Tajikistan declares independence from the Soviet Union.

Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. Dushanbe is the capital and most populous city. Tajikistan borders Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east and is narrowly separated from Pakistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor. It has a population of over 10.7 million people.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until it dissolved in 1991. During its existence, it was the largest country by area, extending across eleven time zones and sharing borders with twelve countries, and the third-most populous country. An overall successor to the Russian Empire, it was nominally organized as a federal union of national republics, the largest and most populous of which was the Russian SFSR. In practice, its government and economy were highly centralized. As a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), it was the flagship communist state. Its capital and largest city was Moscow.