Geography of Tajikistan has headwaters in Afghanistan and Tajikistan. The other neighbors are the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan (to the west and the north) and Kyrgyzstan (to the north). The lower elevations of Tajikistan are divided into northern and southern regions by a complex of three mountain chains that constitute the westernmost extension of the massive Tian Shan system. Running essentially parallel from east to west, the chains are the Turkestan, Zeravshan (Zarafshan), and Hisor (Gissar) mountains. The last of these lies just north of the capital, Dushanbe, which is situated in west-central Tajikistan. More than half of Tajikistan lies above an
Soviet Central Asia many fertile black soil farms were developed by the Tsarists and, later, the process carried on by the USSR. In 1926, the city became the capital of the newly established Kirghiz ASSR and was renamed Frunze after the Bolshevik hero, Mikhail Frunze, who was one of Lenin's close associates, who was born in Bishkek until Kirghiz independence in 1991. The Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, also named Tajikistan (or by its Russian spelling, Tadzhikistan), was one of the new states created in Central Asia in 1924 was Uzbekistan, which had the status of a Soviet socialist republic. In 1929 Tajikistan was