Postcard from Bishkek

Today, May 5th, is not just a public holiday here in Kyrgyzstan - Constitution Day , but it is also the birthday of such people as:

• Karl Marx, the great theorist behind the social, political and economic theory of Communism,(1818);
• Ferdinand von Richthofen who coined the term Great Silk Road, (1833);
• Klavdia Antipina an anthropologist who was exiled to Central Asia as part of the Stalinist purges and devoted her working life to the study of the nomadic Kyrgyz, their lifestyle and culture, (1904) … and of
• Marat Satievich Temirov – the Kyrgyz Admiral, (1943).     

It may be surprising that a landlocked country in the heart of the world’s largest continent should have produced an Admiral, but Military Service was compulsory in the days of the Soviet Union – technically it still is – and young men from the throughout the Union could find themselves drafted into different branches of the Soviet Armed Forces, and a number of them did find themselves serving in the Russian Navy.  Tenirov was one of them.

He was born,  in a small village Satievich Kazarman in the Naryn oblast, but spent most of his formative years in Issyk Kul.

His father was a party worker,  but he died early leaving his wife with seven children to care for, the young ten year old Marat being the eldest son.  His mother moved to Karakol and opened a boarding school which she named after the famous akyn Toktogul Satylganov, where the young Marat proved to be a good scholar.

On graduating from school, he chose the profession of submariner and entered into the Dzerzhinsky Naval Engineering School in Leningrad.  It is said that he was inspired by a Director of the school who had served in the Navy, by books that he had read … and an affinity with Lake Issyk Kul.

After his training he joined one of the submarine crews in the Northern fleet, serving for some eleven years at sea as an engineer, rising through the ranks to become commander in charge of all the power systems, with responsibility for operational safety of the vessel and life support.

He married and together that had three children, (two sons – one of whom, Artur, followed his father into the Service and apparently for some time was the head of the prestigious Panfilov Division and served in UN Peacekeeping Missions, for example … in Sierra Leone – and a daughter), and five grandchildren.

In 1975, he returned to his native Kyrgyzstan where he worked in several roles, especially training recruits for the Military and becoming the head of the military school in the Republic.  In 1989 was granted promotion to the rank of Rear Admiral.

With the demise of the Soviet Union, the responsibility for coordinating and organizing many of the activities of the Military for the new nation fell onto his shoulders.

He died in 1998 and a street in Bishkek has been named in his honour, a memorial plaque erected on the house where he lived, and a statue erected over his grave in the Ala Arch Cemetery.

 

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