The Tajik capital’s Soviet-era buildings are being systematically razed and replaced by multistorey apartments and malls. Most residents seem pleased

“Once this shop was one of the most beautiful buildings in the city,” says Nematullo Mirsaidov as he gazes up at an old department store now dwarfed by new towers. He has been struck by how much Dushanbe has changed since he started visiting from the northern city of Khujand more than a decade ago, but sees change as a positive. “Dushanbe’s architecture has changed significantly,” he adds. “Its residents should be proud.”

Dushanbe was a village of only a few thousand people when it was made capital in 1924 but it has grown rapidly since then and continues to do so at speed. The city’s territory is expected to triple in size and its population to grow from around 800,000 to more than 1.2 million by 2030 according to the new strategic urban development plan recently adopted by the Tajik authorities.

The city is growing outwards and upwards. Once known as Stalinabad (or “city of Stalin”), Dushanbe’s Soviet-era buildings are being demolished and replaced by multistorey apartment blocks and skyscrapers. Parks are being renovated, roads expanded, and new supermarkets taking over from traditional bazaars.

For future generations, it [will] appear that history begins from this time, as if we had nothing before Abduqader Rustam

Just weeks ago the famous Shahmansur market, popularly known as the “green bazaar”, was closed down on the mayor’s orders. Just a short walk away is the Achaun shopping mall, Dushanbe’s first, which opened in June last year.

Barakat market, one of the oldest in Dushanbe, was torn down several years ago and replaced by a new building of the National Museum.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest A shiny new development in Dushanbe. Photograph: Esfandiar Adina

More recently, authorities have started demolishing former city government buildings in Rudaki Avenue – near the central Dusti square where the statue of Lenin was toppled in the anti-Soviet protests of 1991 – to allow for the construction of a new parliament. To the south a skyscraper is being erected on the site of the former national post office.

Q&A Secret Stans: where are the Stans? Show Hide Guardian Cities is exploring in depth the oft-ignored – and exceedingly difficult to report from – cities of the five Central Asian “Stans”: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, a quarter of a century after they became independent from the former Soviet Union. From the bizarre architecture of the “trophy cities” to the joys and struggles of everyday urban life in some very unequal societies, our goal is to engage with the people who actually live in the Stans cities by publishing some of our reporting in the languages spoken there: not just Russian, often considered the language of the elite, but Turkmen, Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Tajik. You can read the rest of the Secret Stans series here.



Under the updated urban plan a large “new city” will be built in the south, with skyscrapers of more than 30 floors – well above the 23-floor twin towers in Rudaki Avenue, currently Dushanbe’s tallest building.

To the west, the city’s first elevated highway is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2018. Authorities say 20 such overpasses will be built in the capital by 2025, the same year construction is slated to begin on its first metro stations.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest This housing on what was Sviridenko (now Bukhara) Street no longer exists. Photograph: Courtesy: Ghafur Shermatov

Many of the younger generation, especially students from other parts of Tajikistan, say they are happy with the new urban development plan. A woman who gives the pseudonym Chamanara says Dushanbe needs to be made more modern to adapt to the realities of the 21st century.



“Some buildings are so old that they cannot be repaired anymore – they have no historical value, either,” she says. “It would be better if they are destroyed and new, modern and beautiful buildings are erected. The city should be refreshed.”

“It is important that the city is changing and high buildings are being erected,” adds Karamatulla, a university student. “Our population is growing, and we need to develop. All these buildings are signs of development … like other countries.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rudaki Avenue, named after the 10th century ‘father of Persian poetry’. Many Soviet buildings on the street are earmarked for demolition. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

But not everyone agrees. Some Dushanbe residents – especially those of an older generation who feel nostalgic for the city’s past, and or those who are losing out in the country’s economic development – see the plan as an attempt to wipe out all trace of Soviet architecture.

Abduqader Rustam, a writer, believes the flurry of construction is driven largely by the desire for wealth but says the change has symbolic impact too.

“I think the Tajik authorities are setting out to destroy people’s memory,” he says. “For future generations, it [will] appear that history begins from this time, as if we had nothing before. The government will tell people ‘we built the history, the city and the country’.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Another one gone … the former city administration building. Photograph: Courtesy: Ghafur Shermatov

‘The city of Stalin’

In fact, the first document on Dushanbe’s urban development was published in 1927, when it was still a village of 6,000 people. Two years later the city was renamed Stalinabad – the name it kept until 1960.



Some of Dushanbe’s most significant buildings were built in the 1930s and 40s, among them the Ayni Opera and Ballet Theatre and the former presidential palace. The latter, once home to the central committee of the Communist Party of Tajikistan, is now the temporary office of the mayor Rustam Emamali (eldest son of Tajik president Emamali Rahman). It, too, is being considered for demolition.

Both are protected to some extent under the new urban development plan. They are on a list of 15 buildings designated as being of cultural significance, alongside the grand Chaykhana Raahat Soviet-era teahouse, the former state philharmonic hall (now owned by the broadcaster Safina), and Vahdat palace.

But others, such as the Russian Mayakovski theatre and the Jami cinema, have already been flattened despite widespread protest.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Soviet-era Jami Cinema has been demolished. Photograph: Esfandiar Adina

“Today, when the whole world strives to protect historic parts of cities, we have no right to eliminate what was built by our fathers and forefathers,” read one online petition in the spring of 2016. “They are not mere constructions, they are our history.”

Part of the problem is inconsistency between the list of historical buildings set out under the city development plan, and that maintained at a national level. Only four of the 15 protected at city level appear on the Culture Ministry’s National Heritage List. It has not been updated since 1971.



Until Tajikistan declared independence in 1991, Dushanbe’s population was dominated by Russians and Russian-speaking emigrants from other parts of the Soviet Union, sent as specialists to this remote part of the vast empire.

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When the Soviet Union collapsed, the majority fled Tajikistan. After the new government took power, people from rural areas – mostly the southern Khatlan region – relocated to Dushanbe. This new wave of urbanisation completely redrew the city’s composition.



“The problem is that there was a mass outflow of residents,” says historian Ghafur Shermatov. “For a part of the population, especially those in power, the city has no value. They were not brought up here, they don’t feel it. They want to leave their own legacy.”



Esfandiar Adineh works for BBC Persian



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