Postcard from Bishkek

I have a confession to make … my diary for today had a mistake … and it is probably a result of my bad handwriting. I had today, 16th April, down as the birthday of Kyrgystan’s version of “The History Man” – Professor Vladimir Mikhailovich Ploskikh … in fact it should have been 10th April.  It’s […]

I have mentioned, several times, that there used to be a website which stated that “Kyrgyzstan is not particularly well endowed with festivals” … which, in my opinion, is grossly unfair.  They may not always be the best organized affairs, but there are a wide variety of festivals giving visitors the chance to see (and […]

Today. 21st March, happens to be World Poetry Day.  The day was inaugurated by UNESCO in 1999 to recognize the  unique ability of poetry to capture the creative spirit of the human mind. The Day is also intended to support linguistic diversity through poetic expression and to offer endangered languages the opportunity to be heard within their […]

The Kyrgyz poet Esengul Ibraev was born into a farming family in the village of Chet Nur, in the Naryn oblast,  on 16th March 1934.  He died on 5th August, 2005, but had he lived, then yesterday would have been his eightieth birthday. A new book has been published to commemorate the anniversary.

I am not sure if there is a recognized collective noun to describe a gathering of Prime Ministers  … in my search I came up with a number of humourous suggestions, but I would would like to suggest one … at least for Kyrgyz Prime Ministers … a Pony of Prime Ministers.  If you can have a […]

Konstantin Petrovich Kaufman was born on 19th February, 1818, (O.S. – that is according to the Julian Calendar … in most of the world where the Gregorian Calendar operated it was 2nd March) – although some sources suggesting it was one day later. He was to play a vital role in the Russian expansion into […]

Some years ago I went on a trip and one of the places where stayed was in a homestay.  On the television that particular evening there happened be a performance by one of the leading manaschi … and our hostess, shamefacedly lowered her voice and almost whispering told me a secret … “I don’t really […]

In a previous postcard, written to commemorate the birthday of Pyotr Semenov, (the Russian explorer whose accounts of his journey and the samples he took back to St. Petersburg opened the Tien Shan Mountains to Western science – for which he was given the honourary title Tienshansky), I gave a summary of his first foray […]

Today would have marked the birthday of an interesting character in Kyrgyzstan’s history: Djumabekov Asankulovovich Asankulov, who served two terms as the head of the KGB in Kyrgyzstan, (from 1967-78 and 1989-1991). The KGB, (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti – Committee for State Security), was the main security agency for the Soviet Union from 1954 – when it […]

Apart from the fact that it was in 1901, we don’t know exactly when Yusuf Abdakhmanovich Abdrahmanov was born, but we do know that he died on 18th February, 1938. Abdrahmanov was an important politician and statesman in the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic, rising to the position of Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars […]