What did the Russians ever do for us?
I am sure there are many plucky overland travellers who have driven from Europe to Central Asia. I like to think Eric Newby started the trend in 1956 (see ‘A short Walk in the Hindu Kush’, when he and Hugh Carless drove a ‘brand new station wagon … painted in light tropical colours’ from London to Afghanistan) but no doubt there have been plenty of others, both before and after. We also know cyclists who have pedalled from Europe to Kyrgyzstan, and who report a vibrant and friendly camaraderie which supports them along the way.
But most of us take the less adventurous option and fly by commercial airline, even if we are beaten up by our carbon consciences. We say ‘less adventurous’ but struggling through Heathrow is no longer a walk in the park and there is that terrible frisson of fear when, checking in for a flight, one’s baggage disappears bearing the IATA airport code FRU when one’s ticket clearly states Bishkek.
‘Bishkek’ is a modern concept - the name was adopted at independence in 1991.
There seems to have been some sort of habitation here for centuries, but the Khan of Kokand fortified the site in the early 19th century and the Russians later carried on the work with the establishment of a strategic Cossack garrison.
Image above: the Kyrgyz Republic’s flag flying proudly from the 45 m high National Flag Pole over Bishkek’s Ala-Too Square
By 1878 the town was known as Pishpek and, by 1914, it had swollen to a substantial city of Russian and Chinese immigrants. Enter the Bolsheviks in 1917, and by 1926 Pishpek became the capital of the Kyrgyz Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic, and was renamed Frunze, after a locally born but recently deceased Bolshevik general. Hence the IATA code of FRU.
Today, central Bishkek’s basic bone structure is still that of a Central Asian capital city constructed during Soviet times. The classic elements are all there – wide boulevards, substantial parks, central spaces for mass rallies, backed by imposing ‘public’ buildings and, of course, statues of Lenin. It scrubs up well though and gives a maturity and presence to the capital of this new Kyrgyz Republic.
The wide boulevards are harder to photograph, cluttered as they are with both parked cars and moving vehicles, but they still slice through Bishkek’s urban area, creating a central grid pattern lined with trees, and radials which connect with surrounding areas, and offer tantalizing glimpses of the mountains.
Parks are a welcome addition in any Kyrgyz town, providing much needed shade, colour and social space, particularly in summer.
Independence was not an easy ride, however. Under the Soviets, there were jobs for all, housing and sufficient food, schools and universities. After independence, the economy crashed and none of the basics provided by the Soviets was a given. In addition, there was political instability, and ethnic friction in the geographically more distant south west, close to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Violence and revolution flared on a number of occasions.
Colin Thubron’s journey through Kyrgyzstan in the mid 2000s (Shadow of the Silk Road, first published 2006), describes poverty in both town and countryside. One chance acquaintance is quoted as saying, “We’re a poor country. We never looked for independence. It just fell into our hands. We should have had battles and rebellions against Moscow. But it was all done for us by others…”. His younger, post-communist, cousin describes being Kyrgyz as “hav[ing] no burden… Others have a burden of history. But we – nothing!”
We saw and felt the impact of this historical void in 2022 but also appreciated the actions taken to fill it: the increased self-esteem with the re-introduction of the Kyrgyz language into daily Kyrgyz life, the pride in the re-establishment of the legendary hero Manas (image left), the awareness of the need to conserve nomadic customs and traditions.
Bishkek’s statues reflect some of this re-acquisition of the Kyrgyz identity. Manas is huge, of course, literally, figuratively – and numerically. It’s a delight to see him pop up on road sides, town squares and mountain sides.
Perhaps surprisingly, Lenin is still present (image right), but has been moved from his original postion. He is no longer gesturing at distant mountains but seems to be waving at the former Central Committee Building . Read into that what you will.
Marx and Engels are still deep in conservation (below left). The Soviet Friendship Monument (below centre) is still floating above Ala-Too Square. But new post-Soviet monuments are also appearing, the most arresting being the black and white marble monument (below right) dedicated to ‘Those who Died for Freedom’. It is located close to the President’s Palace where protestors chained themselves to the railings.
The reinstatement of religion also tells a story: “A poor Islam and a disgraced Communism...” (Colin Thubron’s Shadow of the Silk Road again). Our guides were somewhat embarrassed to tell us that there are now more mosques in Kyrgystan than there are schools. Funding appears to pour in for mosque construction, from Turkey, from the Middle East, and there are fears of fundamentalism. On the other hand, Kyrgyz people seem to practice a brand of ‘relaxed’ Islam, mixed with, or influenced by other, older influences such as Shamanism and Buddhism.
