Kirgizia

Kyrgyzstan,, pronounced or the Kyrgyz Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the south, and the People's Republic of China to the east. Its capital and largest city is Bishkek.

Ethnic Kyrgyz make up the majority of the country's seven million people, followed by significant minorities of Uzbeks and Russians. The Kyrgyz language is closely related to other Turkic languages.

Kyrgyzstan's history spans a variety of cultures and empires. Although geographically isolated by its highly mountainous terrain, Kyrgyzstan has been at the crossroads of several great civilizations as part of the Silk Road along with other commercial routes. Inhabited by a succession of tribes and clans, Kyrgyzstan has periodically fallen under larger domination. Turkic nomads, who trace their ancestry to many Turkic states. It was first established as the Yenisei Kyrgyz Khaganate later in the 13th century, Kyrgyzstan was conquered by the Mongols; it regained independence, but was later invaded by Dzungar Khanate. After the fall of Dzhungars, Kyrgyz and Kipchaks were an integral part of Kokand Khanate. In 1876, Kyrgyzstan became part of the Russian Empire, and in 1936, the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic was formed to become a constituent republic of the Soviet Union. Following Mikhail Gorbachev's democratic reforms in the USSR, in 1990 pro-independence candidate Askar Akayev was elected president. On 31 August 1991, Kyrgyzstan declared independence from Moscow and a democratic government was established. Kyrgyzstan attained sovereignty as a nation state after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

After independence, Kyrgyzstan was officially a unitary presidential republic; after the Tulip Revolution it became a unitary parliamentary republic, although it gradually developed an executive president and was governed as a semi-presidential republic before reverting to a presidential system in 2021. Throughout its existence, the country has continued to endure ethnic conflicts, revolts, economic troubles, transitional governments and political conflict.

Kyrgyzstan is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Eurasian Economic Union, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Organisation of Turkic States, the Türksoy community and the United Nations. It is a developing country ranked 118th in the Human Development Index, and is the second poorest country in Central Asia. The country's transitional economy is heavily dependent on deposits of gold, coal and uranium.

Etymology

''Kyrgyz'' is derived from the Turkic word for "We are forty", believed to refer to the forty clans of Manas, a legendary hero who united forty regional clans. ''-Stan'' is a suffix in Persian meaning "place of".

The 40-ray sun on the flag of Kyrgyzstan is a reference to those same forty tribes and the graphical element in the sun's center depicts the wooden crown, called tunduk, of a yurt—a portable dwelling traditionally used by nomads in the steppes of Central Asia.

The country's official name is ''"Kyrgyz Republic",'' used in international arenas and foreign relations. In the English-speaking world, the spelling ''Kyrgyzstan'' is commonly used, while its former name ''Kirghizia'', is rarely used.

History

Early history

The Kyrgyz state reached its greatest expansion after defeating the Uyghur Khaganate in 840 AD. From the tenth century the Kyrgyz migrated as far as the Tian Shan range and maintained their dominance over this territory for about 200 years.

There is a storytelling tradition of the ''Epic of Manas'', which involves a warrior who unified all of the scattered tribes into a single nation in the 9th century. The trilogy, an element of the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List, expresses the memory of the nomadic peoples.

In the 12th century, the Kyrgyz dominion had shrunk to the Altay Range and Sayan Mountains as a result of the Mongol expansion. With the rise of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century, the Kyrgyz migrated south. The Kyrgyz peacefully became a part of the Mongol Empire in 1207.

Issyk Kul Lake was a stopover on the Silk Road, a land route for traders, merchants, and other travelers from the Far East to Europe.
Kyrgyz tribes were overrun in the 17th century by the Mongols, in the mid-18th century by the Manchurian Qing dynasty, and in the early 19th century by the Uzbek Khanate of Kokand. In 1842, the Kyrgyz tribes broke away from Kokand and united into the , led by Ormon Khan. Following Ormon's death in 1854, the khanate disintegrated.

Russian conquest

In the late nineteenth century, the eastern part of what is today Kyrgyzstan, mainly the Issyk-Kul Region, was ceded to the Russian Empire by Qing China through the Treaty of Tarbagatai. The territory, then known in Russian as "Kirghizia", was formally incorporated into the Empire in 1876. The Russian takeover was met with numerous revolts, and many of the Kyrgyz opted to relocate to the Pamir Mountains and Afghanistan.

In addition, the suppression of the 1916 rebellion against Russian rule in Central Asia caused many Kyrgyz later to migrate to China. Since many ethnic groups in the region were, and still are, split between neighboring states at a time when borders were more porous and less regulated, it was common to move back and forth over the mountains, depending on where life was perceived as better; this might mean better rains for pasture or better government during oppression.

