Kyrgyzstan esimde kalyt
Oh, Kyrgyzstan. The recent events there force me to think again of the nine months I spent in Bishkek in 1994, and the other three months I was there in 1996. I remember looking out the window of one of my eight apartments and seeing the statue of Manas outside the Filkharmoniia; trying to get directions in a city that was changing all the soviet-era street names without actually putting up signs; the hitchhiking Lenin statue just down the street from the Belyi Dom/Ak Uy/White House; taking my life in my hands by eating shashlyk, plov, manty, ashliam fu purchased from street vendors; drinking kymys (fermented mare's milk -- not much to add about that). So much hope, so much promise . . . so much delusion in the Switzerland of Central Asia.
I admit, I shared in that delusion in '94, for a while. Hell, with Karimov in Uzbekistan, Nazarbaev and a restive Russian north in Kazakstan, Turkmenbashy in Turkmenistan, and utter chaos in Tajikistan, how could little Akaev not look good? A physicist from Moscow, untouched by the politics of Soviet Kirgiziia, who spoke Russian fluently and Kyrgyz . . . well, rather not. I remember seeing him on stage with Karimov in '94: the Uzbek "president" was larger, more ebullient, and just a better speaker than Askar. Karimov spouted bullshit with equal fluidity in Russian and Uzbek, clapping Askar on the back, telling jokes (I think: my grasp of the languages was pretty thin for humor, but everybody else laughed). Then, well, Akaev spoke, much as a high school valedictorian might (David Skelton, where are you?), ponderously plodding through a speech in Russian, and then torturing us with a halting translation in Kyrgyz.
Of course, in Bishkek, Russian was just more common. I had gone there on the strength of an intensive three-month course in Uzbek, and given that Kyrgyz is to Uzbek as, say, Italian is to Mexican Spanish, I thought I could get by. But no. There was the occasional pidginizing of Russian and Kyrgyz, but most city dwellers preferred Russian. Whenever I asked for prices in Kyrgyz at the bazaar, I was always answered in Russian.
Hardly surprising, given that Kirgiziia was a net recipient of all-union transfers under the Soviet system -- sort of like a backward southern state in the U.S., receiving more in federal aid than it contributes in federal taxes. The Soviets were also masters at playing nationalities against each other (z.B., Uzbeks and Kyrgyz), and playing the urban dwellers against the rural. The urbanites considered themselves Russian, or at least Soviet, which was always more or less Russian. The station break music on the local state-owned radio was a nifty little tune that we ex-pats assumed was the national anthem. It took me a long time to learn that it was "Moskovkykh vecherakh" -- a Russian song about evenings in Moscow. Hell, Akaev led an audience in one of his speeches in a rousing rendition of the song. Kyrgyz nationalism? Um, yeah.
Meanwhile, outside the capital, Russian rapidly deteriorated: I met shepherds outside of Talas who thought I was a Muscovite, and refused to believe that I was not a native speaker of Russian. At an ulak competition outside of Bishkek, an old Kyrgyz guy advanced on me threateningly, demanding aggressively of my Kyrgyz host (Marat Asanaliev, kaektasyz?) at the event why he'd brought a Russian. When my host told the man that I was American, the man looked confused and wandered away.
And, of course, in Osh, site of bloody riots in 1990 or so -- didn't really matter when, because when I was there in '94, after a grueling 25-hour bus ride through the mountains (and a tedious couple of hours at the Uzbek border, while the driver and the border guards haggled over the bribe), the Uzbeks and Kyrgyz inhabitants still looked at each other as though they might draw knives at any minute. It didn't help that Uzbeks carry knives on their belts anyway, although the blades aren't good for much besides buttering bread. Uzbeks generally put their hands on their chest when expressing pleasantries, and the Kyrgyz (half-)joked that they did this because their hearts were black.
Still, Kyrgyz always referred me to Uzbeks if I wanted good plov, or pilav, or pilow, or (as we in the States call it) pilaf. Uzbeks for plov and manty, Russians for pel'meny, Uighurs or Dungans for ashliam-fu, Koreans for kimchi -- when I asked what the Kyrgyz cooked well, the speakers would shrug and smile. Not surprising, when the national dish was besh barmak ("five fingers", so called because it was eaten without utensils), boiled sheep innards served over noodles. But, again: Kyrgyz nationalism? Um. . . .
(incidentally, I have heard, but never verified, that "um" means . . . um . . . female naughty bits in Kyrgyz.)