Some mosques are elaborate affairs (left), but many look like flat pack Ikea kits, consisting of a squat base, usually (but not always) a small dome, and a stick-on minaret which no muezzin could ever hope to climb.
In contrast, the Soviet era cemeteries seem ethereal, arresting - and distinctly un-egalitarian.
In the countryside, the 19th century Russian immigrants had already wrought significant, if small scale, changes by cultivating land and living in houses. But the Soviet approach was based on centralised control, via the collective farm, with its larger scale agricultural buildings.
We could only imagine the impact of the return to a market economy, combined of course with outward migration which presumably meant fewer agricultural workers but at least some money coming back in from remittances sent home.
We saw very little evidence remaining of the former collective farm stores and structures, and the scale of post-Soviet agriculture seemed very variable. Some fields were being tilled by hand; some showed a basic degree of mechanisation while other areas were growing arable crops across significantly large areas – all presumably for the home market. Wonderful apricots and other fruits also feature. Some fields were fallow, or possibly just totally neglected. A few were irrigated, some not. We saw few cash crops such as cotton or tobacco. But then we didn’t visit the Fergana Valley which may have a very different landscape.
Growing fodder for livestock still appears to be very significant. We were there at ‘hay’ time. For hay read green grass, cut and raked into windrows to dry, then either baled or raked into heaps for transporting loose. The domestic architecture of hay stacks was glorious.
We presume the basic, single storey, rectangular housing unit started life as a 19th Russian import. Most of the older houses we saw had a pitched, or pitched and hipped, or Mansard roofs, with the roof space bulging with last year’s hay. Rural fences come in all shapes and sizes but there was one common theme, a picket style with a diamond panel. Again, we assumed this was a Russian phenomenon, but cannot find its like on the internet.
Larger towns and urban areas are still not a significant feature of the Kyryz landscape but there is a feature of the Kyrgyz transport infrastructure which is something which the Russians did do for Kyrgyzstan. We’ll leave you with pictures of Central Asia’s quirkiest Soviet inheritance: the bus shelter.
Building History
If you read Terroir’s previous blog on Kyrgyzstan, you might be forgiven for thinking that the whole country consists of sweeping mountain pastures, picturesque nomads, woolly yaks, woolly yurts and re-purposed railway carriages. This isn’t quite true, of course, and this week we will, finally, give you a peep at those three historic monuments we mentioned previously.
But we will start our story in prehistory – perhaps 4,000 years ago – with Bronze Age rock carvings (images below from the Cholpon-Ata Open-air Petroglyph Museum) …
… and fascinating Balbal figures. The Balbals reminded us very much of the archaeological site at Filitosa in southern Corsica and the southern mainland of France, some 4,000 miles to the west.
Below: left Balbals at Cholpon-Ata Open-air Petroglyph Museum); right, at Filitosa, Corsica (© Amaury Laporte https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=Filitosa%20corsica&license=4%2C5%2C6%2C9%2C10)
Subsequent political geography seems complex. The early silk trading routes started over two thousand years ago and the ‘owner/occupiers’ of what is now Kyrgyzstan included the Saka tribes (who seem to have successfully seen off Alexander the Great), Huns and Tocharians. Turkik peoples, from the west, started to arrive from the 6th century AD and Arab invasions brought Islam to central Asia in the 7th century AD.
[Various sources including the Bradt guide to Kyrgyzstan].
So now we can go to our first heritage building - the Burana Tower - a remant of the ancient city of Balasgun, founded in the 10th century by the Karakhanids, a Turkik group described by our guide book as ‘cultured’. It seems they were also heavily into trade, and Balasgun (in the Chui valley of northern Kyrgyzstan) is said to be one of three cities in the region controlling the silk roads. The tower is thought to have been a minaret, heavily restored in the 1970’s.
The surrounding urban complex (a fortress plus dwellings, shops, baths, mausoleums, etc) is hard to imagine now, but the small museum is interesting - and also amusing due to a bad attack of that universal problem of mis-translation. The Russian text refers to ‘women’s adornments’, the English text to ‘wallies’. If you know what the ‘wallies’ might be (image below right), please let us know. A couple of Scottish suggestions are already in (china dogs and ‘peely-wally’ ie pale/off-colour), but they don’t seem to get quite to the heart of the matter!
