evidence: During the last century, this long-strategic nexus of Asia, earlier crossed by Scythians, Persians, Greeks, Kushans, Hephtalites, Gokturks, Huns, Arabs and Mongol hordes, became a cul-de-sac at the command of the Russians. In 1929 Stalin’s mapmakers created the Soviet Socialist Republic of Tajikistan, a territory about the same size as New York State, 93 percent mountainous, given shape in the artificial (though politically expedient) manner in which all the Central Asian republics were drawn. A Soviet vision of a model Oriental capital was built around the market village of Dushanbe — pleasant and leafy, if dull, with a wide central avenue, pastel-colored buildings, the standard apartment blocks and some grand monuments meant to be honored from afar. (Make the innocent mistake of approaching one, as I did, and you give an underpaid policeman an excuse to seek a bribe to overlook the offense.)