Municipal redevelopment plan is kept secret so that it does not fall into the hands of terrorists, says municipal official

Disputes over the unavailability of the municipal of Dushanbe redevelopment plan of Dushanbe have been a hot topic for many years.

The First Deputy Mayor Dushanbe, Jamshed Tabarzoda, told reporters in Dushanbe yesterday that the municipal redevelopment plan is kept secret so that it does not fall into the hands of terrorists and extremists.  

He refrained from further comments on this issue and said that journalists could receive another information about Dushanbe’s municipal redevelopment plan only in a written form.  

“The municipal redevelopment plan is classified as secret.  Why?  For the purpose of security, preventing the actions of extremist and terrorist groups and other groups well known to you in quotation marks.   If you have any specific question on the municipal redevelopment plan, for which you would like an answer, please contact,” Tabarzoda said.  

Asked whether Rohat Teahouse, Lohuti Theater and TSUM will be demolished as part of the ambitious municipal redevelopment plan, Dushanbe officials did not give a specific answer, noting only that “there is a list of buildings and monuments of historical value.”   

The municipal redevelopment plan of Dushanbe includes the construction of modern buildings.  The authorities have moved many historical buildings located in close proximity to the construction site for modern buildings and the first was the building of the Main Post Office.  

The authorities then demolished the Mayakovsky Russian Drama Theater.  Recall, the founding of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic was declared at the Mayakovsky Theater in 1929.

The decision to demolish the former presidential palace, which had once been the headquarters of the Tajik Communist Party, was made in February 2020.  Built in 1957 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution, the almond-colored neoclassical building was perceived by many to be inextricably linked to the country’s history.  This historic building was demolished to make space for a new, Chinese government-funded palace that will be the centerpiece of a new government complex.

A string of high-profile demolitions soon followed across Dushanbe.  There was the Jomi cinema, which when it was erected in the city’s main square in 1956 was one of only five panoramic cinemas in the Soviet Union. Then, in March 2017, the city administration building – built in the 1950s in a style that combined classical European and local architecture – was demolished.

A year later, the city decided to demolish the Green Theatre, a 1933 building that in the 1940s had hosted theatre troupes evacuated from Leningrad and Moscow during the Nazi invasion; the building was demolished in September 2020.

Plans to demolish some of the most popular landmarks in Dushanbe have sparked outrage and city residents have repeatedly signed petitions addressed to the president and Dushanbe mayor.