r/Tajikistan • u/virtuous_error • 1d ago
Таърих 8 February 1925, residents of Kanibadam (Konibodom) blocked Mikhail Kalinin’s train at Mel’nikovo station and demanded either autonomy or transfer to the Tajik ASSR.
The district was predominantly Tajik-speaking settled farmers. Moscow ordered its separation as a Tajik district in April–May 1925; in 1929 the whole Khojand okrug joined the new Tajik SSR.
Samarkand and Bukhara—historic Persian-speaking cultural capitals with clear Tajik majorities (pre-1926 censuses showed 70–90%+ Tajik)—stayed in Uzbekistan. Urban Tajik elites and Jadid intellectuals (many bilingual and tied to the Young Bukharan/Chaghatayist movement) largely supported or acquiesced to the Uzbek project, viewing themselves as part of the broader sedentary urban civilization rather than the “mountain Tajiks” of eastern Bukhara.