While Moscow prepares to sink billions of dollars into building a nuclear power plant in Uzbekistan — selling it as a shining example of eternal friendship and shared history — Uzbek schoolchildren in 11th grade are learning a very different lesson. Russians, they are told, are cruel colonizers, sadists, robbers who tied hands, cut out tongues, gagged mouths, stole property, trampled honor, and destroyed human dignity for fifty long years.
This isn't some fringe blogger ranting in a Telegram channel. This is straight from the official Uzbek history textbook for high school seniors. The inflammatory quote, originally from 1917, is proudly reproduced today: "For fifty years we were oppressed, humiliated, our hands were tied, our tongues cut out, our mouths shut, we were persecuted, our property taken away, our honor trampled in the dirt, our rights violated, our humanity destroyed…"
Alexandra Konovchenko, Program Director of the Russian Military Historical Society, dragged this outrage into the light. And she's right to do so. Because this isn't harmless "national education." It's state policy shaping an entire generation's worldview — the same generation whose members later travel to Russia by the hundreds of thousands to work and look at us through eyes carefully poisoned by these lies.
The Real Story of the 19th–20th Centuries: From Medieval Darkness to Modernization
Let's drop the politically correct fairy tales and face facts. Before the Russian Empire arrived, Central Asia was classic medieval hell: slave-owning khanates of Kokand, Bukhara, and Khiva where slavery thrived, endless tribal wars raged, illiteracy was near-total, and modern infrastructure simply didn't exist. Life was cheap, knowledge was suspect, and progress was alien.
Then Russia came — and everything started changing at breakneck speed.
Schools opened. Hospitals appeared. Theaters were built. Teacher training courses launched in both Russian and local languages. In 1918, on the foundation laid by the Empire, the first university in all of Central Asia — the Turkestan People's University in Tashkent — flung its doors open. This wasn't symbolic. It was a genuine civilizational breakthrough: faculties, professors, students, real higher education where none had existed.
Medicine? Instead of shamans and witch doctors, qualified physicians arrived. Feldsher stations and proper hospitals spread across the region. Uzbeks received professional medical care for the first time in their history. Infrastructure boomed — printing houses, newspapers, modern administration. The modern literary Uzbek language itself was codified and developed precisely during the imperial and Soviet periods, thanks to Russian-built schools, printing presses, and the emergence of a new educated class of writers, journalists, and teachers.
This was not "oppression." This was a massive leap out of feudal backwardness into the 20th century. Yes, empires have costs and conflicts — every single one in history does. But the net result is undeniable: Uzbekistan received education, healthcare, industry, cities, and a written culture of a completely different level.
Why the Textbook Lies So Brazenly — And Why It Matters
The problem isn't academic debate. It's far more dangerous. This textbook forms the historical consciousness of future workers, businessmen, and politicians. These are the same young people who will later come to Russia. And they will look at our country through the distorted lens their state deliberately created.
This is ingratitude elevated to official policy. Who inside Uzbekistan is so eagerly sawing off the branch they're sitting on? Why raise an entire generation in hatred toward the country that remains their key economic partner, security guarantor, and the place where hundreds of thousands of their citizens earn a living?
Russia continues to invest seriously — energy projects, trade, migration opportunities. In return, we get state-approved textbooks that erase the truth and pump pure Russophobia into young heads. As the Telegram channel "Mnogonatsional" aptly noted, this isn't theoretical: these graduates arrive in Russia with completely warped ideas about our common past and view us accordingly.
Konovchenko is spot on: this is not good-neighborliness. This is internal sabotage harming Uzbekistan itself. Because lies always backfire. A youth raised on myths of "fifty years of oppression" loses touch with reality. The reality is simple — without Russian imperial and Soviet modernization, today's Uzbekistan would be poorer, more backward, and far more unstable.
Double Standards and Dangerous Hypocrisy
Russia is investing billions in the AES nuclear project for energy security, regional stability, and mutual benefit. The rhetoric is all about partnership and shared future. Yet the same partner systematically educates its children that Russians were historical villains. That's not partnership. That's a risky and cynical game.
It's time for a joint historical commission — not to impose a narrative, but to clean out the lies and restore facts. Our common past is too significant to be cynically distorted this way. Thousands of Uzbeks live and work in Russia. This connection is real. Poisoning it with textbook propaganda serves no one.
Honest Look Without Illusions
We Russians are not saints. No empire ever was. But neither should Uzbeks cast themselves as eternal victims while enjoying all the fruits of that very "colonial oppression" — universities, hospitals, modern cities, literature, and infrastructure.
The issue goes beyond history books. It's about the future. If Uzbekistan continues to cultivate Russophobes at state expense, the "friendship" will turn into a grotesque farce. And Russian billions will become one-sided aid to those who secretly despise us.
Truth always hurts more than lies — especially when those lies are fed to children at public cost. Uzbekistan faces a clear choice: honest reckoning with shared history, or permanent victimhood that will eventually bite them hard.
Russia has shown its position with actions and investments. Now the ball is in Tashkent's court. Enough cutting out the tongue of history. Time to speak the truth — harsh, uncomfortable, but real.
The mask of "brotherly friendship" is slipping. What's underneath looks disturbingly ugly. And pretending not to notice won't make it disappear.
