Down with Lenin! - and up with...?

On a hot summer morning in June another Lenin statue fell. This time in Kyrgyzstan. Syinat Sultanalieva looks at what to keep of your past, why and why not.

BY SYINAT SULTANALIEVA

Against the backdrop of the beginning of the end of the world breaking out over last week, the fall of yet another Lenin statue seems insignificant, but as we, (grumpy) millennials, joke – we’re the “generation that’s lived through 9/11, two recessions, a global pandemic, and eyeing World War 3 all before hitting 40” – and we still manage to chill and sunbathe, go to raves, or write opinion pieces about the ghosts of the past in insignificant localities, so bear with me.

(Lenin in Osh up)

The Lenin statue in question was the tallest in Central Asia at 23 meters and 7.5 tonnes. The demolition happened in Osh - Kyrgyzstan’s southern capital, the land of many cultures and ethnicities, a city that used to be part of the ancient Silk Road, a city that is over 3,000 years old.

(Lenin in Osh down)

Lenin’s statue was erected in the central square in 1975, and it continued to indicate the route to communism for thirty-four years after the Soviet Union itself was gone, and many former Soviet republics rushed to dismantle everything that reminded them of that part of their country’s history.

Not in Central Asia, and definitely not in Kyrgyzstan, which held on to the relics for as long as possible.

Even now, the Lenin Fallen is not to be thrown away into oblivion but moved into a smaller park in a less significant part of Osh, still to remain a part of it. Just like in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s actual capital, back in 2003, when the Lenin statue there was moved just a few hundred meters away from its central location to give way to the statue of Manas, Kyrgyzstan’s epic hero that united its people over a 1,000 years ago.

The Osh Lenin will be replaced with a 95-meter-tall pole for the Kyrgyz flag in a continued process of ethno-nationalist consolidation, which deserves its own write up some other time.

The demolition flared up heated (not too much though) discussions with some people expressing dismay at the municipal administration’s decision to go ahead without consulting the local population. Many in Kyrgyzstan still have fond memories of dedushka Lenin (grandfather Lenin), as taught in Soviet schools, and many do still attribute the country’s infrastructure, education, and healthcare systems to the Soviets alone – which, for once, is actually true. The history of the Soviet Union in Central Asia is one of mixed feelings (everyone’s “it’s complicated” status) interweaved with appreciation and gratitude.

There are others that thought it was the right thing to do because a statue of Lenin is no longer relevant and certainly does not deserve a place at the very heart of the city.

This debate reflects larger processes happening in Kyrgyzstan which one could, with some imagination, call a slow-burn de-colonization – the red thread of which is running through the planned urban redevelopment throughout the country (or so it is claimed by the authorities). A whole host of old Stalinka buildings, including apartment blocs, a musical conservatory and old Soviet government seats, have recently been stripped of their “historical significance” status, with the government offering them up to private investors for deconstruction and reconstruction.

From a de-colonialization point of view, this is probably a good process. Except it’s not just about that ever, is it?

All of these buildings that have been thrown to the capitalist dogs, though, are what used to make Bishkek – Bishkek, with its canopies of trees covering the gray brick buildings of the days of yore. Uncombed, with trees and bushes growing everywhere, sometimes conveniently hiding some of the seedier spots in the city, Bishkek used to be the poor but punk cousin to the other capital cities in Central Asia.

Now, with the old buildings slowly giving way to new ones (made of plexiglass and aluminum, of course), Bishkek is becoming simultaneously cleaner and stuffier, a boring copy of some of the neighboring capitals of more autocratic -stans. There’s something to be said about the connection of autocracy and its obsession with order and cleanliness (cue the Imperial March here, please).

Does it mean that the cleaner and more transparent the streets become, the more darkness there is lurking behind the curtains of government buildings? Maybe not always (then again, although Germans are now famously very liberal and all, we know how obsessed they used to be with order, very suspicious!). But it seems to be the case in most post-Soviet countries.

The more unkempt and neglected a place is, the more freedom there is – or at least used to be. Minsk, Baku, Tashkent, Astana, Dushanbe, Ashgabad – the places are so clean you can feel your dirty liberal queerness leave your body the moment you step into their streets.

Kyrgyzstan is definitely going in that direction, it seems. It’s stuck in the limbo between its old punk identity and its desire to be accepted in the clean streets city club. Like recently, the government (not the president directly, of course, no, but we all know how this works, right?) moved to cut down the beautiful poplar trees that used to line the road to the presidential residence, claiming a need to expand that part of the road and also that the trees were so old they present a health hazard. The funny thing is these lights look like something that was taken straight out of somewhere in downtown Ashgabad with their kitschy monumentality (and weird multiple white bulbs crowning a supposedly gold lamppost).

Recently, I made the acquaintance of an elder architect, someone who’s seen Bishkek develop over the past four decades or so. He thinks there’s also something to be said about the importance of symbols and making them your own. Kyrgyzstan went through a ridiculous change of its flag (because apparently the previous version of the sun’s rays made it look like a sunflower and that’s where all our troubles came from), and is in the process of changing its hymn after thirty-four years (because apparently we’re a strong and independent country now, not a young nation, and we need a song that reminds us of that) – and now the regime is busy demolishing all remnants of the country’s architectural history. Because it’s time to build a new country.

I worry though, whose country will it be then? Will I also need to purge my dirty liberal queerness to be able to continue living here? I don’t know.

Syinat Sultanalieva is a human rights activist and researcher from Kyrgyzstan, who writes science fiction on the side when she’s not busy dissecting power structures and dynamics in the region and the world.

With Syinat, we are adding a voice from the other end of what used to be the Russian and later Soviet empire. A voice less old and less grumpy, we trust that you will enjoy her perspective.