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Tajikistan
The Rural Majority
In the last decade of the Soviet era, the rural population of
Tajikistan grew in both absolute and relative terms. By 1989 the
rural population had risen to 3,437,498, or 68 percent of the
total population, an increase of nearly 1 million people over
the 1979 figure. By the 1980s, the republic had more than 3,000
inhabited villages, of which about one-quarter had 200 inhabitants
or fewer. Observers have estimated that 75 to 89 percent of all
Tajikistantis were villagers in 1990.
The rural standard of living is considerably below that of urban
areas. Sanitation often is poor, and in many cases no safe source
of drinking water is available. By the late 1980s, fewer than
half of rural inhabitants and only 14 percent of collective farm
residents had a piped-in water supply. In the same period, hundreds
of villages lacked electricity, and some had no access to telephones
or radio or television broadcasts (see Transportation and Telecommunications,
this ch.). Many rural areas experienced shortages of doctors and
teachers. The ratio of hospital beds to inhabitants is much lower
in rural Tajikistan than in urban areas and far worse than the
average for the former Soviet Union as a whole (see Health Care
System, this ch.). Even large villages are unlikely to have libraries
or other cultural facilities.
Data as of March 1996
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