Postcard from Bishkek

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 […]

Something unusual happened last May; the Committee on Science, Culture and Sports of the Jogorku Kenesh, (the parliament), passed a resolution. You might think that there’s nothing unusual in that … after all, that’s what parliament’s do.  It’s their job. This one caught my eye, however, because this one concerned marking the 75th anniversary of […]

In some ways, today is the 179th Anniversary of one of the Russian explorers who helped to open up the heartland of Central Asia – the explorer and naturalist Alexei Pavlovich Fedchenko – also known as Mabuza. It was 7th February, 1844, in Irkutsk, (to be fair -apparently me sources suggest it might have been […]

Visitors to Bishkek are sometimes surprised that we have a Theater of Opera and Ballet which maintains companies – especially when it is remembered that neither ballet nor opera really feature in traditional Kyrgyz culture. Although a lot of attention is paid to Bubusara, the Kyrgyz ballerina who appears on the five som banknote – […]

Some time ago I was looking for something on the internet and. you know how it is when you are surfing, I found myself on a webpage about something totally different.  In this case it was a geographical site … and I had landed up on a page about “places named after people” … and […]

Yesterday I came across one of the saddest posts that I have seen for a long time … It was a short post – just a single paragraph comprising three sentences and a youtube videoclip.  It was about Jenishbek Rayimbaev … and told how he had been “forced” to be photographed for money in Osh bazaar […]

Over the New Year we got a piece of surprising news … Some enterprising thieves decided to help themselves to a painting hanging in the Museum of Fine Arts.  It seems that a corporate event was being held in the Museum and, once it was over, the curators noticed that a painting, (Crimean Seascape painted […]

Although one source says that the poet and novelist Mukai Elebaev was born in 1905, but other sources suggest that it was on 15th January, 1906 that he first saw the light of day. When I saw the discrepancy, my first thought was that it was simply down, (once again), to the difference resulting from […]

Today is the birthday  of Jumash Dudusaliev – not just any birthday, but as he turns 20 it is an especially important birthday, what is known here as a Kroogliy data. We’ve been hearing quite a bit about him recently. Although he was born here in Kyrgyzstan, in Bishkek, ten years ago he received a […]