Changing Street names
What street?
I understood the cri de couer only too well.
I had come across a plea on one of the internet discussion groups from someone who was looking for a complete list of street names here in Bishkek.
There must be a list, I thought. Perhaps the city’s architectural department of the State Registry Service kept one – but I couldn’t find one online. I did come across a website which had a map of the city that dated from 2004 and claimed to have some 743 names indexed … but I didn’t try to go through and count them. So I went looking for a Street atlas of the city and found two, each with about 600 streets listed, (and, no, I didn’t go counting them either); one dating from 2000 and the other from 2010.
That’s important because the authorities have a habit of changing the names every now and again … one list I saw recently had something like 150 that have been renamed since Independence … some of them small backstreets, but quite a few of them are “main streets”. Some of them have changed names several times over the years quite often. Prospect Chui, for example, the main thoroughfare through the city center has had something like seven names:
- Until 1924, it was called Kupecheskoi: Merchant Street;
- In 1924 is was renamed Grazhdanskaya: Civil Street – which seems to give the English phrase “Civvie Street” a whole new meaning;
- It became Joseph Stalin Street in 1938;
- To commemorate the XXII Party congress in 1961, it was rechristened XXII Partciyezda;
- In the summer of 1974 it was divided into two:
- the part from Cholpon Atinskaya in the East, through the city center up to Fuchika Street in the West, (just past Osh Bazaar), was renamed as Lenin Prospect, and
- from this point on to the Western border of the city, the street retained the name of XXII Partciyezda Street; (In 1997, this section of the road was renamed, in honour of the friendly relations with China, after the Chinese leader: Deng Xiaoping)
- After Independence, in 1991, Lenin Prospect was renamed Prospect Chui.
Prospect Erkindik, (Freedom Avenue), has also had a variety of names:
- Until 1924 it was called, simply, “The Boulevard“;
- In 1924 is was renamed Komsomolskaya;
- In 1933 it was renamed once again, this time as Dzerzhinsky Street after the Polish revolutionary and founder of the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB;
- It was reclassified as a Boulevard - with the same name, Dzerzhinsky.
- it was reclassified once again 1979 as Prospect Dzerzhinsky.
- Finally, in 1991 it received its current name, Erkindik, in honour of independence of Kyrgyzstan.
One of the other main streets in the city center, Sovietskaya, is confusing because it is still referred to by virtually everyone as Sovietskaya but, strictly speaking (and notwithstanding some of the signs that stil remain in place), it has been renamed and is now called either Baitik Batyr or Abdrachmanova:
- Until 1919, it was called Market Street,
- In 1919 it was renamed Sovietskaya
- The part south (up) from the railway line was developed in the postwar period and for some time was known as New Sovietskaya, (Novisovietskaya). In 1956, the underpass below the railway was dug out connecting the two parts.
- In 1990 the upper part of the street, from the railway line South (up) to Orto Sai village was renamed Baitik Baatyr after the pro Russian leader of the Solto tribe who played a decisive role in the liberation of Pishpek from the Kokand Khanate in opposed the Kokand Khanat in 1862
- In 2001 the lower part of Sovietskaya, from the railway line North (down) to the Large Chui Canal (Bolshoi Chuiskiy Canal – known to locals as the Be-Che-Ka) was renamed Abdrachmanova after the stateman Djusup Addrachmanov.
The Avenue of the Young Guards, Molodaya Gvardia, which marks the Western end of the city center hasn’t had so many names … but:
- it was known as Atbashinskaya Street, but in 1948
- and was renamed in honour of the Komsomolets of Krasnodon as Molodoya Gvardia Street, (Young Guards Street).
- Then, in 1960 it was reclassified as an Avenue (Prospect) and is hence now known as Prospect Molodaya Gvardia.
On the other hand, Isanova has been known as:
- Giorgievska Street, until 1924;
- In 1924 it was renamed Pushkin Street, after the famous Russian Poet;
- In 1938 it was renamed again as Molotov Street, after the Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union – and the inventor of the “Molotov Cocktail”;
- 1957 saw the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution which brought the Bolsheviks to power – and the street was renamed Sorok Let Oktabrya (“40 years of October”)
- The name “Sorok Let” lasted for 34 years, until 1991, when the street was renamed Isanova Street, after the first Prime Minister of the Kyrgyz Republic – in 1991 – who died suddenly in “mysterious” circumstances in a car accident.
… and Togolok Moldo was:
- originally called Barracks Street because there was a military barracks where it now crosses Toktogula … currently the barracks of the National Guards.
- It is not clear when, but it was then renamed Voroshilova after Kliment Voroshilov, a Soviet political and military leader in the Civil War and who replaced Mikhail Frunze, after his death in 1925, as the People’s Commissar for the Army and Navy and later became Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet – to be replaced in turn by Leonid Brezhnev in 1960.
- in 1957 it was renamed once more, this time as Sports Street.
- and then finally, (at least, for now), in 1960 it was renamed after the famous akyn who appears on the 20 som bank note Togolok Moldo.
Kievskaya – it still is Kievskaya
Incidentally, it’s not just the likes of Lenin, Stalin, Kirov and Derzhinsky that have lost the honour of having a street named after them … Karl Mark and Frederick Engels have also had their Streets renamed, as has the Soviet newspaper Pravda, the Soviet Union itself (Sovietskaya), the October Revolution (Krasnaya Oktabraskaya), both the 40th and 50th anniversaries of the Great October Revolution, the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Kyrgyz SSR, the 22nd Party Congress … and it’s not just names that are associated with the USSR that have changed – even New Street, Progress Street and Almaty have been renamed.
So far, Kievskaya, where my office is located, has kept it’s Soviet name … but I can’t help wondering if and when that might change – it’s an idea that has certainly been mooted. .
Bishkek