The Pamir border town of Murgab is among the few places in Tajikistan that still host the surviving Lenin statues. The tiny all-white Lenin statue is located near the offices of the police and security agents (remnants of the former KGB). After the collapse of Soviet Union and the independence of Central Asian republics, many of the new countries hurried to remove anything related to the Soviet past. Lenin statues and street names were replaced by those of national heroes, as they have to create their national identities and national pride in urgent manner. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan even changed the widely-used Cyrillic script into Latin, to distance them further away from the Soviet history. But in Tajikistan, a country suffering from civil war and poverty right after its independence, the Soviet past is still treated with respect, as their politics and economy is very much relied to the big brother Russia.

Murgab, GBAO, Tajikistan, 2006