovietization of the entire landscape. Lucas: Exactly. And it wasn't unique to Uzbekistan — it happened across the entire Soviet Union. In Kazakhstan, Alma-Ata was renamed from Verny to Alma-Ata, but after independence it became Almaty. In Kyrgyzstan, Frunze became Bishkek again. But Uzbekistan's case is interesting because the pre-Soviet names were so deeply rooted in Persian and Turkic cultures, and the Soviet replacement names were especially jarring. A street called 'Khorazm' — after the ancient region — becoming 'Krasnoarmeyskaya' — 'Red Army street' — that's a complete erasure of local geography. Lucas: And it's not just a historical curiosity. In 2018, the Uzbek government launched a new initiative to 'purify' place names of Soviet influence. But it's controversial, because some people have grown up with those names and see them as part of their identity. For example, the city of Navoi — named after the poet — is an artificial creation, but it's now home to hundreds of thousands of people. Renaming it again would be disruptive. So the legacy of Soviet toponymy is still being negotiated. Luna: It's like the map is a living document of all those layers. Lucas: Yes. And that's what makes it so fascinating. The next time you look at a map of Uzbekistan, remember that every name is a political decision, a struggle over memory. It's a story that's still unfolding.