These early changes led to a very urbanized culture as the people became barterers and traders; many people having a shop as most goods and services were traded or sold as farming and living off of the land and animals became the responsibility of the few locals who had fertile lands and foreigners who the people could trade with.
The Russians, and later the Soviets, took control over the region in the late 1800s and early 1900s. While the Soviets were very aggressive in urbanizing the people in order to work in factories and other industrial positions, they wanted Uzbekistan for both its urban centers as well as for its farmland to feed the people in the Soviet Union as a whole. As there weren't enough Uzbeks to work in the factories and on the farms, the Soviets encouraged Russians to arrive to work as Uzbek culture was slowly replaced by Soviet ideals.
With the fall of the Soviet Union, the people of Uzbekistan have been striving to get back to their traditional way of life as city traders and farmers. Unfortunately, a number of ecological disasters enacted by the Soviets have hurt farming in the country as the people are trying to re-discover who they are while attempting to get back to their traditional way of life. Unfortunately, this campaign has been interpreted by some governments as expelling Russians and other foreigners from their country, creating more tensions. However, many Uzbeks today tend to be working the same jobs introduced by the Soviets as industrial workers and farmers with little economic improvement in recent years. The future seems to be in flux as the past is heavily varied with only great monuments remaining to remind visitors of this great history.