Postcard from Bishkek

As I review the news coming in from Egypt, reports and analysis, I see that reporters are making quite a few references to Kyrgyzstan.

I suppose that is natural, and understandable, as yet another government faces outbursts of public discontent, with calls on the President and government to resign and the resulting disorder on the streets.  One report asks about the “domino effect” and what the fallout will be across the Middle East and about the implications for other Arab states and, of course, for Israel.  Some articles have looked back in time to see how this particular “domino” fits in to the history of popular revolutions such as in Kyrgyzstan and more recently Tunisia.

A couple of articles have also mentioned that from February 1959 to June 1961, President Hosni Mubarak underwent training as a pilot in the Soviet Union, attending both, a training school in Moscow and another at the Kant Air Base, near Bishkek in what is now Kyrgyzstan (but was then one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union).  (In fact the airfield at Kant is, today, home to the Russian 5th Air Army’s 999th Air Base which was established in response to the American base at Manas airport.)  Mubarak had qualified as a pilot in 1950 and served in the Egyptian Air Force as a fighter pilot and later flew bombers.  In the Soviet Union he qualified to fly the Ilyushin Il-28 and Tupolev Tu-16 jet bomber, two of the planes which the Soviet Union was supplying to Egypt at the time.

In 2007, there was a proposal to establish a Mubarak Museum in Tokmok to commemorate his time here, but as far as I know, nothing ever came of it.  I was approached by the editors of Discovery Kyrgyzstan and asked if I could an article about it for the magazine.   We asked about it at the Ministry of Culture, but they didn’t know anything about it, and so I asked one of our drivers who lived in Tokmok if he could find it.  After two days of driving around the town, visiting the town museum and other official bodies he reported back that no-one seemed to have any information of the proposal.

Mubarak wasn’t the only former President to have some time in Kyrgyzstan at the Pilot’s Training School.  President Hafez al-Assad of Syria, (1930-2000), also trained here in the 1960’s.  The training school was an important institution in the Khirghiz SSR, and according to one news report that I have seen it raised as much money as all the other enterprises in the republic.  After a break of the Soviet Union it basically stopped operating, although a lot of the helicopters, in particular, that were based here at the time, remained in the country for several years.

More recently, amongst the other students at the training was a contingent of some 80 Ethiopian pilots who were sent by their Marxist government to the Soviet Union for training in 1989.  Within two years, both the Soviet Union and the Marxistr regime in Ethiopia had collapsed and the eighty students found themselves stranded in Kyrgyzstan.  Some have emigrated, others found asylum abroad, some have died here and nine have settled down and still live here.

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In addition to Presidents Assad and Mubarak, there another former President with close ties with Kyrgyzstan: Alexander Dubcek of Czechoslovakia. One review of Dubcek’s autobiography, “Hope Dies Last” started with the comment  that:

“Even if he had not been at the center of the drama in 1968, Dubcek’s story would be fascinating in itself.”

The “drama” of 1968 with which his name will always be associated, and which made him a prominent and influential figure in both the history of his native land, Czechoslovakia, and in Twentieth Century world history in general has been called the “Prague Spring”.

Dubcek had risen to become President of his country and during the early part of 1968, he presided over a number of reforms  -  which he is alleged to have described as trying to create “socialism with a human face”.  The regime in Moscow, and many of their allies, were far from happy about the reforms.  He tried to assure everyone that the Czechs were still good communists and allies of Moscow – and that the reforms were merely an internal matter.  Brezhnev, the Communist Party Secretary, complained that Dubcek had misled him and was putting the whole of the communist world in jeopardy.  On August 21st 1968, troops of the USSR and their allies in the Warsaw Pact crossed the Czech borders and invaded the country to bring to the end political experiment.

The invasion of the countries by it’s supposed allies caught everyone by surprise.  His surprise is reflected in the fact that he is supposed to have asked “How can they do this to me?” when he heard the news.  The response to the invasion on the streets of Czechoslovakia was of shock – and “passive resistance”.  The world rallied to condemn the invasion – even Communist Romania, that had stood out and refused to participate. - but the reaction of the world remained verbal … and the Warsaw Pact troops remained.

