All dismantled statues and busts are now stored in warehouses of Tajikistan’s Art Foundation and the Art Foundation proposes to install all dismantled statues in Dushanbe’s Victory Park.
“Statues and bust that have been dismantled in recent years for different reasons are a piece of our history and they must be installed in any park,” Olim Rabiyev, the head of the Art Foundation, told Asia-Plus in an interview.
According to him, Dushanbe’s Victory Park would be an appropriate place for this. “The Ministry of Culture supports our proposal,” Rabiyev noted.
Dozens of statues and busts of Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, and other revolutionaries and Soviet politicians were installed in all cities and district administrative centers of the country in Soviet era.
After independence the country saw most major statues to the founder of the Soviet Union pulled down. Meanwhile, a group of Muslim clerics in the Shahritous district (Khatlon province) have reportedly spent their congregations' weekly donations on fixing a statue of Lenin.
Radio Liberty’s Tajik Service, locally known as Radio Ozodi, reported on September 4, 2018 that the imam-khatib prayer leaders of the mosques in Shahritous spent the collection money on putting the statue of Lenin back on the plinth in the town center, from which he was toppled in 2016. The statue was reportedly also repainted gold, and a missing hand was replaced.
Citing Mehriniso Rajabova of Shahritous Council, Radio Ozodi reported that the imams had come up with the idea themselves. “They repaired the statue, and had the park around the monument cleaned up, as well as having the fountains fixed,” she told Ozodi.
One imam who spoke to Radio Ozodi was coy about the total amount of money spent, but did say each mosque took about US$100 a week in donations.
