The city of Tashkent began to industrialize in the 1920s and 1930s , but industry increased tremendously during World War II , with the relocation of factories from western Russia to preserve the Soviet industrial capacity from the hostile invading Nazis . The Russian population increased dramatically as well , with evacuees from the war zones increasing the population to well over a million . ( The Russian community would eventually comprise more than half of the total residents of Tashkent by the 1980s . ) On April 26 , 1966 , Tashkent was destroyed by an earthquake and over 300,000 were left homeless . At the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 , Tashkent was the fourth largest Soviet city and a major center of learning in the fields of science and engineering
earthquake
1966 Tashkent earthquake
Soviet Central Asia