Soviet Kyrgyzstan (1919-1991)

Soviet power was initially established in the region in 1919, and the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast was created within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR). The phrase Kara-Kirghiz was used until the mid-1920s by the Russians to distinguish them from the Kazakhs, who were also referred to as Kirghiz. On 5 December 1936, the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic was established as a constituent Union Republic of the Soviet Union.

After the Russian Civil War, the period of the New Economic Policy (NEP), began, which lasted roughly to 1928. The Bolsheviks made an effort to establish a standardized tax system, with higher taxes for nomads to discourage the wandering livelihood and they divided the Central Asia region into five nation-states. Kyrgyzstan developed considerably in cultural, educational, and social life, literacy was greatly improved. Economic and social development also was notable. Under Stalin a great focus was put on Kyrgyz national identity, the Soviet state was fighting tribalism as its social organization based on patrilineal kinship contradicted the concept of the modern nation state. From the indigenous perspective described as a difficult and ambivalent process of nation-building, in a region that did not know national institutions or consciousness before.

By the end of the 1920s, the Soviet Union developed a series of five-year plans, centered around industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture, including the creation of huge "kolkhoz" collective farming systems, needed to feed the new workers in the industries. Because of the plan's reliance on rapidity, major economic and cultural changes had to occur, which led to conflicts. In Kyrgyzstan, Russian settlers acquired the best pasture land, creating much hardship for most of its original inhabitants, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Turkmen nomads, who were also forced to settle down on soil that hadn't enough agricultural potential.
The changes caused unrest, and between 1928 and 1932, nomads and peasants made it clear through methods like passive resistance that they did not agree with these policies, in the Kirgiziya area also guerrilla opposition occurred. The region suffered relatively more deaths from collectivization than any other.

The early years of glasnost, in the late 1980s, had little effect on the political climate in Kyrgyzstan. However, the Republic's press was permitted to adopt a more liberal stance and to establish a new publication, ''Literaturny Kirghizstan'', by the Union of Writers. Unofficial political groups were forbidden, but several groups that emerged in 1989 to deal with the acute housing crisis were permitted to function.

According to the last Soviet census in 1989, ethnic Kyrgyz made up only 22% of the residents of the northern city of Frunze (now Bishkek), while more than 60% were Russians, Ukrainians, and people from other Slavic nations. Nearly 10% of the capital's population were Jewish (a rather unique fact, for almost any place in the Soviet Union, except the Jewish Autonomous Oblast).

In June 1990, ethnic tensions between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz surfaced in the Osh Region (southern Kyrgyzstan), where Uzbeks form a minority of the population. The tensions between Kyrgyzs and Uzbeks in Osis led to 186 deaths. Attempts to appropriate Uzbek collective farms for housing development triggered the Osh Riots. A state of emergency and curfew were introduced and Askar Akayev, the youngest of five sons born into a family of collective farm workers (in northern Kyrgyzstan), was elected president in October of that same year.
By then, the Kyrgyzstan Democratic Movement (KDM) had developed into a significant political force with support in Parliament. On 15 December 1990, the Supreme Soviet voted to change the republic's name to the Republic of Kyrgyzstan. The following January, Akayev introduced new government structures and appointed a new cabinet composed mainly of younger, reform-oriented politicians. In February 1991, the name of the capital, Frunze, was changed back to its pre-revolutionary name of Bishkek.

Despite these political moves toward independence, economic realities seemed to work against secession from the Soviet Union. In a referendum on the preservation of the Soviet Union in March 1991, 88.7% of the voters approved the proposal to retain the Soviet Union as a "renewed federation". Nevertheless, secessionist forces pushed Kyrgyzstan's independence through in August of that same year.

On 19 August 1991, when the State Emergency Committee assumed power in Moscow, there was an attempt to depose Akayev in Kyrgyzstan. After the coup collapsed the following week, Akayev and Vice President German Kuznetsov announced their resignations from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), and the entire bureau and secretariat resigned. This was followed by the Supreme Soviet vote declaring independence from the Soviet Union on 31 August 1991 as the Republic of Kyrgyzstan.

Independence

In October 1991, Akayev ran unopposed and was elected president of the new independent Republic by direct ballot, receiving 95 percent of the votes cast. Together with the representatives of seven other Republics that same month, he signed the Treaty of the Economic Community. The new leaders of three out of four Soviet Union's founding republics, Russia, Belarus and Uzbekistan, on 8 December 1991 signed the Belavezha Accords, denouncing the Union Treaty of 1922, declaring that the Union would cease to exist and proclaimed the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in its place.

On 21 December 1991, Kyrgyzstan agreed with the other four Central Asian Republics, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan to the Alma-Ata Protocols, formally entering the Commonwealth with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Ukraine. Finally, Kyrgyzstan gained full independence on 25 December 1991. The following day, on 26 December 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. In 1992, Kyrgyzstan joined the