Dubcek and his politburo were arrested and taken to Moscow where they with Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders.  Although he was later appointed as Ambassador to Turkey, it was a short lived respite – lasting just one year – before he was “exiled” to a lowly official post in the countries forestry service for twenty years.  He re-emerged into public life once more when the “Velvet” revolution which brought a new reforming administration under the presidency of playwright Vaclav Havel, being invited to become leader of the Social Democratic Party and serving for a time as speaker of the Czechoslovak parliament.

He was awarded the prestigious Sakahrov Peace Price in 1989.

Mikhail Gorbachev, (who went on to become the leader of the Soviet Union – and is said to identify with Dubcek says that he ”suffered the fate of all reformers”), was sent to Czechoslovakia to take part in the “re-education” process following the invasion.  The account of his experiences show that the people were far from satisfied with the intervention – and continued a “silent protest” of non-cooperation and passive resistance.  He tells of visits to factories and other places where people stood with their backs to their Russian visitors – unwilling to talk to them.

Some commentators have pointed to the Prague Spring as a precursor to the event which led up to the dissolution of the Soviet Union some 22 years later.  It was evidently a sign of the desire for reform of a centrally controlled, command driven society … seen throughout the communist world during the 1990′s and more recently in the “colour revolutions” in the “newly independent states”.

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As the reviewer of Dubcek’s autobiography pointed out, however, this was just one episode in an otherwise fascinating and eventful life – and it took place a long way from Kyrgyzstan.  There is, however, a link between those events and the Kyrgyz Republic in that Alexander Dubcek spent many of his formative years in Kyrgyzstan, in Bishkek.

Dubcek’s parents, Stefan and Pavlina, were orignially from Slovakia but met and married each other in the USA.  In Dubcek’s words they were: “a pair of Slovak socialist dreamers who happened to have emigrated to Chicago” where Stefan worked as a cabinet maker, and was also active in the labour movement.  When America entered the First World War, Stefan refused to serve in the army and was arrested.  He spent fourteen months in an internment camp in Texas.

In 1921 they returned to Slovakia in search of work because of the poor prospects and conditions which were prevelat in the US during the Great Depression following the end of the war.  A few months later, on 27th November, Alexander, was born in the town of Uhrovec.

Stefan became one of the founder members of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, and in the spring of 1925 the family moved to the Soviet Union - in response to the appeal for workers to help build socialism.  Alexander was only three and half years at this time, and his brother, Julius, was only one and a half years older.  The train journey took a month to complete – and must have been a difficult journey for a family with two small children.  Half a week was taken up during the transfer from Polish  to Russian rolling stock at the border.

What they discovered upon their arrival was hardly encouraging and the reality they were met was far from what had been the picture they had been presented with back home:

• The latter stages of the journey had passed through a large area of seemingly endless sand and rocks which they were told was called “Hungry Desert”, and some members of the group were beginning to get demoralised.   (Fortunately, as they approached their final destination the scenery changed as rivers, meadows and cottages – signs of human habitation - began to appear.)  Then as they reached their journey’s end, snow began to fell – a late April flurry.
• And there was still 4km to the town of Pishkek!
• Although the original plan had been to establish a collective farm in the Prezhevalsk (Karakol) region.  Discussions had taken place in Moscow, Tashkent and Pishpek (as Bishkek was then called).  It must have been a surprise when they had to announce their arrival.
• They were short of funds – it is said that they had only 323 roubles between them.
• Although they had been told that Prezhervalsk was as a “climatically healthy region” – what they experienced was malaria, contagion and the death of several of the children.  There was a shortage of water - throughout the city.  There was no doctor available – and
• they had no-where to live.

This last point was settled – when they were assigned ten cottages, made from “glina” (clay bricks) in the former military camp (for a group which numbered 300) which were in a very dilapidated state.  Conditions for the new arrivals were difficult and they lived together as in a commune.

It was important to find some way of supporting themselves and the group settled down to work – building workshops and a sawmill.  It wasn’t easy because the materials were not readily available and had to be transported great distances.  For the first few months they received no wages.  Later, they received a loan of 20,000 roubles from a bank.

People ate raw sparrow’s eggs.  To find food for their pigs they rummaged about in the local rubbish dumps.

Then, in the next year, fire destroyed most of their workshops.

According to Dubcek, some of their number decide that “enough was enough” and decided to return home – or to go to somewhere else in Russia.  The Dubcek boys, however, accepted Pishpek as their home and, like most small boys, got into a number of “scrapes” and adventures: riding on a coach drawn by a camel which ran out of control and had to be stopped by a local; Julius almost drowning when he was trying to find out how thick the ice on the lake was.

