 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
KYRGYZSTAN AND RUSSIA: PAST AND PRESENTValentina VOROPAEVA
Valentina Voropaeva, Ph.D. (Hist.), assistant professor at the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University.
Documents say that Russia and Kyrgyzstan first came into a contact some 250 years ago when Kyrgyzes first migrated to Siberia and then to the Volga area.
For a long time historians were ignorant of the fact; they knew next to nothing about the first Kyrgyz embassy to Russia in 1785. Prof. V. Ploskikh and D. Saparaliev, his pupil doctorand, spent a lot of time in Russian archives to fill in the early pages in the history of diplomatic ties between the two countries.
Historiography of their relations in the twentieth century was overburdened with ideology to serve politics and politicians to the extent that academics had to doctor facts, or at least conclusions, to have their works published.
Here are relevant examples. In the second half of the nineteenth century there appeared articles that spoke about how Russia had conquered Central Asia. In 1940 the Sovetskaia Kirghizia newspaper carried an article by assistant professor A. Khasanov "How Czarism Conquered Northern Kirghizia." In 1959, in Moscow Dr. B. Dzhamgerchinov published a book How Kirghizia Was Joined to Russia (in fact, how Northern Kirghizia had been joined to Russia). A year later another historian K. Usenbaev published his book on how Southern Kirghizia had been joined to Russia. "Joining" was a neutral word which described a peaceful process. This is in line with what happened in Northern Kirghizia where the local tribes voluntarily became Russian subjects. In the south, however, the Kirghizian Alai tribes lost a war that followed the revolt under Pulat Khan and were unified with Russia by the force of arms.
Finally, in 1963, on an initiative of the local Kirghiz powers which Nikita Khrushchev approved the Communist Party decided to celebrate, on the national scale, the centenary of Kirghizia's voluntary joining Russia. The celebration caused a veritable avalanche of books, another edition of B. Dzhamgerchinov's monograph under the title How Kirghizia Voluntarily Joined Russia was published. It became a bad form to talk about conquering Kirghizia or even some of its parts. Two decades later, the second volume of the five-volume History of the Kirghiz SSR published by the Academy of Sciences carried a section "How Kirghizia Voluntarily Joined Russia. Progressive Effects." From that time on official scholarship and journalism never allowed a different treatment of the past.
Other republics followed in the footsteps of Kirghizia and hastened to celebrate their voluntary affiliation with Russia. Kazakhstan also celebrated the 250th anniversary of its joining Russia.
The late eighties and early nineties produced a different process. The past was scrutinized once more with hostile feelings toward Russia. This was one of the manifestations of the "illness of acquiring sovereignty."
Today, we are witnessing a process of developing a genuinely scholarly approach to the past which is testified by the textbook for higher educational establishments, the first of its kind, published in the republic: History of Kyrgyzes and Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek, 1996-1999) and an anthology of the history of Kyrgyzstan from the ancient times to the twentieth century for secondary schools and colleges (Bishkek, 1997). The first volume of the planned three-volume edition of documents Kyrgyzstan-Russia. Relationships from the 18th to the 19th Centuries (Bishkek, 1998) also appeared.
The First Embassy to Russia in the 18th CenturyWhat did Russia know about Kyrgyzes and what did they know about Russia in the eighteenth century? Let's look into the book of an "involuntary wanderer" Filipp Efremov who found himself in Kirghizia in the 1770s. There he ascended the sacred Muslim mountain of Suleiman-gora in Osh and saw how the local tribes in Alai were living. He wrote that "the Kyrgyzes were not living in Bukharia itself but close to it, between the cities of ……………………………..
Please fill subscription form to obtain full text of this jounal
 |