Tash Rabat – our second monument - is a breathtaking, 15th century, silk road caravanserai on a site which may also have been used as an earlier monastery (Christian or perhaps Buddhist) prior to the arrival of Islam. The location is remote – over 100 km from the town of Naryn – but well worth the long climb into the Tian Shan Mountains. The Chinese border is maybe 30 km away, as the Eagle flies.
Half buried in the hillside, the stone built structure must have been part hotel, part secure warehouse and perhaps part administrative centre too. The situation is phenomenal, and the building’s historic aura is almost tangible. Inside it is cool, secure, but cunningly constructed to make good use of natural daylight. Around 30 small rooms provide bedrooms, kitchens, storage, prayer rooms and prison cells. It was thronged with ghosts.
By the time the Tash Rabat caravanserai was built, it seems that ethnically Kyrgyz people (nomads/warriors) had arrived in the Tien Shan Mountains and spread into what is now called Kyrgyzstan. This journey from northern Mongolia included robust altercations with rivals and futile attempts to resist Ghengis Khan and his Mongolian Golden Horde. Later (17th century) the western Mongol Oirats got involved, only to be replaced, in the 18th century, by the Chinese. Things seemed to get tough again with a takeover by the Uzbek Kokand Khanate (the guide book mentions issues relating to Silk Road fortresses, high taxes and violent repression).
Next: enter the Russians. The Tsar’s armies defeated the Kokand forces in 1865, annexed the territory and took control. It seems that, in social and landscape terms, nothing was ever the same again.
A new breed of migrants started to enter Kyrgyzstan – sedentary, house dwelling, farmers. Many were soldiers, but many others were landless peasants, offered free land (well, actually nomadic, seasonal grazing) and building materials, in exchange for populating what the Tsar saw as a frontier zone. Russian or Soviet rule would last until the early 21st century.
Not all incoming migrants were Russian, of course, but all needed some form of shelter. Permanent military and domestic structures must have started to make significant inroads into the nomadic Kyrgyz people’s lowland pastures.
Many of the new incomers were Muslim Hui and Uyghur refugees from China and one assumes their spritual needs were already met, at least in part, by the existing Islamic infrastructure of the Kyrgyz society. But the Russians would have been Orthodox Christians, looking to construct churches as well as homes, barns and barracks.
And so we come to our third historic Monument, the splendid, wooden Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, in Karakol.
The cathedral website is in Russian, but travel websites (such as https://visitkarakol.com/holy_trinity_cathedral), dedicated to enticing tourists to Kyrgystan, provide useful background information.
Once a garrison town, Karakol is now described in our guide book as “delightfully serene … resonant with the ghosts of 19th-century rural Russian life”. We can thoroughly recommend the small Museum of Local History which illustrates, amongst many other things, the lives and homes of the peasants who arrived to take up their homeland’s offer of a better life. Building the church must have been a significant event in their new lives and their new landscape.
Below left: Museum of Local History and, right: agricultural machinery and dolls dressed in the costumes of the immigrants who came to farm here
The first church, apparently a small brick building, was destroyed by an earthquake in 1885, some sixteen years after it was constructed. The larger, wooden replacement took six years to build and, at the time, was by far the tallest building in town. The cathedral survived a rather chequered career in Soviet times but was returned to the church in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. It has, of course, needed considerable but we would judge, pretty successful, restoration.
Of course there are other places of worship in Karakol. We also visited the Dungan, or ‘Chinese’ Mosque. This too is constructed from wood (completed in 1910) and also symbolises the migrant journey of the muslim, Dungan Chinese, escaping persecution. In terms of architecture, Holy Trinity brought Russia to Kyrgyzstan, but this mosque’s history is slightly more complex. As you can see, despite it's rectangular minaret, it resembles more pagoda than mosque, and reflects the Dungan’s Buddhist past.
In Britain, this would probably be a listed structure by now. We suggest it’s time Kyrgyzstan increased its heritage building list from three to four!
No Fixed Address
It can take a lot of driving and a robust vehicle to visit the historic buildings of Kyrgyzstan. We managed to visit all of them over a 9 day visit. In the UK, that would be pretty amazing; there are over 370,000 structures on the Heritage list for England alone. But in Kyrgyzstan, our guides informed us, there are only three monuments regarded as heritage buildings. Kyrgyzstan is great on archaeology, but very light on early architecture.
