The breakfast delivered to our room at the Ocean Hotel in Bishkek where
we stayed on three separate occasions was certainly nothing to rave
about with very watery porridge and a glass of juice and a banana each! The
next day we had blintzes so they were better at least.
A two-minute walk from our hotel was the Manas Sculptural Complex in front
of the State Philharmonic Concert Hall located
on Chui Prospect, Bishkek’s main
street. The largest statue in front of the Philharmonic Hall was of Manas on his horse defeating a dragon surrounded
by spurting fountains.
Next to Manas were his wife, Kanykei, and faithful friend and spiritual adviser, Bakai. Along the edges of the square were smaller statues of well-known Kyrgyz manaschy or traditional storytellers.
Across Chui Prospect from the concert hall was City Hall.
A sign below the snow leopard said the animal was slowly disappearing from the Kyrgyzstan mountains and people must do their best to conserve them.
I loved the huge eyeglasses with Kyrgyzstan University in the background!
We walked several blocks to the Russian Orthodox Cathedral with its sky-blue onion domes.
The main sanctuary:
The main sanctuary had two paintings that looked like there were bullet holes in them.
A small chapel was off the sanctuary.
This little market was the first we'd seen that sold the local Kyrgyz bread we'd come to like so much to munch on while walking around for the day. It only cost about a quarter so we couldn't beat the price and easy convenience of eating it rather than taking the time to stop for lunch which neither of us ever felt for. We were also able to buy apples at an adjacent stall which provided a healthy alternative to the bread.
The Mikhail Frunze
Museum was dedicated to the Bolshevik leader who led the advance into Central Asia who was born in Bishkek in 1875 in what was then a Russian garrison town. As you may recall from a previous post, Kyrgyzstan's capital city of Bishkek was named Frunze in his honor before reverting to Bishkek in 1991 after the country gained independence from the Soviet Union. The city's airport code is FRU after the war hero.
The museum outlined his life and achievements. According to Wikipedia, “Frunze had been noted among communist leaders as possessing a very creative and almost unorthodox view on matters of implementation and policy. He gained the respect and admiration of his comrades thanks to his fearless and successful pursuit of complicated military objectives and his endurance during the illegality period of the communist party.
He had been considered as a potential successor to Lenin, due to his strength in both theoretical and practical matters of advancing the Communist party agenda, and his seeming lack of personal ambition separate from the party.”
I thought Frunze appeared to be so young to be in command of the Eastern Front troops in 1919.
After the October Revolution of 1917, Frunze became Military Commissar for the Ivanovo-Voznesensk Province in 1918. During the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922, he was appointed head of the Southern Army Group of the Red Army Eastern Front in March of 1919 when he was 34. After Frunze's troops defeated Admiral Alexander Kolchak and the White Army in Omsk, Leon Trotsky, the head of the Red Army, gave overall command of the Eastern Front to him just four months later. When he was in what is now Uzbekistan in 1920, he captured Khiva in February and Bukhara in September. A few days ago we were in Khiva and now we're in Bukhara, btw!
There was an inscription on the arms that said "As a gratitude from the Bukhara revolutionary people to (the) commander of the Turkestan front, M. V. Frunze, for active participation in Bukhara revolution." It was dated September 5, 1920.
Frunze, on the right, was photographed with representatives in Odessa and the Ukraine.
A photo of Frunze listening to the first Soviet radio broadcast in 1924:
An undated picture of Frunze with Lenin:
When Frunze was hospitalized for ulcers, Stalin visited Frunze and advised him to have an operation but Frunze wanted to take a more conservative approach. That didn't work as Frunze died on October 31, 1925. His funeral took place in Moscow’s Red Square on November 3rd, 1925.
The museum was built around the home where he was said to have been born, although I read that it is likelier the house merely represented the type of home he was born into rather than his actual one.
Whoever's home it may have been, it still provided a fascinating glimpse of a late 19th century home in what was then called Pishpek.
