History
Situated at the confluence of two rivers, Varzob and Kofarnihon, Dushanbe is the capital of Tajikistan. Although archaeological remnants dating to the 5th century BC have been discovered in the area, there is little to suggest that Dushanbe was more than a small village until the early 20th century. In 1920, the last Emir of Bukhara briefly took refuge in Dushanbe (then called Dyushambe) after being overthrown by the Bolshevik revolution. He fled to Afghanistan after the Red Army conquered the area the next year.
Dushanbe, which means "Monday" in Persian, (فارسی), developed on the site of a Monday marketplace village, Dyushambe-Bozor, and its former name Dyushambe was a Russified version of the word meaning "Monday" in Persian (du-shanbe from du two + shanbe Saturday, lit. "second day after Saturday"). Following the Red Army victory in Central Asia the village was upgraded to town in 1925 and made the capital of the newly created Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Tajik ASSR). After the transformation of Tajik ASSR to Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic (Tajik SSR) in 1929, Dyushambe was renamed Stalinabad, after Joseph Stalin. As part of Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization initiative, the city was renamed Dushanbe in 1961.
The Soviets transformed the area into a centre for cotton and silk production, and relocated tens of thousands of people to the city from around the Soviet Union. The population also increased with thousands of ethnic Tajiks migrating to Tajikistan following the transfer of Bukhara and Samarkand to the Uzbek SSR. A peaceful and relatively prosperous city under Soviet rule, Dushanbe was home to a university and the Tajik Academy of Sciences. Severe rioting occurred in February 1990, after it was rumored that Moscow planned to relocate tens of thousands of Armenian refugees to Tajikistan. The Dushanbe riots were primarily fueled by concerns about housing shortages for the Tajik population, but they coincided with a wave of nationalist unrest that swept Transcaucasia and other Central Asian states during the twilight of Gorbachev's era.
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