Even in Tajikistan's capital, Dushanbe, it doesn't take long to realize how much the country and its roughly 10 million people rely on labor migration to Russia.
For this correspondent, the realization hit home in the space of two taxi rides during a reporting trip there 10 years ago.
The first driver, who drove me to an interview at a cafe, was a smartly attired man in his 60s who told me he had returned home to Dushanbe after nearly 20 years working in Russia.
He had recently married off his youngest son without needing to borrow money for the wedding -- a rarity in Tajikistan -- and said the only reason he drove a taxi was to avoid sitting at home. His trips around the town that he left at the height of Tajikistan's brutal civil war must have felt like victory laps.
For the clearly agitated driver who drove me back, they were more like circles of hell.
He had only recently finished school but looked much older than a recent college grad. He was skinny with sunken eyes and desperate to leave a country where monthly salaries were hovering around $100. He had a friend who had promised to set him up with a job at a factory outside Moscow, he said.
As a trend, mass migration divides Tajik families, sometimes across the seasons -- and sometimes for years at a time.
But for Tajikistan's system: authoritarian, corrupt, and not very good at creating jobs -- the money that the foreign-based labor force of some 1 million people sends home every month is a lifesaver.
Every so often, however, business as usual is interrupted, as the mostly male migrants come streaming back to the country that they help keep afloat, with few jobs waiting for them and no social net to catch them.
The latest shock is the xenophobic aftermath of the worst attack inside Russia since 2004, which left 145 people dead after gunmen stormed the Crocus City Hall concert venue outside Moscow on March 22.
Ten Tajiks have thus far been arrested in Russia in connection with the attack claimed by the Islamic State group, including four accused of being the gunmen, who appeared in court bearing clear signs of beating and torture.
The weeks since have seen a spike in Russia in intimidation, discrimination, detentions, and migration bureaucracy that has worsened life for all Central Asians, Tajiks in particular.
Stability Is Our Mantra
Another side effect of Crocus, coupled with other recent reports of Tajiks being recruited by the Islamic State group, may be that the world as a whole becomes more closed to citizens of the region's poorest country, leaving them ever more dependent on Russia.
That new reality was made clear earlier this month when Turkey enacted what its embassy in Tajikistan described as a "temporary" reversal of a 90-day, visa-free term for Tajik citizens that was begun in 2018.
The Tajik government said Ankara had not notified Dushanbe of the move, which goes into effect on April 20.
For the moment, there is no suggestion Russia is considering anything similar, despite calls by many for a visa regime.
Temur Umarov, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia-Eurasia Center in Berlin, says this is due to the countries' status as allies, as well as the Russian economy's desperate labor shortages.
"The structural dependence in terms of migration is on both sides," Umarov told RFE/RL. "Russia also knows that migration is essential not only for economic but political stability in Tajikistan and other Central Asian countries. So remittances may drop after Crocus City Hall, but it will probably only be a short-term phenomenon."
It is currently unclear how many Tajiks have returned home rather than wait for the end of a xenophobic backlash that has seen reports of clients refusing the services of Tajik taxi drivers and of Tajik nationals being beaten by Russian police and other citizens.
But RFE/RL's Tajik Service has interviewed several Tajiks who said they found themselves either unable to enter Russia or arbitrarily deported from the country when they left for trips home.
Tajik Deputy Labor Minister Shahnoza Nodiri acknowledged on March 30 that her ministry had received "a lot of calls" from Tajiks looking to leave Russia due to the fear of discrimination and worse.
"We are now monitoring the situation; more people are coming [back to Tajikistan] than leaving [for Russia]," she said in an interview with Russia's TASS news agency.
The Tajik Labor Ministry published via local media on April 9 a list of eight Russian companies with a combined total of 3,000 vacancies available to Tajik citizens -- the latest sign, perhaps that officials are feeling anxious about a reverse exodus.
The ministry added that the "rights and interests" of Tajiks would be protected for the duration of their contracts if they applied for their placements with assistance from the ministry's Agency for Employment Abroad.
Authoritarian President Emomali Rahmon, meanwhile, had peace and stability on his mind, mentioning those words numerous times in an April 9 address to congratulate Tajiks on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr -- the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Rahmon called on Tajiks to be "politically vigilant" amid "growing tension as the process of the world's repartitioning is intensifying."
"In these difficult and dangerous circumstances, we should not let our citizens, our children, turn into toys in the hands of the groups involved in the global standoff," Rahmon cautioned.
Migration Nation
For Tajikistan, mass migration to Russia began even earlier than for neighbors Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, due to the civil war that struck the region's poorest country in 1992 -- just one year after gaining independence.
The real gamechanger, however, came at the turn of the century as rising energy prices powered an economic revival -- and a construction boom -- in Tajikistan's former imperial master.
In 2021, a record-breaking 3 million Tajiks entered Russia, according to Russian Interior Ministry figures, although many were repeat entries.
The ministry said that some 2.4 million of those who entered stated work as the purpose of their visit.
Tajikistan has not published data on remittances this year, but it is safe to say that it is still one of the most remittance-dependent countries in the world in terms of the money relative to GDP, a title it has in the past vied for with Kyrgyzstan and Nepal.
Economists warn that when remittances outstrip exports in value, the effect is one similar to Dutch disease -- when dependence on a dominant sector makes a given economy vulnerable to external shocks.
For Tajikistan, that dependence is compounded by the fact that those remittances are overwhelmingly from Russia, whose economy has seen shocks in the past from commodity price plunges as well as sanctions applied by Western countries over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, leading to dramatic reductions in monthly transfers back to Tajikistan.
And it is potential economic slumps in Russia, argues Umarov, that remain the biggest long-term question mark for the sustainability of Tajikistan's remittance fix.
The worst of all shocks was probably the coronavirus pandemic, which left hundreds of thousands of Central Asian migrants literally stranded in Russia with little or no money for food and rent.
Russian Central Bank data for the first nine months of 2020 suggested that money transfers to Tajikistan fell by as much as 37 percent, although Tajikistan's central bank claimed they decreased by just 9 percent.
Tajiks now considering going to Russia may be comforted to know that the worst of the post-attack reaction may now be over.
Monitoring and interviews conducted by RFE/RL's Tajik Service unearthed fewer instances of violence and intimidation against Tajiks in the last week, and more support on social networks in Russia for hardworking Tajik migrants.
Officials may be softening their tone, too.
Shortly after the attack, a lawmaker in Russia's State Duma called for a visa regime for Tajiks, while powerful Russian Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev stated last week that Ukraine had been recruiting mercenaries in Tajikistan to fight against Russia -- comments that prompted a rebuttal from the Tajik Foreign Ministry.
But there were no notable anti-Tajik statements from top-level Russian politicians this week, while a representative of the Orsk city department of the Emergency Situations Ministry, Irina Panaistova, made a point on April 10 of thanking a local Tajik diaspora group for its massive aid drive amid floods that have devastated the region.
Not that Panaistova's quotes were widely picked up by Russian media.
