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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Tajikistan
Index
Statistically, Tajikistan is the least urban of all the former Soviet
republics (see table 3, Appendix). By the 1980s, the republic had nineteen
cities and forty-nine "urban-type settlements" (the term used
for populated places developed as part of Soviet planning). At the time of
the first Soviet census, in 1926, when Tajikistan still was an autonomous
republic of Uzbekistan, only 10 percent of its inhabitants lived in
cities. By the 1959 census, urbanization had risen to 33 percent. This
growth reflected not only the development of Tajikistan in its own right
but the resettlement of people from other parts of the Soviet Union to
occupy government, party, and military positions. It also reflected an
influx of political deportees. Most of the immigrants went to Tajikistan's
two largest cities, Dushanbe and Leninobod. During the period before 1960,
some populated places also were reclassified as urban or incorporated into
an existing city's boundaries, thus creating an impression of even greater
urbanization.
The growth of the urban population continued for most of the postwar
era. Between the 1959 and 1979 censuses, Tajikistan's urban population
more than doubled, while the rural population increased almost as rapidly.
However, by the 1970s the rate of rural population growth had begun to
outstrip that of urban areas. After reaching a peak of 35 percent in the
1979 census, the proportion of the urban population declined.
According to the 1989 census, although Tajikistan's urban population
increased by 26 percent in the 1980s, the proportion of urban inhabitants
in the total population declined to 32.5 percent during that period. By
the start of 1991, the republic's five largest cities, Dushanbe, Khujand,
Kulob, Qurghonteppa, and Uroteppa, accounted for 17 percent of the total
population of the republic. Beginning with the 1979 census, emigration
from cities exceeded immigration into them. In the 1980s, urban
immigration also came predominantly from within Tajikistan rather than
from other Soviet republics, as had been the case in earlier decades. As
other ethnic groups emigrated from Tajikistan more rapidly beginning in
the late Soviet period, the percentage of Tajiks in the cities rose.
Nevertheless, Tajiks in Tajikistan were one of the Soviet nationalities
least likely to move from villages to cities. Those who did so were
usually single men reacting to the scarcity of employment in rural areas.
Tajikistan's largest city, Dushanbe (which was called Stalinabad from
1929 to 1961), was a Soviet-era development. Badly battered in the Russian
Civil War of 1918-21, the village experienced a population drop from more
than 3,000 in 1920 to 283 by 1924, and few buildings remained intact.
Nevertheless, in 1924 Dushanbe was chosen as the capital of the new
Tajikistan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Centrally planned
development projects inaugurated in 1926, 1938, 1965, and 1983 established
housing, government office buildings, cultural facilities, and sports and
recreational facilities, as well as the municipal infrastructure. With the
addition of about 100 factories, Dushanbe also became Tajikistan's
industrial center. It is the headquarters of the republic's radio and
television broadcasting facilities and film studio. Several institutions
of higher education and scholarship are located there.
Soviet-era industrial development projects played a major role in the
growth of cities on the sites of former villages. For example, Regar,
which was established in 1952, is the center of Tajikistan's vital
aluminum industry, as well as several factories dedicated to other
activities. Norak and Yovon (Russian spelling Yavan--site of a large
chemical plant), were developed as industrial centers near Dushanbe to
play specific economic roles in the Soviet system.
Data as of March 1996
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