Yagnobs, Last People Deported by the Soviets, Continue to Return to Their Ancestral Homeland to Save Their Language and Culture

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 13 – The Yagnobs, the last remnant of the pre-Turkic Sogdian civilization in Central Asia and the last people to be deported in Soviet times – in 1970 -- continue to return to their isolated mountain fastness in highland Tajikistan in a last-ditch effort to save their language and culture from absorption by the Tajik majority.

            But despite support from Dushanbe to do so, the Yagnobs there number only about 600, down from 4,000 in 1970. Most are older, few live there year around, and the young are in residential schools where they are being taught in Tajik. Consequently, the survival of this people is anything but assured asiaplustj.info/ru/news/tajikistan/society/20240913/yagnobtsi-vozvratshayutsya-na-rodinu-chto-tyanet-ih-tuda-gde-zhizn-slozhna-i-opasna; for background, see  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/10/yagnobs-last-nation-soviets-deported.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/10/last-remnant-of-sogdian-civilization.html).

If the Yagnobs die out, Sayfiddin Mirzoyev, a specialist in linguistics at the Tajik Academy of Sciences who has written textbooks for that people, the world will lose a window into both pre-Sogdian civilization and the origins of the Tajik nation. Consequently, he suggests, Dushanbe should give more than just tax breaks to help them survive.