ABSTRACT
History bounds events: the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991; the period of reform known as ‘perestroika’ lasted six years from its start in 1985. Historical memory and lived experience, however, know no such bounds, and historical conditions live on in many aftershocks. In Tajikistan, the period of perestroika, with its attendant economic collapse, social degradation, and violence, bled straight into the 1990s. It remained in the background during the Tajik Civil War and even today underlines debates about the privatization of industry or legal changes to property rights. Using a mix of archival materials from the period of perestroika, memoirs, interviews and ethnographic observation in Dushanbe, this chapter will analyse the ways in which perestroika (lit: ‘restructuring’) continues to underpin social change in modern, post-Soviet Tajikistan.
