History History

Initially coming from the forests of northern and eastern Siberia, the proto-Kyrgyz Yenisei people settled in the Central Yenisei Valley (Minousinsk and Abakan region) around 1200-700 BC, then in the Altai for a tiny part of them between 700 and 300 BC. They nomadised between this region and Mongolia until the 9th century AD. In 840, they founded a nomadic semi-state in Mongolia, from where they succeeded in driving out another Turkish tribe, the Uyghurs. They did not join present-day Kyrgyzstan until the 16th century, during the great movement of Turkish tribes following the fall of the Timurid Empire.

After the Muslim conquest and the battle of Talas, all we know is that Kyrgyzstan was ruled by a khaganat whose tribes were constantly quarrelling and nomadic. A first capital appeared in Balasagoun with the Karakhanids, and traces of many towns along the Chuï valley have been found, dating from the 13th century, testifying to the passage of caravans on the Silk Road. All this was neatly razed by Genghis Khan, and Kyrgyzstan became for the next three centuries a heterogeneous mixture of peoples, ethnicities and religions.

Driven by migratory movements, the Kyrgyz invaded the Tian Shan in the 16th century. In the Tian Shan Mountains, the Kyrgyz tribal structure is organized into three major tribal confederations. From its 'capital' at Barskoon, south of Lake Issyk Kul, Mukhammed-Kyrgyz (1519-1533) seems to have been, as the common chief (khan) of all the Kyrgyz in the early 16th century, the architect of their unification and settlement on present-day Kyrgyz territory, at the same time as their long process of Islamization began.

As early as 1709, the Khan of Kokand, one of the three Uzbek khans of Transoxiane, governed from Kokand, in the heart of the Ferghana Valley, vast territories with populations with very varied lifestyles and cultures. The conquest of the Kyrgyz territory by the khanate of Kokand will be long and difficult, and the power of the khan often stopped at the city or the fortress, the countryside remaining the domain of the Kyrgyz nomads, from where resistance and rebellions started. It is only in 1834 that the khanat will control the whole of the current territory, but revolts will continue to mark the political history of the area.

During a first incursion in support of the revolts against the khanate in 1862, Tsarist troops captured Pishkek. Afterwards, the Russians simply provided logistical support to the tribes of the two northern khanats that were favourable to them. During this phase, several Kyrgyz chiefs distinguished themselves, notably Chabdan Jantaev, the federator of Kyrgyz support to the Russian army. He seized the fortress of Tokmok in 1862, before suppressing the revolt of the Tian Shan Mountains in July 1863. Finally, he effectively supported Colonel Skobelev during the conquest of the Ferghana Valley.
At the end of 1862, the Chuï Valley was attached to the Russian Empire. In 1863, the Russians set up a garrison west of Lake Issyk Kul in order to prevent any possible coup de force by the khanate or China. In 1864, the Kyrgyz space except for the valley of Ferghana and the Altai Mountains passed entirely in the Russian orbit. On September 10, 1875, the Russian army, led by Colonel Skobelev, seized Osh after heavy fighting. On 18 February 1876, by a decree of the Tsar, the Khanate of Kokand was dissolved and incorporated into the Governorate General of Turkestan.

The mobilization of 25 June was the immediate factor that triggered the 1916 revolt, which gradually engulfed the whole of Central Asia. The revolt started in the vicinity of Khojent and then spread rapidly to the whole of the Ferghana Valley, the Tashkent basin and the Samarkand region. In August, the revolt spread to the steppes of Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz mountains. From 20 August, repression from Pishpek and Przhevalsk ends the uprising. In September and October, the valleys are pacified and the outbreaks of revolt are maintained only in isolated areas of high mountains. In some places, the revolts lasted until the end of the 1920s, when they were diluted in revolutionary agitation or basmatchi guerrilla warfare.

The birth of the USSR led to the emergence of the Soviet Socialist Republics (SSR) of Central Asia: Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in 1924, Tajikistan in 1929, and finally Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in 1936. The Ferghana Valley, the final base of the revolt movement against the Soviets since 1925, represented the last serious threat to Stalin. In order to stem the guerrilla warfare, the concept of "national demarcation" had to be applied to the valley. A territorial carving up between what is now Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan was thus carried out by Moscow in the valley in coordination with the communist parties in order to break up local and supranational feelings. These territorial changes have not been without causing discontent in the neighbouring republics because of their aberration. As a result, new problems specific to the valley emerged, sharpened by the addition of the regions of Jalalabad, Osh, Kyzyl-Kyia and Batken, mostly Uzbek, to Kyrgyz territory. By this clever division of the valley, Stalin managed to break the strength of the Basmatchi movements at the turn of the 1930s, after more than ten years of guerrilla warfare.

