Archive sections: ‘Second World War’
Today is a big day here in Kyrgyzstan … it’s Dehn Pobeda – Victory Day – a public holiday … and this year it will be bigger than ever because it is a Jubilee – the seventieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War … or, as it is known here, the Velikiye Otchestveniye Voiniye […]
Tomorrow is going to a big day here in Kyrgyzstan … it’s Dehn Pobeda – Victory Day – a public holiday … and this year it will be bigger than ever because it is a Jubilee – the seventieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War … well, in Europe, at least … well, […]
Today is International Workers Day – commonly associated with the Labour, movement but complete with links back to Spring festivities in Pagan Europe – which was one of the main holidays during the Soviet period. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the holiday has not been so prominently celebrated. This year, in particular, overshadowing […]
According to Pravda, the two greatest events of the last century for Russia were the victory during the Great Patriotic War, (the Second World War), and the first manned flight into space. As we approach the seventieth anniversary of the first of those events, there are a lot of events commemorating the end of the war, […]
To the West of Bishkek there are a series of settlements that form a continuous ribbon development along the main road towards Kara Balta (and the turn off for the Too Ashu Pass and the main Bishkek-Osh road), the Kazakh border and on to Tashkent. One of those settlements is the town of Shopokov. It’s […]
A recent report in the Daily Telegraph caught my eye … apparently the residents of a small rural town in southern England were surprised to discover that their housing estate, built back in the 1960’s, is shaped like a swastika. Nobody seems to have noticed the resemblance before – until, that is, it was spotted in […]
For 50 days in 1943, (between July 5th and August 23rd), one of the biggest battles of the Second World War was contested between the German Wehrmacht and the Soviet Red Army. Some say that it was the biggest armoured battle, not just of the war but of all time – involving something like 700 […]
Cholponbayev Tuleberdiev was born on 13th April, 1922, into a peasant family in the village of Chymgent in the Talas region of Kyrgyzstan. Don’t bother looking for Chymgent on a map, however, because it is now called Cholponbayev … in his honour, This was just one of the honours that was to be bestowed on […]
Today would have been the 90th birthday of Dair Asanovich Asanov if he hadn’t passed away in September 2009. The anniversary has been nominated as one of the thirteen to be officially commemorated this year.
Today is a national holiday in Kyrgyzstan: Defenders of the Fatherland Day, or more simply Army Day or even, Man’s Day. To a small group, however, the day has a more poignant significance. It was on February 23rd, 1944, when Beria ordered the expulsion of the entire Chechen and Ingush populations, (about half a million […]
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