Postcard from Bishkek

Seventy years ago, 27th January, 1944, saw the end of the great battles of the Second World War … the Siege of Leningrad. It was one of the the longest and most destructive and costly sieges in all human history, (according to some estimates there were as many as one and a half million casualties), […]

Back in 1932, on 27th December, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution “On the establishment of a single passport system to the USSR” and mandatory residency passports (Propiska). That’s the reason why today is considered the professional holiday for the employees of the Passport and Visa […]

Tucked away behind the National Library, in a small square on the corner of Tynystanovna and Funze streets, there is an interesting, albeit anonymous monument. Anonymous, in that it bears no inscription to tell the passers by who the notable worthy is that is depicted rising out of the pink granite plinth. The lack of […]

Abdynasyra Elebesova was born into a poor peasant family in the village of Kairma in the Djumgal valley, on 5th December, 1912.  He was one of four children – with a brother and two sisters. He was to play an important role in the establishment of Soviet power, laying the foundation  of the economy and […]

On 28th November, 1820, a young boy was born in the town of Barmen in the Kingdom of Prussia, (today it is known as Wuppertal in Germany), Frederick Engels. Although he was the son of an influential and relatively affluent businessman, (a cotton manufacturer), he developed an interest in revolutionary politics and dropped out of […]

Opposite the Kyrgyz Agrarian Academy, on Mederova Street, (in the Southern part of town,  near the junction with Sovietskaya – nowadays renamed after Baaytik Baatyr,) there is a Statue which has a striking feature – a long flowing handlebar moustache which surmounts a full beard.  It’s a statue of the Biologist Konstantin Scriabin. It faces […]

Tucked away beside the Semetei Youth Center in Bishkek is a small monument, a stele made from a block of red granite, with a plaque bearing a simple message dedicating the monument to the victims of Political Repression. It has been the subject of some minor controversy over the last year or so. One of […]

They say that moving house is one of the three most stressful experiences that a person can go through.  On 1st November, 1800 John Adams moved into a new home but he probably had plenty of other stressful things to worry about apart from that … he was, after all, President of the United States […]

At the intersection of Prospects Chui and Molodaya Gvardia, (The Avenue of the Young Guards), in downtown Bishkek, there is a striking memorial depicting two soldiers on a granite pedestal – a young Russian in a Red Army helmet, dressed in an Army coat and boots, holding a rifle in his hands. Next to him […]

I don’t often spend time pouring over laws and regulations, but a recent article in the newspaper Slovo Kyrgyzstan, (an official, Government newspaper), sent me scurrying to the Toktom legal database … The law in particular was the Criminal Code of the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic, (Kyrgyz SSR). It was passed in 1960 – Toktom doesn’t seem […]