When you think of Kyrgyzstan, you think of the Tien Shan and Pamir mountain ranges. You picture serene green valleys lined with ancient walnut trees interwoven between snow-capped peaks and the shores of the primordial mountain lake Issyk-Kul. Wild horses grazing on untouched mountain grasses, bearing no traces of human civilization, save for a solitary yurt.
At least, these are the first images that surface of Kyrgyzstan on Google images. Likewise, a search for the country on TikTok is populated with numerous videos of Western tourists on a guided horse excursion, with the caption: ‘You’re not depressed, you just need to go horse-riding in Kyrgyzstan’, as Turanic throat singing plays in the background. It’s as if the country’s landscape unlocks something hidden within our DNA, as if its beauty can unleash our inner Genghis Khan.
But during my time in Central Asia, I happened upon a beauty at odds with Kyrgyzstan’s natural splendour, one far from the mountain tops and primeval valleys; one found in the cities, and which bears the imprint of mankind’s shaping of the world. This beauty is ugly, grey and quadrilateral.
During my first week in Bishkek I was introduced to my first Kyrgyz friend, Emir. It was early March, and one of the first days of spring, which meant that the winter smog was finally clearing, revealing the Ala-Too mountains that loom over Bishkek. After enjoying a chainik of sea-buckthorn tea, Emir and I made our way to the cinema, along Erkindik Boulevard, Bishkek’s central promenade, which was lined with flower sellers for International Women’s Day. We then reached Baytik-Baatyr (formerly ‘Sovetskaya’, or ‘Soviet’) Street. One of the city’s main arterial roads, the street housed numerous curiosities of Soviet architecture, such as a KFC with a brutalist fountain, a Soviet-style shopping centre now home to a ‘European-style’ furniture store, an egg-shaped clocktower, and two marvellously Soviet apartment buildings at the street’s end.
Nervous to come across as overly-nerdy about seemingly banal concrete buildings to my new, and up to this point, only Kyrgyz friend, I bit my tongue about what had caught my eye. But a few seconds later, perhaps eager to show me the sights of his city, he brought it up: ‘See that building to the right, my Mum calls it the drunk building’. Emir explained that during the 80s and the period of Perestroika, the era of his mother’s youth, it was impossible to tell whether the building was actually bending in and out when under the influence. Nowadays, a litany of AC units, and poorly retrofitted double-glazed windows hamper the somewhat disorientating effect of the Issyk-Kul residential building, designed in 1979 by A. Isaev, A. Nigai and L. Sidorenko.
Centre: Residential Building, B. Lebedev, I. Kombarbayev, A. Nezhurin, 1985, Right: Issyk-Kul residential building, designed in 1979 by A. Isaev, A. Nigai and L. Sidorenko. Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
Enamored by his story, I asked him if he knew anything about the building to its rear (residential Building, B. Lebedev, I. Kombarbayev, A. Nezhurin, 1985), which had a perplexing shape. Admittedly, he didn’t have an anecdote for this one. However, he informed me that in Soviet times, due to the tectonic activity of the area, buildings were limited to twenty stories in height, and as such, this building dominated Bishkek’s skyline. That is, up until the fall of the Soviet Union, when planning regulations were relaxed and many cheaply built novostroiki cropped up all around the city, surpassing the concrete monolith’s height.
The buildings and their history fascinated me, igniting one of my favourite hobbies during my time in Bishkek: tracking down as many unique examples of Brutalist and Socialist Modernist architecture as possible.
In Britain, the term ‘brutalist’ is the most readily available architectural style to slap onto the monolith of Soviet architecture. We think of Le Corbussier, the Southbank Centre, Trellick Tower, university campuses and the Barbican. In the Soviet context, the term conjures up images of rows of faceless prefab apartment blocks, endearingly dubbed ‘commie blocks’, but Soviet architecture is so much more than that.
The analogous yet discrete architectural style of Socialist Modernism is a more befitting term for the style of architecture that emerged in the post-war Soviet Union, arising in part thanks to the exchange of technologies with the outside world. In reaction to the excess of Stalinist architecture and the need for mass-rebuilding in the wake of the second world war, Nikita Khruschev declared: ‘Soviet architecture should be simple, austere and economic in form’. Nonetheless, the result was not uniformly bland and uninspiring as so often thought. A simple elegance and a functional beauty emerged in buildings that housed institutions held dear by Soviet ideology: universities, palaces of sport, sanatoriums and cultural institutions were designed with utmost consideration to their function and location. Even ordinary apartment blocks and remote bus stops were designed with the intent to inspire awe within the Soviet citizen, and foster a sense of civic pride. Above all, however, the most interesting examples arose as a result of the unique form of urban development in Central Asia which engage in a dialogue with the local culture. Indeed, most of Bishkek’s most memorable Socialist Modernist buildings are the product of an 80s construction boom, highlighting the persistence of the style.
Zhyrgal Bathhouse, A. Sogonov, S. Nasypkulov and S. Belyanchikov, 1986.
For example, the 1986 Zhyrgal Bathhouse designed by A. Sogonov, S. Nasypkulov and S. Belyanchikov looks like something practically straight out of Tataouine, with its two peculiar marble white domes resembling yurts. Also notable is the Kyrgyz National University Laboratory Building, which features a mosaic on its facade designed by Satar Aitiev in 1978. The dreamlike scene is unlike any work of Socialist Realism, incorporating several Kyrgyz folk motifs.
Façade of the Kyrgyz National University featuring mosaic The Path of Enlightenment, Satar Aitiev 1978.
Now often viewed as a semblance of a bygone era, a vestige of the Soviet authoritarian system, many of these buildings have fallen into disrepair and there is little (albeit growing) interest in maintaining them given the ideological provenance of these buildings.
Using Kim and Del Hogg’s blog and the photobook Soviet Asia: Soviet Modernist Architecture in Central Asia by Roberto Conte and Stefano Porego, I set out to discover as many of these unique structures as possible. On Wednesdays I would often find myself on side quests, taking a marshrutka to obscure micro-districts to see what I could find. In the end, I had created my own map of all of Bishkek’s architectural treasures and places of interest.
On the surface, Bishkek’s beauty might not be obvious, and the city unfortunately remains just a stop-off before venturing into the mountains for most tourists. But beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, and a city is what you make of it. While Kyrgyzstan possesses an unbelievable level of natural beauty that does not mean its cities and their stories should be overlooked.