The need to summarize the achievements of soil research in Uzbekistan has long since become evident. This need arises from the necessity of substantiating the rational utilization of Uzbekistan’s land resources from the perspective of soil conditions and of developing practical solutions for soil improvement through the enhancement of soil fertility. The construction of irrigation and drainage systems, the expansion of sown areas for cotton, sugar beet, and other commercial crops on this basis, the increase of yields through improved agricultural techniques and the introduction of grass-field crop rotation systems, agricultural chemicalization, the consolidation and development of dryland farming, and the rationalization of pasture management, all represent only part of a much broader range of priority tasks. The successful resolution of these tasks depends to a considerable extent on the proper utilization of soil resources. Progress in this area has been hindered by the absence of a comprehensive work that systematically organizes the vast but scattered body of soil research materials. This monograph seeks to fill that gap by presenting, in concise form, our current understanding of the soil cover of the Republic. Until quite recently, soil research in Uzbekistan remained highly uneven. While most irrigated lands had already been mapped at a scale of 1:10,000, the compilation of soil maps for the dryland and pastoral regions of Uzbekistan and Central Asia depended almost entirely on individual route surveys and extrapolations by soil scientists. This prevented the preparation of a comprehensive monograph at an earlier stage and limited us to describing only those regions of the Republic that had been studied more extensively, such as Fergana and the Hungry Steppe. The compilation of a comprehensive survey of the Republic’s soils became possible only after the soil investigations carried out in recent years (1936-1941) in Uzbekistan’s dryland areas, mountain pastures, and desert grazing regions. The soil materials for Uzbekistan were synthesized on the basis of the general principles of soil classification developed by the Permanent Classification Commission of the Dokuchaev Soil Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, as well as the recent classification studies conducted by the Institute’s researchers, including Gerasimov, Zavalishin, Ivanova, and Rozanov. In addition, broad nationwide generalizations reflected in the soil register of the All-Union State Soil Map were taken into account, together with the local experience and theoretical conclusions of numerous soil scientists working in Central Asia. The monograph Soils of Uzbekistan consists of two volumes. The first volume is devoted to a characterization of soil-forming conditions and the principal soil types. The second volume will be dedicated specifically to describing the soils and their agricultural characteristics in the administrative regions of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and the Karakalpak Soviet Socialist Autonomous Republic. The authors endeavored to make the fullest possible use of soil-research manuscripts, texts, and cartographic materials preserved in the archives of the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Land Reclamation, the Central Asian Institute of Irrigation and Land Reclamation, university departments, the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, and other scientific institutions. In preparing this monograph, additional investigations were also conducted in the mountainous regions of the Republic, which had previously received the least scientific attention. The principal work on the first volume of Soils of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic was completed in 1939. The Great Patriotic War prevented its publication. In 1947, following the receipt of comments and reviews on the manuscript of the first volume, as well as on the classification scheme that served as the basis both for the monograph and for the State Soil Map¹, the authors carried out additional work, including the revision of individual chapters, certain modifications to the classification system, and the preparation of two entirely new chapters. This volume was not comprehensively rewritten in accordance with the latest achievements of Dokuchaev-Williams soil science, since it was planned that the material would be further developed in that direction in the second volume.