The Stalinist purges of the 1930s and 1950s represented a radical break in the history of Central Asia and particularly in the history of the Kyrgyz. The purges accompanied the collectivisation and forced sedentarisation of the nomadic peoples of Central Asia. They also affected the political personnel and intellectuals of the various SSRs. In 1937-1938, the founders of the Kyrgyz SSR were, for the most part, shot following mock trials. Thus, the "Thirty", including Sydykov, Tynystanov, Aidarbekov, Abdrakhmanov and Orozbekov, were accused of belonging to an opposition political party which allegedly advocated panturanism, and were shot after a summary trial in 1938. At the suggestion of the Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aymatov, whose father was one of the victims, a memorial ceremony was held on 30 August 1991, during which the place of burial was immortalized by a memorial complex known as "Ata-Beiit". The purges were to make way for new political personnel, forged in the mould of the nation-state, which would happen twenty years later with the arrival of Iskhak Razzakov as the first Secretary General of the KCP (1950-1961).

Beyond the political, economic and cultural upheavals it brought about, perestroika served as a period of apprenticeship for the Kyrgyz people in the free self-governance of the nation-state. The Kyrgyz took advantage of this short period to break free from ties with Moscow and learn to administer themselves within the Soviet borders of their nation-state. However, the extreme brevity of this period did not allow the Kyrgyz people to prepare sufficiently for independence and integration into the international community. Several political currents emerged, determined by the position to be adopted towards Moscow, currents which subsequently clashed well beyond independence, since they are still finding their marks in the current Kyrgyz political chessboard and in the meantime have crystallized on tribal bases. The victory of the "radical" movement, the replacement of Russian by Kyrgyz as the sole official language in September 1989 was one of the catalysts, along with the deterioration of economic conditions, the departure of European ethnic minorities and the heightening of tensions in the Ferghana Valley. In Osh, the Uzbek minority violently opposed the arrival of young Kyrgyz mountain people and bloodshed ensued in June 1990. Inter-community violence is said to have claimed between 200 and 2,000 victims in one week in the region of Osh and Uzgen, depending on the source.

President Akaev's first term in office was characterised by the euphoria of independence. The "Kyrgyz" card was then put forward, but with the sole tactical aim of curbing the nationalists' extremist fervour. However, national minorities felt excluded from the workings of the country, despite the rather favourable reception of independence. That said, the range of political parties and the independence of the media maintained a voice for these minorities through political movements and cultural centres. All of them were thinking of building their new nation-state, relegating their regional and tribal particularities to the background. It was the period of dreams and the most daring projects, financed by numerous international credits. Re-elected in 1995, Akaev presided over his regime by governing by decree and thus overruling the parliament, and then strengthened his powers in the 1993 Constitution, which was further amended in his favour in October 1994 and again in 1998. Opposition leaders began to be arrested and the press experienced its first attempts to muzzle him. Kyrgyz domestic policy then tended to move closer to what could be observed in neighbouring Central Asian countries.

In 2000, Azkar Akaev won the new presidential elections after numerous electoral frauds denounced by the OSCE. His second term of office saw the foundation of his power shrink by taking on a tribal form. The economic and social crisis and the increase in corruption and nepotism are causing widespread discontent among the population, all ethnic groups combined. The events of March 2005, described as the "Tulip Revolution" in the West, were in fact nothing more than a coup de force by representatives of the South of the country to regain political power and control of economic circuits, which for too long had remained in the hands of tribes from the North of the Republic.

Kurmanbek Bakiev, one of the leaders of the March 2005 events, is a pure product of the Soviet system. His election in March 2005 will, however, lead not to the promised reforms, but to a strengthening of power and personalisation of the regime. Ministries and administrations are being purged of men from the north of the republic, while the social-democratic opposition is, in the literal sense of the word, liquidated. On 7 April 2010, eight months after the re-election of Kurmanbek Bakiyev, serious riots broke out in Bishkek, reflecting the heightened social tension in the country. Deprived of the support of Muscovites, who welcomed the return of their friends from the north, Bakiyev took refuge in his stronghold in Jalalabad.

A year of reconstruction for Kyrgyzstan: a new constitution and parliamentary elections mark the highlights of domestic politics until the presidential elections in October 2011, which make Almazbek Atambayev, a man from the North, the fourth president of independent Kyrgyzstan and the first to come to power without violence. But the country quickly returned to its old demons: Atambayev's prime minister, Sooronbay Jeenbekov, a man from the South, won the 2017 presidential elections and had his former president imprisoned.