Crossroads Asia | Society | Central Asia

Can a State Build a Reading Culture? Uzbekistan Is Trying.

Uzbekistan’s “Thousand Books for Youth” project hopes to promote a reading culture by making renowned books accessible in Uzbek. 

Uzbekistan’s Youth Affairs Agency was established in 2020 to develop young people’s intellectual and creative potential and to support and effectively address issues in Uzbekistan’s youth sector. One of the agency’s projects is the “Yoshlar uchun ming kitob” – “Thousand Books for Youth” – also known as the 1000KITOB project. The project was launched to support young people’s intellectual development by translating major scientific and literary works directly from their original languages into Uzbek. It also seeks to strengthen the country’s translation tradition and expand the capacity of the Uzbek language as a language of modern scholarship, scientific thought, and knowledge.

In addition, the project aims to promote and popularize reading and broaden readers’ perspectives. However, no matter how much a state actively tries to foster a reading culture, young people’s reading habits are ultimately shaped by their own interests and needs. 

If reading is fundamentally a voluntary act, how can state-led initiatives like this one successfully promote a reading culture among youth? As an intern on this project, I worked closely with the project head and several editors, participating in discussions about book selection and translation.

“The project primarily aims to address the shortage of popular science books in the Uzbek language,” the head of the project, Jamshid Egamberganov, said in an interview with The Diplomat. He argued that publishing such books is not always profitable for publishers, and the market has not given this area sufficient attention. Therefore, the government is stepping in to support the translation and publication of important works. . 

“The project selects books from different fields, whether it’s the humanities or technology. After these books are translated and published by the state, the translations are provided to publishers free of charge for further publishing purposes,” explained Egamberganov. 

The project licenses translations and copyrights from reputable publishers, including Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. According to the presidential decree that established the project, an expert council compiles a preliminary list of books annually, which is then offered for public review and selection. The council then reviews and approves a final list.

The books are distributed to information institutions and libraries, including those of government agencies and administrative bodies. To broaden the project’s reach, the Youth Affairs Agency also provides electronic copies through its reading app, Mutolaa (from the Arabic word for “reading”). According to Egamberganov, 140,000 copies of 47 different books have been distributed to libraries, and 33 books have been uploaded to the Mutolaa app. 

According to data from the Mutolaa team, the app is currently used by more than 4.8 million people. Between September 2025 and July 2026, more than 25,000 people read e-books through the “Thousand Books for Youth” project. Among the books provided by the project, the three most-read titles are “Psychology,” “Philosophy,” and “Politics” from Oxford University Press’s Very Short Introductions series.

“People usually learn about newly published translations through social media and book launch events,” Egamberganov said. 

Zuhra Turdibekova, a student at the Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization Engineers, shared her experience with the project. She said she had been looking for a book on ethnology when she discovered that one was available through the Thousand Books project. For her, being able to read a book on the subject in Uzbek was very meaningful.

The Thousand Books for Youth project could also help the Uzbek language move beyond everyday communication and creates opportunities for its use in academic settings and discussions. The project acknowledges that major advanced works are mostly available in Russian or English. It also notes a shortage of translators capable of handling complex books and few publishing houses able to prepare them for publication. The Uzbek language received limited attention for many years and relatively little credible academic and scientific knowledge was produced in it. The Thousand Books for Youth project seeks to address this gap. 

There are, however, several challenges in both translation and conceptualization of the project. 

One of the most common problems in Uzbek translation, according to the project’s chief editor, Akmal Jumamurodov, is translating words without losing their meaning. A translation may be technically correct in Uzbek, but may still fail to sound natural to an Uzbek reader. 

“In the project Thousand Books for Youth, we do not view translation simply as transferring a text from one language to another. Rather, we see it as the process of conveying the author’s ideas, style, and spirit of the work to the Uzbek reader clearly and naturally. This is why every book........

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