The article is devoted to the study of trends in the population of cities in Tajikistan in the post-Soviet period. It analyzes the dynamics of the number of residents of the country's largest cities and based on the construction of Zipf curves, estimates the state of the urban settlement system for 1989-2019. The change in the ratio of 5 groups of cities in the country with different population over this period was determined and the features of their placement were revealed. The article describes the multi-vector growth of the number of cities in the Republic for the identified groups of cities, as well as the features of development and the main reasons for uneven changes in the number of inhabitants and distribution across the country.Ст...