ABSTRACT
Uzbekistan was the scene of several particularly nasty rounds of ethnic violence in 1989 and 1990, the major outbreaks in Central Asia during the Gorbachev period. In a multiethnic society symbols that play to a particular ethnic identity produce a nationalism that excludes members of other ethnic groups and thereby acts as a source of communal division. As a newly independent state, questions of nationality and ethnicity are on the front burner of the political agenda in Uzbekistan. The government sees strengthening the national identity of Uzbeks as a vital part of the state-building process required for the newly independent state to take on a character separate from Moscow. The government conducting an active campaign to build Uzbek identity through promoting Uzbek language, culture, and institutions. Karimov ran in the December 1991 presidential election as the incumbent head of state and the head of the People's Democratic Party of Uzbekistan (NDPU), the successor to the Communist Party in Uzbekistan.
