Postcard from Bishkek

On International Day of Peace, (sometimes known as World Peace Day), I thought I would take a brief look at one of Bishkek’s main streets: Peace Avenue … otherwise known as Prospect Mira.

In fact it nearly wasn’t called that … in the heady days following Independence, many of the capital’s streets were renamed.  Someone had the temerity to suggest renaming Prospect Mira and giving it something more Kyrgyz than this Soviet name … until, that is, somebody pointed out that such a move might send the wrong signals, implying that Kyrgyzstan was not introduced in Peace. It was wisely decided to leave the name as it was … although you will now see plenty of references to Tynchtyk Prospect, this is just a rendition of the name in Kyrgyz.

 

Bishkek streets were laid out in a rectangular grid as the result of being planned by army engineers back in the 1880′s.  Some streets went North-South and others East-West.   Prospect Mira  is one of the main North-South routes linking the city centre with the suburbs on the southern outskirts of town, one of the few places where it ios possible to cross the railway which effectively divided the city for many years).  

Prospect Mira is actually outside the main city areas encompassed in those original town plans, but the long, wide, straight road climbing steadily towards the mountains still maintains the general North-South orientation.  Travelling from the City Centre South along Prospect Manas, towards the mountains, Prospect Mira starts from where the road passes under the railway and Lev Tolstoy Street.  

As the road climbs from the cutting underneath the bridges, on the right is the site of the Lenin Works, one of the major industrial plants which was evacuated here during the Second World War, away from the path of the advancing German armies.  The plant continued to be a major manufacturer of heavy equipment following the end of  war right up until the present, although it no longer turns out the same level or volume of production.          

Just past that is the building of GosRegister, the State registration service which, amongst other things, keeps records of property ownership.

Traffic lights at a T-junction help to regulate traffic city along Gorkova Street, past the Botanical Gardens and the East of the city.

A bridge takes the road across the Ala Archa River which passes through the City from the valley some 40km to the South.

Next, on the left is the site of a former sports stadium, where a large trade centre is being under construction.

On the other side of the road is the plant of the Bishkek Champagne Combinat, which manufactures Cognac, Vodka and Balsaam as well as the fizzy wine that gives it its name.  It is not a very imposing building, but is easy to identify by the statue outside the gates of a girl with a bunch of grapes.

Another set of traffic lights at a T-junction regulates traffic turning off along Gagarin Street, past the Surgical Hospital and to the Western suburbs of the city.

The building with the tall pillars on the right just after Gargarin Street is the Bishkek Humanitarian University, one of Bishkek’s leading Institutes of Higher Education.

Amongst the shopping centres and apartment blocks on the right hand side there is the renovated Manas Cinema.  It opened its doors in 1966 and at that time was the largest widescreen cinema in the Soviet Union with a hall seating 740 people.  The modern cinema has a capacity for 550 people with a large screen, (as tall as a three storey building – the biggest in Central Asia), as well as two smaller halls.  It has facilities for 3D films and 8 channel sound system.

Over the road, on the left hand side is the corpus of the Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University, which looks like a large rectangular office block.  A little further on is the campus of the Technical University named after Razzakov, which has a more traditional design.

The next set of traffic lights mark the intersection with Ahunbaeva Street – the Inner Ring Road which carries traffic to the southern end of  Sovietskaya and as far as Almatinskaya Street in the East … and the suburb of Djal to the West.

Not far beyond the intersection is the turn off to the Old Airport, (once the main city civil airport for Frunze before the Manas airport was built), and the Ak Keme Hotel.  At the junction there is a statue of the Kyrgyz hero Ormon Khan … and outside the low rise Stalin style airport building is another statue of a Pilot.  On the other side of the road is one of Bishkek’s mosaics … depicting people of different nationalities that welcome visitors arriving at the airport as they made their way to the city centre.

From this point on, to the East, (that is on the left hand side of the road), there are few buildings, and open land prevails as Prospect Mira climbs inexorably up towards the mountains.  On the right are a number, interspersed between modern apartment blocks are the embassies of Kazakhstan and the United States.

Set back from the main road is the Manas Ordo complex – a sort of architectural park where newly weds come for photographs for the album as they “promenade”.

Then comes the Hotel Issyk Kul – once one of the main hotels in Bishkek, built for Part apparatchiks and party functions.  Now it is run under two separate administrations.

Next is the entrance to the former VDNH Exhibition Centre, which now houses one of the territories of the Bishkek Free Economic Zone and the Flamingo amusement park – Bishkek’s own “theme park”, albeit on a small scale.

The traffic lights at the crossroads mark the edge of the city.  To the East the road curves round towards South Gate at the end of Sovietskaya, whilst that to the East is the one-way system which takes traffic to Ala Archa.  Straight ahead is the road carrying the one way system back from Ala Archa.

The gates visible in the distance are to the Presidential Residence … the official homes of the President and various members of the state apparatus, (such as: the Prime Minister, Speaker of the Parliament, Prosecutor General, Deputy Prime Minister, Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Chairman of the National Security Committee, the Mayor of Bishkek and the Chief Justice), as well as several other notable persons.

 

 

Tags: For_the_Record, Kyrgyzstan