As we walked through Dubovy or Oak Park again, acorns were
dropping like hail!
More of the park's sculptures we'd enjoyed seeing so much the previous evening after arriving from Karakol.
I've mentioned in previous posts about the innovative use of recycled pop or water bottles in this part of the world. Here one was being used as a bird feeder.
In the park, the granite obelisk Monument to the Red Guards had the names
of 43 Red Guards who died defending the Soviet Union.
Near the Kyrgyz Opera
and Ballet Theater was a statue of Bubusara
Beishenalieva, the country’s prima ballerina. She danced with the Bolshoi
Theater in Moscow and was a soloist at the Kyrgyz Opera and Ballet Theater.
Another dancer was nearby.
The Opera and Ballet Theater:
The first graffiti we’d seen in weeks was at the Fine Arts Museum which also had one of the most unprepossessing entrances of any museum anywhere we’ve seen.
Once we entered the museum, our impressions improved
significantly although that wasn’t hard! There were some great exhibits on Kyrgyz folk
and applied art.
The large Kyrgyz screens were so pretty.
There were also colorful displays of shyrdaks, the appliqued throws or blankets we’d seen so many of while spending time at the yurts on the horse trek.
I thought it interesting the painting on the right was called Poppy Growers. I think I'm correct in saying Kyrgyzstan used to grow a lot of poppies for the opium and heroin markets.
The gallery of realist art:
Can't you just feel the hard times in the painting of the same name that was created in 1985?
For some reason, the painter titled this work California.
This was a Russian sculptor's take on Auguste Rodin's The Thinker.
A recreation of the huge Manas sculptures in front of the Philharmonic Center we'd first seen that morning except this one had Manas' wife and counselor switching positions.
A very idealized view of the collective farms in 1958:
The painting of the shepherd reminded me of so many scenes we'd seen of men tending to their flocks of sheep around Karakol.
Mindy: When I saw this painting titled Morning Nibble, I could only think of Neill and all his early morning fishing trips to Chatfield Reservoir!
We didn't hear much Folk Music being played in Kyrgyzstan but we certainly saw lots of Kyrgyz men dressed like these musicians!
The floors throughout the museum were wood ones like this and all were pretty uneven. The pattern made me think of books lined up on shelves.
The museum was sometimes referred to as the Gaspar Aytiev Museum of Applied Arts after the painter who created the works in this gallery.
We happened to be at the museum when there was a special exhibition dedicated to a Japanese painter who was there on its opening day.
I managed to snag this photo of the artist creating a painting on the spot but, unfortunately, I never learned his name as all the posters were in Kyrgyz and Japanese.
A very small room was dedicated to the wonders of ancient Greek and Egyptian civilizations.
Despite our earlier misgivings as we approached the museum, we both found it quite impressive.
In Victory Park, three massive curved arches create the image of a section of a yurt towering above a sculpture of a woman waiting for her son or husband to return from the war. I like the story that says she was waiting for them to emerge instead from one of the nightclubs that surrounded the square!
The monument was created in 1985 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the end of WW II.
An Eternal Flame burned in the center of the monument which I had read was a popular spot for either wedding parties or an assortment of the city's drinkers and nefarious characters. I was glad on that day only a wedding party was there!
Other sculptures in Victory Park were dedicated to those who died and to the cost of war.
Once the wedding party had left, I was able to take a better picture of the woman in front of the Eternal Flame.
As we walked back to the hotel later that day, we found the sculpture in Ala-Too Square of Kyrgyzstan's best known modern writer, Chingis Aitmatov, looking rather debonair with his tie undone and his jacket slung over one shoulder. It and the equestrian statue of Manas across the square in front of the State History Museum were erected in 2011 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the country's independence from the former Soviet Union.
Next post: Meat flying at the Osh Bazaar and kids careening on bike carts at Dubovy Park!
Posted on October 5th, 2018, from Bukhara, Uzbekistan.
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