{"id":19455,"date":"2013-10-20T14:23:55","date_gmt":"2013-10-20T18:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theredphoenixapl.org\/?p=19455"},"modified":"2013-10-20T14:23:55","modified_gmt":"2013-10-20T18:23:55","slug":"tajikistan-pines-for-old-soviet-union-strength","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2013\/10\/tajikistan-pines-for-old-soviet-union-strength\/","title":{"rendered":"Tajikistan pines for old Soviet Union strength"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
A lone security guard at a closed Tajikistan cement factory. Some 70 percent of Tajiks say they pine for the Soviet Union era.
Iason Athanasiadis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Polls reveal that up to 70 percent of the Tajikistan population longs for the Soviet Union era. Industrial output is a fraction of 1990 levels, and some 2 million Tajiks have emigrated to Russia in search of work.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Iason Athanasiadis<\/span><\/p>\n

The guard was the only person around in the empty cement works facility that sprawls along one of the\u00a0Turkistan\u00a0Range\u2019s high ridges.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt used to be so busy here,\u201d he said, popping cheerfully out of a grimy metal tower to offer green tea and stale biscuits. \u201cBut the factory closed when the\u00a0USSR\u00a0collapsed.\u201d The facility is one of dozens spread across this mountainous landlocked country, which were idled after\u00a0Tajikistan\u2019s independence in 1991. The country was a Soviet-era industrial powerhouse, a past attested by the abandoned hulks of cement factories littering its verdant countryside.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, industrial output is down 70 percent compared with 1990, and cotton production reduced from a million tons annually to just 250,000. An estimated 2 million Tajiks have emigrated to\u00a0Russia\u00a0in search of menial jobs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople were happy during\u00a0shoravi\u00a0[the Soviet era]. The government looked after them, and everyone had work and enough food,\u201d says\u00a0Karim Ismailov, a trained engineer now reduced to driving a taxi around the capital,\u00a0Dushanbe.<\/span><\/p>\n

Every morning, at the entrance to the city\u2019s international airport, hundreds of laborers push and shove to get onto one of the Russia-bound flights. The economic crisis that silenced its once-booming construction sector has affected the estimated $2 billion in foreign remittances that help keep the Tajik economy afloat. The salaries of government employees are so low that corruption is endemic. Young people declare themselves disillusioned.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe new generation of 20-somethings cannot understand just how that state was,\u201d says\u00a0Muzaffar Olimov, the director of the\u00a0Sharq Research Center, whose polls reveal that up to 70 percent of Tajiks<\/span>\u00a0pine for the Soviet era<\/span><\/a><\/span>. \u201cIt offered insurance, financial guarantees for old age \u2013 now, none of these things exist.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Polls reveal that up to 70 percent of the Tajikistan population longs for the Soviet Union era. Industrial output is a fraction of 1990 levels,..<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,21],"tags":[348,207,273,279,347,351],"class_list":["post-19455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-international","tag-revolutionary-history","tag-russia","tag-soviet-union-ussr","tag-tajikistan","tag-workers-struggle","tag-world-history"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redphoenix.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0531-onostaliga_full_600.jpg?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}