Fetisov and the Greenest City on Earth
Bishkek is known as the Greenest City on Earth, and it owes this honour, largely, to one man, Alexei Fetisov.
Aleksei Fetisov has been described by Daniel Prior as “one of Pishpek’s most brilliant and energetic early enthusiasts”. He is credited with creating the “central greenway” – centered around Prospekt Erkindik – and laying the foundation for Bishkek being labeled in Soviet times as “the greenest city on earth” with 100 square meters of greenery for every inhabitant.
A botanist, horticulturist, archaeologist and educator – he was born in 1842 and arrived in Pishkek (Bishkek) from Saint Petersburg in 1879 having been invited by the then Governor of Semirechiye – General Kolpankovsky.
Shortly after arriving he set about planting the first city garden and orchard – which is now Panfilov Park, behind the White House. In it’s heyday it housed over 100,000 specimens and a 1913 guidebook to all of Russia reported that “The sight to see in all the city is the municipal garden”. In 1889 Fetisov founded a horticultural school, based in the grounds, giving lectures to the local Kyrgyz youth, using the gardens as both a laboratory and a classroom until his death. The school continued in operation until 1919, most of the plants having been killed of in the bitter frosts of 1916 and 1918.
In 1881 he set about converting a large swamp water-land to the North of the city into a large park – Karagachova Roshcha on the northern bank of the Be-Che-Ke – The Bolshoi Chuiskiy Canal, or Grand Chui Canal. The park has been enlarged somewhat since Fetisov’s day.
Another park which the city owes to this pioneer is the Children’s Park – Dietsky Park – just off Sovietskaya to the North of Jibek Jolu. This is based on a hop plantation which he started in 1885 and it was converted into a park in 1894 by the then mayor of Pishkek Ilya Terentev.
Perhaps his greatest gift to the city was the boulevard now known as Prospekt Erkindik. He planted a double row of silver poplars on a stretch of a filled in streambed. The original alley of silver poplars has long since disappeared – they were replaced by oaks trees in about 1904. After his death in 1894, others took on the work of enlarging the project and named it “The Boulevard”. Later it was renamed Dzerzhinsky after the notorious founder of the Cheka – Lenin’s secret police and the forerunner of the Committee for State Security, the KGB. After Independence in 1992, it received its current name – Prospekt Erkindik, or Freedom Avenue.
He travelled widely in the Tien Shan collecting specimens and writing scholarly articles about them.
As an amateur archaeologist, he was the first person to investigate the ruins at Burana and the Nestorian Christian cemetery near Pishpek.
He even turned his hand at making cheese – Ilya Terentev, Pishkek’s first mayor, records in an article in the Semirechiye Oblast Data Book the Fetisov made about 980kg of “Swiss Cheese” a year.
Bishkek