The difficulties of life in Tajikistan are compounded by environmental and political insecurities which have operated in tandem since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Based on seventeen months of fieldwork, this paper explores intra-community resource conflicts and processes of collective action in the high-mountain communities of rural Tajikistan. Tracing the history of the conflicts of land tenure and water allocation, I argue that much of the negotiation around resources has taken place in reaction to older forms of tenure in place during the Soviet period. These forms, while not entirely eroding public trust, inhibited then establishment of institutions of collective problem-solving at the local levels. In the case of my primary field-site, a village located in the Bartang Valley in the Western Pamirs, I study the effects of a land grab by political elites who took advantage of the chaos afforded by the fall of the Soviet Union. These developments pushed the villagers to work for a full decollectivization effort to put an end to such actions. Thus, new forms of collective action have come about in order to address these and many other issues that have arisen in recent years. My contention in this paper is that while new institutional forms of resource management are coming into being in post-Soviet Tajikistan, they continue to be burdened by the legacies of the Soviet past and the new uncertainties of the present, which have undercut successful and long-term institutional action. Since natural disasters and other livelihood challenges resulting from climate change present new types of risks which must be addressed through socio-political means, these questions take on a sense of urgency for daily life in mountain communities in Tajikistan. It remains to be seen whether village-level organizations and other institutions of collective action will prove adequate to meet these challenges.