Postcard from Bishkek

Last month, President Atambaev took part in a ceremony in Tokmok, unveiling a monument to to the prominent statesman and public figure, Sultan Ibraimovich Ibraimov, who was the President of the Council of Ministers – the equivalent of the Prime Minister – of the Kirghiz Socialist Soviet Republic for two years until his death in […]

Tomorrow is a big day for Kyrgyzstan – Independence Day.  Although I’ve already written a postcard about the public holiday, I thought that it would be appropriate to take a look at the events in Moscow that led to Kyrgyzstan breaking its bonds with the former Soviet Union at then end of August, 1991. Before I […]

On 24th May, 1900, a ship was launched from the Admiralty Shipyard in St. Petersburg, a two masted, three funneled cruiser that was to play that was to play a role in the October Revolution of 1917, and is now preserved as a museum in the same harbour where she was built: the Aurora. Actually, […]

Under the Soviet regime, content of the “News” was strictly controlled – and almost anything that could be considered to be negative was duly censored.  As a result there was little known about episodes of social unrest and disorder within the Union, yet alone in the wider world beyond the country’s borders. In the mid […]

Today marks the 80th anniversary of the birth of Absamat Masalievich Masaliev who served as the leader of the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic in the final years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Kyrgyzstan became an independent state. Following independence he served as the leader of the Party of Communists of Kyrgyzstan until […]

One of the popular photo opportunities in Bishkek used to be the MIG fighter outside the headquarters of the National Guard on Kievskaya Street … although, these days, people tend to nonchalantly pass it by. There are several examples of pensioned military equipment turned into monuments in Kyrgyzstan, for example: this MIG; another MIG fighter on the […]

Sunday marked the anniversary of Mikhail Vasilievich Frunze in 1885 and yesterday was the anniversary of the renaming the city of Frunze as Bishkek. Both of would have been natural choices for a postcard, but I have already written about the famous Red Army General, (uhh … twice actually), the change of name and, for that […]

  It is probable that the American Black writer and social activist, James Mercer Langston Hughes, (more commonly known as simply Langston Hughes : February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967), never actually visited Kyrgyzstan on his journey through Central Asia … but the names of towns in the Ferghana valley echo throughout the short but vivid account of his travels […]

The Orthodox Church seems to be getting more active – or at least I am hearing of more events. One of the reasons ius that some of our staff are devout Orthodox Christians who not only attend Church on Sundays and High Holidays, but take their faith very seriously … and knowing that my degree […]

Yesterday, I came across an article in the Vecherniye Bishkek newspaper, (Evening Bishkek – the cities largest newspaper), about Turar Ryskulov, a Soviet politician who held many important posts in the fledgling Soviet Union before he was executed in 1938.  It was quite a long article, and in Russian, so it took me a while […]