The family of Alexander Dubcek`s future wife arrived in one of the later parties to join the group in the subsequent years.

Pavlina, Dubcek’s mother, was elected as leader of the women’s committee which was responsible for the children – in all there were almost 140 of them.  A school was started – and originally there were fifty children attending classes.  At the beginning, there were no textbooks, paper or pencils.  Alexander started to attend classes school at the age of eight, in 1929.  Classes were conducted in Slovak and Czech, but later on he was taught in Russian as well.

In 1932, Interhelpa sent Alexander’s father to Moscow for a course and later took advantage of an opportunity to move to Gorky in Russia where he worked in the GAZ automobile factory.  There, he had a possibility to work with American engineers preparing inner parts of bodyworks and filling the panels which were made of wood. In Gorky the family rented a house in the settlement named Ruttenberg.  His mother did not go to work.

Alexander was very sad, he was only 12 years old and was leaving the only home he could remember.  The boys attended a much better secondary school where discipline was much more strict.  He was a good student, he played water polo, hockey, he went skating played football in a junior team of GAZ.

In 1935, Julius, (Alexander’s brother – who was 15 years old at the time), was involved in a street fight with boys from another part of town … and he hurt one of the others.  Their parents feared that Julius would be strictly punished according to Soviet laws and so the family made a decision that he and Pavlina would return to Czechoslovakia.  They left at night and, back in Slovakia they stayed at the house of his uncle Michal.  With his uncle’s support, Julius finished school and became a mechanic and a turner.  (Later, the cooperative farm was nationalized, his uncle lost everything and he committed suicide.)

Alexander was not interested in politics any more than other boys his age.  In his memoirs, however, he describes how they were taught to admire revolutionary heroes – who were suddenly declared villains, put on trial, and executed. He and his schoolmates were instructed to cut out the photos of these former heroes - ”the unwanted” and to cover-up their names where they occurred in the text.  Apparently the teachers carefully collected and counted the pages so that none were missed.

In the autumn of 1938, the Supreme Soviet issued a decree that the foreigners living in Russia had to either accept Soviet citizenship or leave the country.  Despite his socialist feelings, Stefan decided to leave the USSR and took with him his 17 year-old son.  He still considered Czechoslovakia as “home” – that he and Alexander were ”Slovaks living abroad” … but the situation was more complicated for Alexander.  Once again he was leaving behind him the country that he knew, that held all his memories – both good and bad, and was venturing out into the unknown.

Back in Czechoslovakia he became an apprentice in the Skoda factory and in 1939 he joined the Communist Party – which was banned at that time.  Then came the Second World War, and both of the Dubcek brothers were active as communist guerrillas fighting the Nazi occupation.  In the winter of 1944-45 he fought in the Slovak uprising against the Germans, during which he was twice wounded and his brother Julius was killed

After the war Czechoslovakia fell into the Eastern Block - under the sway of USSR.  Alexander worked in a factory and was active as secretary of various local Communist committees. In the early 1950′s he was appointed to the central committee of the Slovak Communist Party.  He studied law in Bratislava and later received a doctorate in Political Studies in Moscow.  By 1964 he had risen to the chairmanship of the Slovak Communist Party.

In 1967 the Czechoslovak Communist leader, Novotny, was dismissed and Dubcek was appointed leader of Czechoslovak Communism early in 1968.

However, since 1964 he had begun to adopt “unconventional”, liberal economic views, (for a high Communist official, that is), in that he saw a substantial role for private enterprises. He also began to openly associate with intellectuals and artists.  He soon authorised lifting controls over the media, trades unions, economic enterprises and the courts. There were many such extensions of liberalisation in politics, the economy, and the arts giving rise to the so-called  “Prague Spring” where civil freedoms seemed to flourish in a state that still officially declared itself to be Communist.  A crisis was developing … which is where we began his story.

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Alexander Dubcek died on November 7, 1992 aged 70 – of injuries received in a car crash.

His time spent in, and affection for, Kyrgyzstan is still remembered and may have contributed to the good relationships that have existed between the two republics – especially in the post Soviet era.

Tags: For_the_Record, History, Kyrgyzstan, People, Soviet_Union