Anyway, the politics. Akaev seemed to get along okay, not hurt by the fact that the USAID and UN were just pouring money into the economy. There were some shaky moments, of course. Early in his administration, Akaev had said that the Kyrgyz economy would be strong and diversified, including the export of opium. . . . He also had to rapidly backpedal when he announced that the state langauge of Kyrgyzstan would be Kyrgyz: to keep the Russian professionals from fleeing in droves, he hastily added Russian as coequal with Kyrgyz. Then, a few months before I left, Akaev dissolved parliament for new elections, a sign that maybe things weren't so . . . um . . . oh, fuck it.
When I went back in '96, I was an intern at the Ministerstvo Innostrannykh Del'/Tyshky Ishter Ministeriasi/Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was under the control of Minister Roza Otunbaeva, former ambassador to the U.S. I had actually met her in 1994, when one of her younger relatives (the Kyrgyz were not always so careful in distinguishing "little sister" from "niece" or "cousin") was in the ESL class I taught, and when I arrived in 1996, owing to a screw-up with my fellow intern (Matt Bergstrom, where are you?), I stayed the first night with her family. Anyway, that was all largely irrelevant, because Akaev had pulled foreign policy completely into a sort of auxiliary administration. So . . . the ministry was basically spinning its wheels, keeping busy. Anvar, Jyldyz, Marat, Samargul' (Borbieva, who had helped arrange my '94 visa), Ainora, Ainura, Erkin -- kak u vas, y'all? Salomatsingarby? Cyngarnyng ishteringer barmy? Vashy raboty kak?
Economically, things weren't looking so good. Although the gasoline shortage of '94 had ended (decreasing air quality and making street-crossing considerably more dangerous), USAID was looking at pulling out in a couple of years, the Canadian mining companies were bitching about the bureaucrats at every level of government taking their cuts. In '94 I had seen doctors, engineers, and other professionals selling possessions (and sometimes purchases from Moscow or Istanbul) on blankets on the sidewalks; I had seen women standing, each with a cake in her hands, waiting to sell it so she could go back and bake another one and come right back out there. The factories had closed, and the men who worked them were unemployed, while their wives, who had studied such feminine fields as linguistics were getting paid skads of money to be translators and office administrators for the foreign firms. So, in many cases, the husbands would drink (it was said that the Russians taught the Kyrgyz how to drink, but never taught them how to stop) and be general layabouts, the wives would kick them out and support their families, their parents and/or siblings, and even their husbands, whose apartments the wives financed. Many urbanites had dachas in the countryside; basically little huts where they could grow vegetables that they canned for the winter.
I guess I could go on like this forever (and, I guess in internet terms, I kind of already have), but I should probably call it quits here. I would like to say howdy to a bunch of folks I knew over there, although I have no reason to think that any of them is reading this, any more than anybody else. But I have to hope that they're all doing okay, that they have means of support and are happy, and that the events in the little republic haven't harmed them. Vsego dobrogo, moi druky; jakshy kalyngar, dosttorum!
I admit, I shared in that delusion in '94, for a while. Hell, with Karimov in Uzbekistan, Nazarbaev and a restive Russian north in Kazakstan, Turkmenbashy in Turkmenistan, and utter chaos in Tajikistan, how could little Akaev not look good? A physicist from Moscow, untouched by the politics of Soviet Kirgiziia, who spoke Russian fluently and Kyrgyz . . . well, rather not. I remember seeing him on stage with Karimov in '94: the Uzbek "president" was larger, more ebullient, and just a better speaker than Askar. Karimov spouted bullshit with equal fluidity in Russian and Uzbek, clapping Askar on the back, telling jokes (I think: my grasp of the languages was pretty thin for humor, but everybody else laughed). Then, well, Akaev spoke, much as a high school valedictorian might (David Skelton, where are you?), ponderously plodding through a speech in Russian, and then torturing us with a halting translation in Kyrgyz.
Of course, in Bishkek, Russian was just more common. I had gone there on the strength of an intensive three-month course in Uzbek, and given that Kyrgyz is to Uzbek as, say, Italian is to Mexican Spanish, I thought I could get by. But no. There was the occasional pidginizing of Russian and Kyrgyz, but most city dwellers preferred Russian. Whenever I asked for prices in Kyrgyz at the bazaar, I was always answered in Russian.
Hardly surprising, given that Kirgiziia was a net recipient of all-union transfers under the Soviet system -- sort of like a backward southern state in the U.S., receiving more in federal aid than it contributes in federal taxes. The Soviets were also masters at playing nationalities against each other (z.B., Uzbeks and Kyrgyz), and playing the urban dwellers against the rural. The urbanites considered themselves Russian, or at least Soviet, which was always more or less Russian. The station break music on the local state-owned radio was a nifty little tune that we ex-pats assumed was the national anthem. It took me a long time to learn that it was "Moskovkykh vecherakh" -- a Russian song about evenings in Moscow. Hell, Akaev led an audience in one of his speeches in a rousing rendition of the song. Kyrgyz nationalism? Um, yeah.
