Yagnobs, Last Nation Soviets Forcibly Deported, Cling to Existence

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 12 – The Yagnobs, the last descendants of the Sogdian civilization and the last nation to be forcibly deported by the Soviets (in 1970 and by helicopter), continue to cling to their way of life and language despite having no medical facilities, no store in most villages, no roads to the outside world for half the year, and no school beyond the fourth grade.

            This nation, most of whose members still live in the mountain fastness of Tajikistan to which their ancestors fled in the face of the Arab invasion in the eighth century, seldom attracts much attention beyond a narrow circle of ethnographers and linguists. (For background on the Yagnobs, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/10/yagnobs-last-nation-soviets-deported.html.)

            That makes any article about them precious and especially one based on interviews with the people in the historical homeland. Now, the Central Asian Bureau for Analytic Reporting has released an especially informative one (cabar.asia/ru/kak-zhivut-yagnobtsy-reportazh-iz-trudnodostupnoj-mestnosti-tadzhikistana/).

            Since the Yagnobs were deported from their homelands, after which many of them died because they could not adapt to the climate or working conditions in lowland Tajikistan, many but not all have returned.  Institutions that existed there in Soviet times no longer do: there is no store in all but one village, no trade center, no medical center, and schools beyond grade four.

            And they are isolated from the rest of the world six months a year when the single unpaved road in becomes impassable. Many Yagnobs travel out several times in the summer to buy food for the winter because they can’t count on getting most kinds of food during the winter months.

            Dushanbe has not released official data on the number of Yagnobs in their home area. But experts say there are “approximately 60 families with about 400 people,” a small fraction of the roughly 9,000 Yagnobs the Tajiks say live in that country and also only a fraction of the 3194 who were forcibly deported.

            Many Yagnobs speak their language only among themselves and have gone over to Tajik for most social life. As a result, ever fewer young people are fluent; and elders are convinced that the language and then the people will die out. One notion being floated is having young people living elsewhere return to the region in the summer for language camps.

            Eight years ago, Tajikistan President Emomali Rakhmon promised to build a school for the Yagnobs, but as of now, nothing has happened; and most Yagnob children are home schooled using informal texts prepared by local activists.  Because they aren’t exposed to speakers of other languages, they do retain it more than one might expect.

            Another thing holding the nation together, the CABAR report says, is strict endogamy. The Yagnobs may pass from the scene but it won’t be by the usual pattern of intermarriage that has led to the demise of many other peoples.