The director of Dushanbe’s Mayakovsky Theatre weeps as she describes how demolition workers moved in.



Since work began in May, much of the Mayakovsky – a low-key, utilitarian and yet much-loved Soviet era constructivist building along the capital’s main thoroughfare – has been destroyed.

“We walk around like madmen. We have decided that when they pulled our theatre down, we will for a while try to avoid passing through the centre,” says director Munira Dadayeva, who first visited the Mayakovsky when she was just four years old.

Lovers of the unassuming red building have long known this day would come. Many Soviet-era structures have been pulled down in Dushanbe over the past few years, despite widespread public opposition.

The trend, evident across much of the former Soviet Union, shows no sign of slowing, despite a protracted period of economic stagnation. Tajik officials have brushed off criticism of the urban redevelopment programme, saying the buildings targeted for removal are of negligible historical or cultural significance and need replacing.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Mayakovsky theatre before the demolition began. Photograph: Katherine Long/Mashallah News

Historian Gafur Shermatov has denounced the official explanation for the destruction. “They justify the demolition of this building by arguing that it is very dilapidated and unable to withstand earthquakes, but this is not true,” he says.

In its first incarnation, the building that went up in the late 1920s in a town then called Stalinabad served as the House of Peasants, a clubhouse for farmers. It was here that on the 19 October 1929 Tajik statesman Nusratullo Makhsum declared the creation of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic.

The town was renamed as Dushanbe in 1961, and the construction was the first completed there as a “capital building” — with foundations designed for long-term use.

“This is a very good and solid building,” Shermatov says. “It was designed by Pyotr Vaulin and constructed to quadruple strength. It will soon be 100 years since it was finished, and yet it is has not been damaged once, even though it has been through many earthquakes.”



There are few cultural developments in Tajikistan’s modern history that did not first occur in the House of Peasants. It was home to Tajikistan’s first cinema, first modern library, first public reading rooms, first theatre and first radio broadcasting centre.

It even housed the country’s first driving school and the first home of the popular Soviet-era Pioneer youth movement.

“Our history began in that very building. Killing the House of Peasants means killing the history of Dushanbe and the point from where it began,” Shermatov says.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The sound engineer’s cabin beside the auditorium. Photograph: Katherine Long/Mashallah News

City authorities have promised to provide the Mayakovsky company with new premises, but no new building has been confirmed so far.

According to Dadayeva, the government said there would be no room for them at the gargantuan $100m National Theatre, which began construction last year.

“That is why they promised to make us a new building. But we have heard nothing yet. Our things are just scattered around,” the director says.

Decades’ worth of equipment has been stashed at the Lohuti theatre, another site on the same road which is also slated for removal. “If they give us new premises, this will be the theatre’s third birth,” Dadayeva says.

When civil war broke out in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Mayakovsky company tried to keep going, but eventually relocated temporarily to the Russian city of Magnitogorsk. Before that, in 1993, officers from the Russian military base in Tajikistan raised 200,000 roubles to keep the theatre going.

“During the war, I remember rehearsing with [the actor] Barzu Abdurazakov in the play Gelsomino. The crowd was sitting in the square shouting. The men stood on guard and women brought them whatever food they could muster. Despite the rallies, we would go to work and continue our business,” Dadayeva remembers.

After the war, the Mayakovsky troupe also acted as an unofficial diplomatic bridge between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, who have a long and troubled history.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gulnara Akhmedova, deputy director, in her former office in the Mayakovsky. Photograph: Katherine Long/Mashallah News

“In 2010 and 2012, when relations between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan reached their lowest point, our theatre visited the Youth Theatre of Uzbekistan [in Tashkent] and performed there,” says actress Mavlon Najmutdinova. “That was a time when our politicians were not talking to one another. But through theatre we found a common language.”

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As Tajikistan’s last remaining Russian-language theatre company, the Mayakovsky was the only troupe able to continue going on tours abroad. Efforts to enlist the help of the Russian Embassy in Dushanbe in saving the theatre were unsuccessful.

Once the Mayakovsky demolition is completed, government efforts will shift to removing a monument in central Dushanbe erected to mark the 20th anniversary of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic. It is likely the old parliament building and the mayor’s office will follow.

“The city should grow and develop, but it should not develop at the cost of moving things around, but through the accumulation of valuable objects,” Shermatov says. “The new must not destroy the old.”

A version of this article first appeared on Eurasianet.org. All photographs courtesy of Katherine Long