This lack of old structures is largely due to Kyrgyzstan’s social and geographical history: this bit of central Asia was largely about nomads until well into the 19th century. Despite being traversed by the ‘silk road’ trading routes between China and Turkey, despite sharing a border with Uzbekistan (a settled, farming country rich in trade and Islamic architecture with legendary cities such as Bukhara, Samarkand and Khiva), Kyrgyzstan is startlingly different. Kyrgyzstan’s heritage is about wide open spaces, about seasonal movement, and about yurts, not houses. It takes quite a lot of getting used to.
So why is the nomadic landscape so hard to ‘read’? What’s different from any other grazed hillside? Most Europeans are very familiar with the bi-annual transhumance of domestic animals: up in spring time to those picturesque, mountain meadows, leaving the lowlands to grow hay for winter fodder; down in the autumn as the days shorten and the uplands prepare for snow.
But no, that’s not the same as nomadic. Down in those European valleys are quaint farm houses with barns and cow sheds, villages, churches and inns, where humans and livestock can overwinter in permanent structures. This isn’t part of a truly nomadic tradition.
So what is a nomad? Wikipedia’s definition seems as good as any:
‘A nomad is a member of a community without fixed habitation who regularly moves to and from the same areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the population of nomadic pastoral tribes slowly decreased, reaching an estimated 30–40 million nomads in the world as of 1995.’ [Terroir’s highlighting] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomad
Trying to locate information on the current status of nomads in Kyrgyzstan is difficult. Understandably, many of the websites which offer information are those promoting tourism and selling ‘experiences’ in Kyrgyzstan. We have no problem with that - we ourselves were tourists and glad to be supporting the Kyrgyz economy - but the sources of the tourist sites’ data are unreferenced and hard to verify. One such site suggests that there are still 4.4 million Kyrgyz nomads, ‘who mostly live in Kyrgyzstan’. Assuming that the current population of Kyrgyzstan (not all of which are ethnic Kyrgyz, of course) is about 6.7 million people (depending on which website you check), then about half the Republic’s population could be classified as nomadic. From what we experienced, however, we assume that the continued use of the term ‘nomads’ is somewhat misleading as most families now have permanent winter/all year round quarters with, perhaps, summer yurts on the upland pastures. A great many of the yurts we saw are now also, or possibly only, servicing the tourist industry. One family we chatted to spent their winters in Bishkek and their summers on the Tien Shan uplands, providing visitor facilities at Tash Rabat - one of those three historic buildings we mentioned earlier.
Below: summer uplands near Tash Rabat, 21st century style - yurts, trucks, tourists and horses
What are the key elements of Kyrgyzstan’s historic nomadic lifestyle? Terroir would suggest that the combination of vast areas of upland, combined with robust and sure footed livestock, is key.
According to our guide book, a staggering 90% of Kyrgyzstan is over 1,500m (around 5,000 ft). If you read our previous blog (The Bin), you’ll know that Ben Nevis is ‘only’ 1,345 m (or 4,413 ft). The north and east of the country is dominated by the Tien Shan mountain range, which stretches from Uzbekistan, thrugh Kyrgyzstan and on into western China. The highest peak, on the Kyrgyz side of the China border, clocks 7,439 m (over 24,000 ft) which is not far off 84% of the height of Everest. The geology and age of the rocks varies and so does the landscape (see below).
South western Kyrgyzstan sports sections of the Pamir and Pamir Alay ranges, older and more rounded mountains but still achieiving a Kyrgyz summit (second highest in the Pamir range) of 7,134 m (23,400 ft) at Peak Lenin.
Below: glimpses of the Tien Shan range
How do you create a way of life which makes best use of such a vertical country? Livestock is the obvious answer. Horses, donkeys and camels - the four legged equivalent of the modern four wheel drive - provide transport and draft power. Cattle, yaks and sheep provide food, drink, housing, clothing and an outlet for artistic expression. But communities have to keep moving to ensure the meagre pastures can continuously support the animal based ‘capital’.
Below: livestock on the summer pastures - horses, sheep, camels, yak, a donkey on child care duties and cattle
Need some ready money for a lowland shopping expedition? Cash in a beast or two at the cattle market.
Obviously meat is an important part of the nomadic diet (traditionally mutton and horse were particularly significant) but fermented mare’s milk (kumis) is also a Kyrgyz speciality and is now an important part of that new aspect of the nomadic economy - tourism.
We experienced both meat and kumis at Lake Son Kul - a water body frozen in winter, but a dusty experence in summer thanks to climate-change induced mega temperatures. The lake is described in guide books, and on tourist websites, as ‘isolated’ and ‘only accessible by hiking and walking’. In fact we were driven there, but our non four-wheel drive minibus did not enjoy the off-road experience.
