Farewell to the Rohat Tajikistan’s most iconic teahouse falls victim to the capital’s redevelopment craze
Story by Sher Khashimov for The Beet. Edited by Eilish Hart.
Tajikistan's famous Rohat Teahouse has become the latest victim of Dushanbe’s reconstruction craze. As Meduza’s The Beet newsletter reported previously, city authorities have been taking wrecking balls to the Tajik capital’s Soviet-era landmarks for years now, in a bid to foster the country’s post-independence identity. But while locals may still be concerned about the development boom’s costs and consequences, public outcry over the loss of historic buildings has diminished significantly. As freelance journalist Sher Khashimov shows in his latest report for The Beet, last month’s razing of the Rohat is a case in point: Whereas rumored demolition plans once provoked enough backlash to pressure the authorities to spare the beloved teahouse, locals now appear to have resigned themselves to the city’s relentless redevelopment.
This story first appeared in The Beet, a monthly email dispatch from Meduza covering Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Sign up here to get the next issue delivered directly to your inbox.
A young bride wearing a bright traditional dress embraces her groom against a backdrop of stately columns, handcrafted wooden doors, and colorful mosaics. This happy couple’s photoshoot would turn out to be one of the last at Dushanbe’s Rohat Teahouse — a famous landmark that was demolished in early March.
The iconic teahouse, known as Choihonai Rohat in Tajik, is the latest victim of the city-wide redevelopment boom in Tajikistan’s capital, although it seemed for years that the building would be spared. Over the past decade, locals have watched Dushanbe transform from a Soviet-built town known for its quiet tree-lined avenues into a dusty, bustling city full of glass highrises and grand administrative buildings. In the process, much of the city’s Soviet heritage has been erased, as Tajikistan reimagines what it means to be an independent Central Asian republic with its own national identity.
Known as Stalinabad for much of the Soviet period, Dushanbe was largely designed by Stefan Anisimov, a graduate of the Leningrad architecture school who served as one of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic’s chief architects from 1936 until his death in 1985. Taking the Soviets’ stylistically unitary and centrally planned approach to urban development, Anisimov designed the buildings that gave Soviet Dushanbe its signature neoclassical look — including the Tajik Communist Party headquarters, the old parliament building, and the Lohuti Theater, among many others.
Located on Dushanbe’s main thoroughfare, Rudaki Avenue, the open-faced Rohat Teahouse was built in 1958 based on designs by Soviet architects Konstantin Terletsky and Daniil Gendlin and Tajik painter Mirzorahmat Alimov. During a visit the next year, John F. Kennedy’s assistant secretary of state W. Averell Harriman deemed the two-story building “the most original teahouse in the world.” The Rohat became an iconic symbol of Dushanbe, hosting the likes of Vietnamese revolutionary Ho Chi Minh and Kyrgyz literary giant Chinghiz Aitmatov. The building made CNN’s 2017 list of the world’s best teahouses. For foreign visitors to Dushanbe, it was a must-see.
In recent years, the Rohat had also become a fashionable hangout for local youth, a place to stage trendy photoshoots and indulge in the simple but tasty bread and soft serve from the teahouse’s vendors. “This wasn’t just a teahouse but a meeting place for writers and artists. Our daily routine invariably began with the Rohat Teahouse,” local artist Ortiq Kodir said in an interview, listing famous Tajik artists like Hoshim Gadoev, Mahmud Tohiri, and Burhon Rajabov who used to meet there regularly.
The tall green construction fencing that went up around the Rohat on March 1 marked the end of a decade-long saga. The authorities first sparked fears of the teahouse’s eventual demolition by excluding it from the list of protected historic buildings in 2015. As of February 2022, this list reportedly included just 12 buildings, but which ones actually get preserved remains at the whim of the authorities. The city’s general redevelopment plan is classified, and officials refuse to answer any questions on the subject, citing security concerns.
The 2016 demolition of the beloved Mayakovsky Theater, a modest constructivist building erected in 1924, was an early demonstration of the authorities’ relentless drive to radically remake the city. After Tajikistan gained independence in 1991, the Mayakovsky Theater hosted the country’s most prolific acting troupe and served as a countercultural hub. The decision to knock down the historic building ignited unprecedented public outcry in the form of social media posts, petitions, and open letters to the authorities, albeit to no avail.
The destruction of other famous buildings soon followed, like the 2020 demolition of the almond-colored neoclassical building that once housed the Tajik Communist Party in favor of a Chinese-funded palace that will be the centrepiece of a new government complex. But the authorities long denied that the Rohat Teahouse would meet the same fate.
Instead, they stuck to their usual playbook, ignoring rumors of the impending teardown and then making a last-minute official announcement, leaving activists little time to oppose the decision before it was finalized. “For years, the Architecture and Construction Committee refused to confirm demolition plans, despite numerous requests from local media and experts,” a Tajik urban studies researcher, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Beet.
When the committee finally acknowledged its plans to demolish the Rohat in July 2024, officials refused to provide a timeline. “This has been the intentional strategy and the pattern around demolitions in Dushanbe — no public meetings, no information, no transparency,” the urban studies expert explained. “This effectively hinders and limits mobilization and resistance potential.”
In the end, an online petition to save the Rohat and declare it a historic landmark gathered less than 800 signatures, despite being shared alongside nostalgic social media posts about the teahouse. It was a far cry from the public campaign to save the Mayakovsky Theater or even the petitions that helped save the Rohat just three years ago, reflecting growing civic apathy over residents’ inability to influence the redevelopment of Dushanbe.
“We started a petition, but it was too late — they moved quickly with the demolition and we knew they wouldn’t listen to us,” a social activist from Dushanbe, who also asked to remain anonymous, told The Beet. “Many people who sincerely opposed the teardown [of the Rohat] didn’t sign the petition because they knew it wouldn’t change anything.”
The lack of public outcry also reflects the city’s changing demographics. Once a cosmopolitan oasis, Dushanbe has lost most of its Russian-speaking intelligentsia who cared about preserving the city’s Soviet history — and newer arrivals from Tajikistan’s countryside broadly seem to view Dushanbe’s redevelopment as upgrading.
“The emotional resonance of 20th-century Dushanbe’s monuments is declining along with the number of people who feel emotionally attached to these spaces,” said the urban studies researcher. “Younger generations, as well as newcomers from other areas of Tajikistan, do not share the same appreciation for Soviet-era architecture, potentially viewing it as a relic of a colonial past that warrants removal or modernization.”
Officials have since admitted that the Rohat had cultural cache, going so far as to hint at plans to build an even “more beautiful” replica of the teahouse. Nevertheless, they moved forward with a complete demolition, dismissing public appeals to preserve and relocate the building’s colorful mosaics and intricate columns as “impossible.” Once a cultural landmark named after the Tajik word for “rest,” the Rohat Teahouse now lies in ruins.
Hello, I’m Eilish Hart, the editor of The Beet. Thanks for taking the time to read our work! Our newsletter delivers underreported stories like this one to subscribers once a month. Like all of Meduza’s reporting, it’s free to read but relies on support from readers like you. Please consider donating to our crowdfunding campaign.
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Story by Sher Khashimov for The Beet
Edited by Eilish Hart