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Employees of the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Laboratory of Natural Science Methods in Humanities of the Ural Federal University with colleagues from the A. Donish Institute of Hi
May 12, 2021
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Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe is undergoing a rapid urban transformation. The once quiet town known for its green foliage is now striving for a bustling modern image amidst the country’s search for an identity. The city’s streets were once the pride of Soviet architects sent from Leningrad and Moscow, but now they are dotted with glass high-rises and grand administrative structures sponsored by China and Saudi Arabia – a transformation that comes at the price of erasing Dushanbe’s Soviet past, of residents losing their childhood homes and memories, and of gentrification.
While this transformation isn’t unique to Tajikistan and can be seen in Western cities that adopted neoliberal policies like Vancouver, Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, London, and in the Global South, it is a recent phenomenon for Dushanbe, where major redevelopment began just six years ago.
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.