Having now been in Bishkek for more than 3 weeks, I thought it was about time for me to go and "see" some of the "sights." As a city without an ancient history, or a sizeable national budget, Bishkek is rather lacking in the above-named "sights," and those with an appeal to an English-language traveler are even fewer. As all the travel literature on Kyrgyzstan reiterates, this is a country for "eco-tourism."subtext - not a very good place for standard, urban, photo&museum tourism.
But it has a few to recommend, and I certainly couldn't claim to have spent time in Bishkek without giving them a fair shake.
Stop #1 was the State Historical Museum. In addition to being housed in a magnificent edifice of Soviet archetecture, the interior is even more mind-blowing. While a 150 som ($4) admittance price is a little high by Kyrgyz standards, the additional 200 som ($5) "camera ticket" was more than I was willing to part with for the honor of Kyrgyz history. As a result, the description will be limited to textual - sorry, MTV generation.
The Museum is essentially 2 floors, one focusing on the Soviet revolution, and the other featuring archaeological information from within the currently-defined Kyrgyz state borders.
The interior is dimmly-lit, with only focus-lights highlighting some of the main exhibits. The top floor, and thus the most distant, is for "local" history, which interestingly only includes Pre-History, and one display about Ghengis Khan. This is probably the most telling detail of what this Museum is all about. It says, de facto, "the History of Kyrgyzstan includes only Primitives, Mongols, and Soviets." This is not a minority opinion, despite its ridiculous reductionism.
It's also informative that the Museum repeats the Soviet-era "ethnology" studies. One display was especially informative: It shows the evolution of humans from our ape-like ancestors to the modern specimens. While in true soviet-style, it does not list the Kyrgyz as less-evolved than their Russian counterparts, it does establish a rule of difference. The "Mongoloid" family is shown as branching off from the "European" (presumably including Slavs), about the same time as the "Negroids."
Thus there are 3 types of people in the world: Europeans, "Mongoloids" (of which the Kyrgyz & most other non-Russian soviets, qualify), and African/"Negroids."
The chart doesn't demonstrate that these three operate in a cultural heiarchy, but it is implied. The European is dressed in medieval costume, the "Mongoloid" as a traditional nomad, and the African is almost naked. It's not hard to draw the conclusion.
Interestingly, the floor displays found objects of considerably craftsmanship and beauty contemporary with many similar objects I've seen in the museums of Turkey, Britain, and even the American West. In fact, in 2007 archaeologists discovered well-preserved ruins of a massive urban city at the bottom of Kyrgyzstan's largest lake: Issyk Kul. Their findings are still preliminary, but they believe the metropolis, which matches the size of ancient Athens, may well have been its near-contemporary.
What does it say then, that a country which has a potential civilized legacy tantamount to Greece, has only a few arrow-heads, vases, and horse-bridles, to account for its thousands of years of pre-Soviet existence?
Only that the history is not important to the modern imagined identity.
The Soviet floor is by-far the more impressive, containing numerous (more than a dozen) more-than-life-size facades which narrate the story of the revolution and an illustrated guide (to fill in the gaps) painted onto its ceiling. From the intellectual curiosity of Marx & Engels to the arrival of Lenin and the various types of proletariats (steel workers, farmers, mothers, etc.) that rose up against their oppressors/aristocrats/nazis/reagan.
The facades, which dominate the majority of the walls, are uniformly a rough-sculpted copper(?) painted gold. While they are wall-mounted, some elements are in high relief, and some are even free-standing scultures placed or connected to the piece.
Not only are they amazing for their incredible collage-ness (the crowds, the implied actions, the WEALTH of symbolic items they're holding), but also their size. They're not real-sized, but they are close. Everything about them is just a little bigger, a little bolder, a little... better, than the rest of us. "These were the Men & Women of the Revolution - peasants and paupers who, through collective imagination and careful manipulation, have litterally become larger-than-life. They are the everyman that today's everyman can only admire. Their revolution could never be repeated, all we can do is meakly carry on their proud tradition."
Sprinkled between the giant (full-wall) freizes are collections of documents, letters, maps & photographs. If you read Russian, I'll bet it's actually a pretty good collection. Being unable to appreciate the content of the works, I focused on the context.
the photos - every single one a straight-on black/white mug-shot of a revolutionary leader or participant - were absolutely terrifying. They weren't meant to be so, and perhaps that's not how others saw them, but I found each one haunting. It was a mixed assortment - mostly Russian, but with healthy representation from other pre-Soviet ethnicities, whether Georgian, Ukranian, Central Asian or even non-Russian europeans. Some were clearly of blue-collar stock, the thick necks and weary eyes were a giveaway, while others had the thin jaws and square spectacles of an avowed leftist intellectual.
What kept creeping me out was what they all had in common - not that they fervently believed that Marxism/Socialism/Communism was the inevitable next step in social evolution, and not that, some 90 years later they're all dead, but that only with a few very rare exceptions did they die of natural causes. These Revolutionaries were destroyed - ideologically and mortally - by the Revolution they championed.
It's not a new story, or sadly, all that rare. If the French Revolution was the archetype, and it was certainly the origin of the term "revolution" as a break with, rather than continuation, of gradual social change, then the maxim about revolutions eating their children seems both true and horrifying.
Just to be clear, I'm talking about Revolutions. Not separatist movements (US Revolution, for example), reformations (Russian Revolution of 1905), or power-shuffles (Kyrgyz Revolution, 2005). A true Revolution, in which social factors within society convulse in a massive-scale rejection of the pre-existing social order and/or leadership.
With few exceptions, such revolutions (big 4: French, Soviet, Chinese, Iranian) have required a considerable amount of bloodshed & destruction. Perhaps in the end they achieve a better social contract; I'm not interested in arguing for or against Revolution as an instrument of change. But I am engrossed by its monstrosity.
Looking at the faces of Revolutionaries, in what may well have been their police arrest photos, did nothing to diminish the beast. It was odd, though - clearly the purpose of the Museum (more so at a former time, but lingering now) was to instill pride, or at least respect, for the sacrifices these people made. I found myself looking at them and asking, "is this really what you wanted?"
We all fool ourselves into thinking that we are the arbiters of our own fate. Despite religious beliefs that would logically require predestination, or historical/social familiarity that demonstrates time and again that individuals are prisoners of their context, we as humans insist on believing that we determine our own path.
And for the rare revolutionary, I think this was actually more true than for the rest of us. They did play a role in determining their own fate; it just didn't happen to be the fate they planned on.
I guess the most salient point from the Soviet floor was that I was embedded in materials that were latently propagandistic, but in the context of post-soviet Bishkek, and the known brutality of this still-celebrated revolution, I was left at a loss.
What is one to do when you help create a world built equally upon your high ideals, and the base cruelty you were willing to employ, and was ultimately self-consuming?
It's a question I would have liked to ask a few of the individuals pictured, though I doubt I would have had to courage to face their answers. On a social level, it's easier to think in the abstract.
Given the the US track record (from the genocide of indigenous North America to the extravagant destruction of Iraq), I think it's a question we need not only pose to once-proud Soviets.
Weber (on the lamb)
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