How We Got Started

Exchange activity between Tashkent and Seattle goes back to 1961, when a book exchange was initiated between the University of Washington libraries and a number of libraries in Central Asia, including the library of Tashkent State University. Then, in 1971, Seattle mayor Wes Uhlman met the mayor of Tashkent when three Soviet mayors visited Seattle on a promotional tour sponsored by Alaska Airlines. In 1972, when it was announced that President Nixon would soon travel to Moscow, Mayor Uhlman decided Seattle must strike a first in U.S. sister city programs by acquiring a sister city in the Soviet Union. No other U.S. city had a Soviet sister city at the time. Mayor Uhlman wrote a formal proposal for a sister city relationship and sent it to the mayor of Tashkent.

In the meantime, Ilse Cirtautas, professor of comparative Turkic and Central Asian studies at the University of Washington, had traveled to Tashkent to do research at the Academy of Sciences. She surprised the Uzbeks with her familiarity with the Uzbek language and customs. While in Tashkent, she met with the deputy director of the Uzbek Friendship Society, who discussed the matter of the sister city relationship with her. Shortly after her return to Seattle, Professor Cirtautas learned that Tashkent had accepted Seattle as its sister city. She met with Mayor Uhlman, who emphasized the importance of creating a Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Committee. A committee was established in the same year (1972), with Professor Cirtautas as its first member and Mr. Hugh Smith as its first chair. Many of the early members were from the University of Washington and Seattle’s business community. On January 22, 1973, the Seattle City Council passed Resolution 23992, adopting Tashkent as a sister city of Seattle. In June of 1973, Seattle Deputy Mayor John Chambers and Hugh Smith visited Tashkent. Mayor Uhlman led a large delegation to Tashkent later in 1973; and in 1974 Mayor Kazimov of Tashkent visited Seattle, together with M.E. Yusupov, senior official of the Tashkent City Executive Committee, and Academician Melikhon Okhunova, director of the Abu Rayhan Beruniy Institute of History at the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR.

You can find out more about the early years of the Seattle-Tashkent sister city relationship from this insightful article by Dr. Roscius Doan.

What We Do
Sister City exchanges through the years have included visits by mayors, deputy mayors and city council members. It has also fostered people-to-people diplomacy through exchanges of teachers, school children and university students, theater arts, museum exhibits, healthcare providers, lawyers, journalists and social service professionals.

Click on Events and Activities for more details.

Despite the cold war, Seattle and Tashkent developed close ties, gradually eroding the enemy image of the Soviet Union and forging lasting friendships which continue to grow and flourish today.

Last Update: 4 July 2007

Logo courtesy Mamoun Sakkal