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This article examines the history of Nurek City in Tajikistan, built to accommodate the works constructing the world’s tallest dam starting in 1961. One of many “new cities” constructed in the post‑war USSR, Nurek began life as a messy construction site but eventually became a city Soviet officials felt reflected Soviet promises of urban modernity. Drawing on sources from archives in Moscow and Tajikistan, as well as oral history and published sources, this article traces how the various problems faced in the course of construction, particularly over the retention of labor, led to the building site gradually evolving into a well‑ordered city. It then goes on to examine the problems of inequality between the city, populated primarily by workers from the European USSR, and locals living in nearby villages. It shows that local activists lobbied to extend the benefits of social welfare to the surrounding countryside. Not all aspects of the welfare state were equally well received by the population, and the story reveals some of the dynamics of engagement and resistance with Soviet development in the region. This article uses the story of Nurek to examine the intersection of urban construction, social welfare, equality, and internationalism in the USSR from the 1960s to the 1980s.

A Most Beautiful City for the World’s Tallest Dam