An ‘all in one’ meal of mutton and vegetables was prepared for us (below left) (Terroir found it utterly delicious) and which was served to us in an adjacent yurt (middle picture). The low table was laden with the stew, plus salads, fruit, biscuits, jams and sweets, laid out in very generous quantities. The yurt was beautifully decorated but as there was nothing else in it apart from us and the table, it felt rather like eating in the little used parlour or ‘front room’ of an English, Edwardian, terraced house.
After lunch we were introduced to kumis and shown how the women milked the mares to obtain the basic raw material (below right). Before and after fermentation tasting samples were available; the kumis reminded Terroir of kefir but of a thinner consistency.
Kyrgyz nomadic housing, is of course, based on the yurt, a structure made from wood, reed, leather and thick, home made felt. It can be collapsed, packed away, loaded onto a cart, transported to a new area of meadow, and reconstructed with remarkable efficiency.
Here is Terroir’s guide to erecting a yurt in ten (uneasy?) steps. Please note that the yurt in question is tiny so that the building team could fit in the demonstration before another generous lunch was served in the family house!
Actually it should be eleven steps - it was pointed out that we had missed the shots of vodka taken inside on completion.
And, of course, no modern yurt is complete without its converted railway carriage extension.
A mobile life means that crafts and artistic expression must use easily available raw materials. It must also adapt well to life in an upland pasture and be easily packed away and transported.
Animal skins are great for boots and bottles but you can’t beat home-made woollen felt for stunning interior decoration and inspired needle work.
Our first introduction to Kyrgyz shyrdaks was in hotels and guest houses where these patterned felt rectangles had been re-puposed from domestic decorative wall hangings, carpets and table covers to doing the same job in the hospitality sector. They are stunning in either location.
Thankfully, we were soon taken to visit a fascinating collection of costumes and decorative textiles lovingly kept by a Kyrgyz family who were concerned, not just with interested tourists like ourselves, but with the conservation of this heritage and with raising awareness, both locally and regionally, of a traditional art and craft form which could easily be lost.
Women created these fabrics. The work was slow, laborious but social and one can imagine that process was as important as finished product. Our guide book suggests that two colour embroidery was formerly the norm but, with the availability of modern, 20th century dyes, more dramatic colour schemes have developed. We have yet to verify this and, foolishly, didn’t ask when the opportunity arose. We could certainly spot the difference between items produced for tourists (smaller, easier to carry, quicker to make, often involving machine rather than hand stitching) but that’s fine. We bought.
How many in Kyrgyzstan can afford to risk investment (time, finance, market research) to produce modern pieces using traditional techniques? How many women still have the skills? What are the risks of cultural appropriation? Who would buy? I would - if I could afford it, of course.
We haven’t even touched on two other nomad staples which delight visitors to Kyrgyzstan.
One is the use of eagles for hunting. Extraordinarily dramatic and picturesque - an adult eagle can take out a wolf, as well as kill prey for human consumption - and steeped in tradition. Does it exist now just for tourists? Can it adapt to a modern but non-tourist context? It reminded me of our European traditions of hunting with birds. Now largely a tourist spectacle, it does have a few modern commercial functions, but I can hardly see eagles being employed to rid Kyrgyz airports or football grounds of starlings and pigeons.
The other is a modern tradition built on nomadic skills and sports - the Kyrgyz invention of the Nomad Games. First held in 2016 and now with a permanent stadium in Cholpon-Ata on Lake Issyk Kul, this biennial event is largely based on equestrian skills, wrestling, falconry (yes, the eagles do have a role) but also includes yurt building and board games - nomadic aspects you don’t usually see at that other great horse based tradition, the North American rodeo.
But we can’t finish a blog on the nomadic traditions of Kyrgyzstan without mentioning one final, great Kyrgyz icon. The hat or headress is key, of course.
The man’s jaunty, felt, titfer is modelled for us by the yak herder at the top of this blog, and by our eagle toting friend above. It comes in a variety of patterns. If you don’t fancy making your own, new ones can be bought in the Bishkek bazaar. It is such a symbol of the Kyrgyz male, that there is even an older version in the excellent Karakol museum (image left).
In contrast, women tend to have moved on from the traditional yards of cotton which once swathed their heads and which, unlike the man’s headgear, could also be pressed into service to swaddle babies or staunch wounds, as required.
Below (left) women’s traditional and (right) more modern headgear
We might get to those three heritage buildings next time.