Transforming Tajikistan: Between a Soviet past and a Tajik future

As historic buildings are demolished, some residents of Dushanbe mourn lost memories while others embrace change.

Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, is changing rapidly. In what was once a Soviet city known for its quiet tree-lined avenues, new highrise towers and grand administrative buildings are emerging. It is an extraordinary transformation taking place as Tajikistan reimagines what it means to be an independent Central Asian republic with its own national identity. But some residents are questioning the price at which it comes: the demolition of the city’s Soviet architecture and with it, the loss of childhood homes and memories to large-scale construction. It is a topic debated on the pages of local newspapers, on social media and in local teahouses – pitting a shrinking but vocal class of Russian-speaking, middle-class natives of Soviet Dushanbe who oppose these changes as a targeted erasure of its history against the city’s Tajik-speaking majority, many of whom moved here from the countryside and view the changes in the capital as a sign of a nation coming into its own. Largely unheard between these two competing narratives, however, are the voices of the city’s youth. Born in Dushanbe after 1991, as Tajikistan was emerging as an independent country for the first time in its history, this generation is now caught between two visions of the city.