Inscription (Uzbekistan)

FROM LENINGRAD TO TASHKENT

This inscription dates back to 1969 and is a symbol of socialist mutual aid and friendship between peoples. It can still be seen on one of the buildings that forms section Ts-13 of the Labzak housing estate in the city of Tashkent. The housing estate was built by workers from Leningrad and consists of four and five-storey brick-built and prefabricated apartment blocks.

The story of this estate is linked to the earthquake that shook Tashkent in 1966. At the time all the Soviet republics came to Uzbekistan’s aid and, as a result, housing estates in a variety of styles were built in Tashkent. Interestingly, although the new residential areas were mostly constructed in Chilanzar, beyond the city’s ancient boundaries, this one – Labzak – is a historic district in the centre of Tashkent. The rapid re-development of the old town of Tashkent was intended to ‘modernise’ this part of the city. Yet opposite the housing estate and even amongst the apartment blocks themselves you can still find traditional Uzbek houses that have survived.

It is significant that the residents of the housing estate were (and still are) largely academics, creative intellectuals and government officials. All the people living there were fluent Russian speakers, making it an island of Europeanness and a model of Soviet modernisation in the middle of old Tashkent. A reverence for ‘elites’ was a curious feature of Soviet governmental policy in the city. Local people could clearly see and were very aware of the privileges enjoyed by those who faithfully served the Soviet regime.

I was born and grew up opposite this housing estate – in a traditional Uzbek neighbourhood known as a mahalla. When I was a child we went over to the new estate to go shopping. To me, those multi-storey blocks felt somehow mysterious and, at the same time, completely alien. We didn’t know anyone in this very Europeanised district; I didn’t have a single friend from there. Although we lived side by side, it was as though we inhabited parallel worlds.
Years went by and I grew up, pursued my education and now, in an irony of fate, I live in this area and feel completely at home with this privileged community and the remnants of Soviet civilisation!

Bakhtior Alimjanov is a historian and postdoctoral fellow at the Abu Rayhan Beruni Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan.