Paul Goble
Staunton, Oct. 3 – The Yagnobs, the last remnant of pre-Turkic Sogdian civilization in Central Asia, have survived deportations including one by helicopter in 1970; but they are now about to be done in by a force that has killed off numerically small peoples in many places around the world -- a boarding school.
Two years ago, despite a 2009 legal promise to protect the language and culture of the Sogdi people as they call themselves – Yagnob is an exonym derived from the river valley in which they live – Dushanbe established a boarding school for the remaining young Sogdis where instruction is in Tajik (fergana.agency/photos/127931/).
As a result, elders in the community say, young people there are losing both their language and their culture; and consequently, despite the resilience of a nation that retreated into the mountain fastness of the border region near Afghanistan, there is every indication that the Yagnobs will cease to exist as a separate nation sometime in the coming generation.
Before the Soviets deported them in 1970, using helicopters rather than cattle cars, the Yagnobs numbered about 4,000 people. Now, there are only a few hundred left. They are the descendants of a small group which fled back to their homeland from the cotton fields of Tajikistan.
The nation has existed separately for more than 1300 years as agriculturalists and herders. Some Yagnobs in the lowlands of Tajikistan return each year to help with the harvest, but they are losing their language and culture even more rapidly. Now under the impact of a residential school, the children of those who do remain in that region are being Tajikified.
For background on this proud people whom the author of these lines has been keeping track of for 40 years and who have long deserved better, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/10/yagnobs-last-nation-soviets-forcibly.html.
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