The following is the continuation of cross-blogging initiative on 15th anniversary of Moscow coup. Here is the translation of some excerpts from my and Rahmon’s posts on the Russian-language blog.

The collapse of Soviet Union had a great influence on further developments in post-Soviet countries and the rest of the world. The consequences of this event were tragic for Tajikistan. In the process of transition was accelerated a struggle for power and the result of this political crisis in the country was the erupted civil war.

I was raised in Khorog, the administrative center of Gorno-Badakhshan. The civil war did not reach this region in the form that it was in other parts of the country but it had a great influence on the social and political life. The collapse of the union was unexpected for most of the people in Gorno-Badakhshan. They could not imagine how they were going to live without the support from Moscow. Everybody was concerned about it but still no one could realize the scale of the event and what the consequences were. Gorbochev and Eltsin are still blamed for the destruction of the Soviet state but people still do not understand that the whole system was eroded.

The population of Tajikistan realized that the Soviet Union no more existed only when the war started because they suddenly realized that Moscow has no more power to stop the conflict. Here how Rahmon describes the life in Dushanbe after the collapse.

In 1991 collapsed the super-power named USSR. Tajikistan came across the unprecedented violence. The natives of different regions of the republic severely struggled for power. Thousands of people died. The warriors executed representatives of intelligentsia, journalists, and other innocent people. The factories and plants stopped working, the production of goods was stopped. There were lots of refugees, many people fled to Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan. Some of them went to Russia, Israel and United States. Most of the refugees were the Russian-speaking population. During the Soviet Union the percentage of Russian speaking population constituted 10% of the whole population, today the number barely reaches 1 %. Those who remained in the country had to bare all the difficulties of the civil war.

We lived on the outskirts of the capital [Dushanbe], while the main armed hostilities took place in the center of the city. However, the bullets, shells and missiles reached our district. Once, me and my mother were hiding in the room where the window was covered with the blanket, from the bullets which reached our balcony and the glass on the window was destroyed. When the battles were over we went outside in search of bread. In the streets we could see some killed people. It was February, cold winter. We had no gas, electricity and food. After half a year the situation was better, we were standing in the line for bread from 4 a.m. One person could get only two loafs of bread. The whole families were standing in the line to get more bread, because no one knew when they were going to stand in line for bread next time.

In comparison to Dushanbe in Khorog the situation was better. International aid reached the region on time and as I said the armed hostilities which took place in Gono-Badakhshan were not at such a big scale as they were in Dushanbe. However, people were suffering of hunger and cold. Especially in the winters there were times when people had no electricity and electricity for most of the population was the only energy resource.

The Gorno-Badakhshan have not acquired anything else except the economic crisis after the collapse of Soviet Union. People with nostalgia recall the Soviet period, when everybody had enough food. During the independence in Gorno-Badakhshan not a single factory or plant was built and those which existed during the Soviet time were destroyed. The big amount of male population is working outside the country, mostly in Russia, as a common labor. The fertility rate is decreasing and the mortality rate in reverse is increasing. Students are still using textbooks which were published during the soviet era. The number of drug-addicts is increasing almost everyday, and consequently is increasing the number of HIV-positive population. People drink more alcohol, mostly the counterfeit vodka. The roads are destroyed, schools and hospitals are suffering of lack of resources. The media is under a severe censorship.

It is only a small part of all the problems which came after the collapse of Soviet Union, and these problems exist not only in Gorno-Badakhshan but in the whole country. In some areas the problems are solved to some extent but in others the situation is even worse. Most of the population still wants to live the life that they lived during the Soviet Union.