Postcard from Bishkek

March 6th, 1958 … and the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic, (one of the 15 constituent republics of the USSR), got itself a new Prime Minister – although he wasn’t actually called that, rather he carried the title, Chairman of the Council of Ministers. The man who assumed the post on that occasion was Kazy Dikambaevich Dikambaev. […]

We take so many everyday things for granted … that, as a result, we forget what marvels they are and how they revolutionized daily life.  Some of them, of course, are major and complex innovations … like computers and the internet … but others are more basic – even so, they have had a significant […]

Uranium is a silvery-grey metallic chemical element which is generally known due to the fact that it is mildly radioactive and for is used in the nuclear industries – including for nuclear weapons. Uranium is mined in various places throughout the world and some sites in Kyrgyzstan were mined during the soviet period, but uranium mining […]

Manas is the hero of the Kyrgyz Epic Saga … and many consider that is fundamental to understanding how the Kyrgyz see themselves. Some years ago I was told something about the epic by someone that I would call a “secular Kyrgyz”, (by which I mean a “Russified Kyrgyz”  … someone who had been born […]

Josef Stalin is, perhaps, one of the most enigmatic characters in Soviet history … one man who was, at the same time, both a hero and a villain. Hero: The leader of the nation for thirty years, (from 1922 until his death in 1953), shaping the nation and bringing it into the modern world, leading […]

It is said that when the Founding Fathers of the United States were considering the position of Head of State, they deliberated long and hard over what to call him, (or her). Given their experience of rebellion against the British crown they wanted to avoid anything that hinted at monarchy … indeed, they wanted to […]

Abdykerim Sydykov is regarded as one of the founders of the Kyrgyz state – with a bust in the Alley of statesmen, with one of the streets in Central Bishkek, and a school named after him. Born on 26th October, 1889, into the aristocracy of the Solto tribe in, what is today, the Alemedin District. […]

Sunday marked two Professional Holidays here in Kyrgyzstan: Fire Services Day and Water Resources Day. Water Resources Day is celebrated annually on the third Sunday in June – and has been since 1995.  It replaced a Soviet “holiday”, the Day of the Meliorator, which had first been established in 1981.  It’s an occasion when attention […]

It was on 10th June, 2008, that Kyrgyzstan lost one of its favourite sons and cultural icon, Chingiz Aitmatov. He was a man of many of many talents.  Born in 1928 in the the village of Sheker in the Talas region of Kyrgyzstan, near the border with Uzbekistan, he began working at the age of […]

Some time ago I was invited to an event in one of Bishkek’s many Universities, the one named in honour of Ishenaly Arabaev. It is one of the oldest and most prestigious Universities in the country – based on six sites located in the city center – the main one being adjacent to the main […]