Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic along a waterway. After Stalin's death in March 1953, Stalinabad, was renamed to "Dushanbe" on 10 November 1961 as part of the De-Stalinization program. In February 1990, tensions between the Tajiks and Armenians squared off in the republic's capital Dushanbe. 26 people died and 565 more were injured and the Soviet troops put down the riots. Both Yaqub Salimov, the Interior Minister and the youth activists were convicted for the participation in the riots. Later on 24 August 1990, Tajik SSR declared its sovereignty over Soviet laws. By 1991, Tajikistan participated in a referendum in March as part of the
Dushanbe Synagogue two thousand years, the building was of considerable historical significance. The ownership of the building was also disputed. The Jewish community reported that it had documentation of its original (pre-Soviet) ownership of the building and the purchase of the land on which the synagogue had been constructed. The Dushanbe municipal authorities argued, on the other hand, that the state owned the land and the building since it underwent nationalisation in 1952 by the Soviet authorities. Back in 2004, the Chief Rabbi of Central Asia, Rabbi Abraham Dovid Gurevich, raised the issue of antisemitism, hinting that the prospect of a synagogue