Meanwhile, outside the capital, Russian rapidly deteriorated: I met shepherds outside of Talas who thought I was a Muscovite, and refused to believe that I was not a native speaker of Russian. At an ulak competition outside of Bishkek, an old Kyrgyz guy advanced on me threateningly, demanding aggressively of my Kyrgyz host (Marat Asanaliev, kaektasyz?) at the event why he'd brought a Russian. When my host told the man that I was American, the man looked confused and wandered away.
And, of course, in Osh, site of bloody riots in 1990 or so -- didn't really matter when, because when I was there in '94, after a grueling 25-hour bus ride through the mountains (and a tedious couple of hours at the Uzbek border, while the driver and the border guards haggled over the bribe), the Uzbeks and Kyrgyz inhabitants still looked at each other as though they might draw knives at any minute. It didn't help that Uzbeks carry knives on their belts anyway, although the blades aren't good for much besides buttering bread. Uzbeks generally put their hands on their chest when expressing pleasantries, and the Kyrgyz (half-)joked that they did this because their hearts were black.
Still, Kyrgyz always referred me to Uzbeks if I wanted good plov, or pilav, or pilow, or (as we in the States call it) pilaf. Uzbeks for plov and manty, Russians for pel'meny, Uighurs or Dungans for ashliam-fu, Koreans for kimchi -- when I asked what the Kyrgyz cooked well, the speakers would shrug and smile. Not surprising, when the national dish was besh barmak ("five fingers", so called because it was eaten without utensils), boiled sheep innards served over noodles. But, again: Kyrgyz nationalism? Um. . . .
(incidentally, I have heard, but never verified, that "um" means . . . um . . . female naughty bits in Kyrgyz.)
Anyway, the politics. Akaev seemed to get along okay, not hurt by the fact that the USAID and UN were just pouring money into the economy. There were some shaky moments, of course. Early in his administration, Akaev had said that the Kyrgyz economy would be strong and diversified, including the export of opium. . . . He also had to rapidly backpedal when he announced that the state langauge of Kyrgyzstan would be Kyrgyz: to keep the Russian professionals from fleeing in droves, he hastily added Russian as coequal with Kyrgyz. Then, a few months before I left, Akaev dissolved parliament for new elections, a sign that maybe things weren't so . . . um . . . oh, fuck it.
When I went back in '96, I was an intern at the Ministerstvo Innostrannykh Del'/Tyshky Ishter Ministeriasi/Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was under the control of Minister Roza Otunbaeva, former ambassador to the U.S. I had actually met her in 1994, when one of her younger relatives (the Kyrgyz were not always so careful in distinguishing "little sister" from "niece" or "cousin") was in the ESL class I taught, and when I arrived in 1996, owing to a screw-up with my fellow intern (Matt Bergstrom, where are you?), I stayed the first night with her family. Anyway, that was all largely irrelevant, because Akaev had pulled foreign policy completely into a sort of auxiliary administration. So . . . the ministry was basically spinning its wheels, keeping busy. Anvar, Jyldyz, Marat, Samargul' (Borbieva, who had helped arrange my '94 visa), Ainora, Ainura, Erkin -- kak u vas, y'all? Salomatsingarby? Cyngarnyng ishteringer barmy? Vashy raboty kak?
Economically, things weren't looking so good. Although the gasoline shortage of '94 had ended (decreasing air quality and making street-crossing considerably more dangerous), USAID was looking at pulling out in a couple of years, the Canadian mining companies were bitching about the bureaucrats at every level of government taking their cuts. In '94 I had seen doctors, engineers, and other professionals selling possessions (and sometimes purchases from Moscow or Istanbul) on blankets on the sidewalks; I had seen women standing, each with a cake in her hands, waiting to sell it so she could go back and bake another one and come right back out there. The factories had closed, and the men who worked them were unemployed, while their wives, who had studied such feminine fields as linguistics were getting paid skads of money to be translators and office administrators for the foreign firms. So, in many cases, the husbands would drink (it was said that the Russians taught the Kyrgyz how to drink, but never taught them how to stop) and be general layabouts, the wives would kick them out and support their families, their parents and/or siblings, and even their husbands, whose apartments the wives financed. Many urbanites had dachas in the countryside; basically little huts where they could grow vegetables that they canned for the winter.
I guess I could go on like this forever (and, I guess in internet terms, I kind of already have), but I should probably call it quits here. I would like to say howdy to a bunch of folks I knew over there, although I have no reason to think that any of them is reading this, any more than anybody else. But I have to hope that they're all doing okay, that they have means of support and are happy, and that the events in the little republic haven't harmed them. Vsego dobrogo, moi druky; jakshy kalyngar, dosttorum!
posted by heavynettle at 13:50
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