Historical monuments in Kyrgyzstan.

"In a word, they restored order! Indignant, I immediately went to the district party committee. The cooperators asked me to put in a good word for them, otherwise they would not let me work. At the district committee, the second secretary listened to me attentively and, asking me to wait, left, and, returning, invited the first secretary, asking him to repeat to him word for word the history of the birth of the monument."

V. Barskov.

Historical and archaeological monuments in Barskoon gorge.

The story of one photograph:
Valentin Barskov - "Once a local photographer asked me to write in paint on a large rocky stone near a waterfall in the Barskoon gorge "Gagarin was here, August, 1964". I fulfilled the photographer's request, but soon regretted it, as other "memorial" inscriptions about the stay of "Vanya + Manya, Abyl and Adyl" began to appear on the stone...
The entire stone was covered with autographs of "petyakanthropes". I felt sorry for the ruined rock. In the late seventies, cosmonaut Leonov came to Tamga for a vacation. The commander of the district troops invited him to hunt in the area of ​​the waterfalls.
According to established tradition, the guests visited the memorial "Gagarin Stone". Alexey Arkhipovich, seeing the rock smeared with inscriptions, was indignant and suggested removing all the inscriptions and writing one word - GAGARIN - or attaching a memorial plaque with a portrait to the stone Yury.
I was given the wish of cosmonaut Leonov, and I sat down to work on the project of remaking the "Gagarin Stone" into a monument to Gagarin. Perhaps now my long-standing dream of immortalizing the image of Yury will come true. The "Barskoon" collective farm, on whose land this rock lies, agreed to be the customer.
A couple of months later the project (sketches, model, estimate) were ready. And my friend, journalist and photographer Vadim Kapustin, and I presented it to the board of the collective farm. The project was approved and taken to the District Committee for approval.
There, too, they were happy with the idea of ​​creating a monument, but they decided to invite local sculptors from the capital to be the creators. However, the "creators" asked for a price tens of times higher than the one I proposed. Of course, the collective farm refused the order.
Soon I went to work in Leningrad, but continued to come to Tamga on vacation. And all these years Vadim Kapustin was pushing the idea of ​​creating a monument among the visiting cosmonauts and employees of the Baikonur cosmodrome. The idea arose to "pass the hat around", that is, to create a monument using voluntary donations.
I was persuaded to return to work on the monument. However, the "art critics" of their OBKhSS became interested in the project and made it clear to me that the trick with donations would not work... Then I gave up on the fruitless search for funds and decided that I would make a monument to Gagarin for nothing, i.e. for free, if only they would help me with building materials.
By that time, I was already teaching at the Grekov Odessa State College and could use my two-month vacation to travel to Kyrgyzstan. In 1989, I finally got down to work. I brought clay, building materials, a welding machine, reinforcement to the gorge... My friends helped me.
But August ended, I returned to Odessa, having mothballed the work. The following year I returned to Tamga, having first told the students of "Grekovka" about the work on the monument. Some of them expressed a desire to look at the Tien Shan. With a joyful feeling, I arrived at the place of work and ... found nothing - no materials, no frame (it was thrown into the river), no stucco! ...
Only the rock flaunted its former inscriptions, and two large yurts appeared, converted by cooperators into a barbecue and snack bar. The traders told me that a month ago the party leadership came and banned all monumental work, and at the same time ordered the removal of the yurts-snack bars.
In short, they restored order! Indignant, I immediately went to the district party committee. The cooperators asked me to put in a good word for them, otherwise they would not let me work. At the district committee, the second secretary listened to me attentively and, asking me to wait, left, and, returning, invited me to the first secretary, asking him to repeat to him word for word the history of the birth of the monument.
And then I learned that the owner of the office, who was now sitting in front of me, personally forbade the construction. “If anyone had said a word to me about what you just told me, I would still I did it so as not to interfere with your work. Go and create!
No one will bother you anymore, and we will remove the bazaar from there so that they do not litter the area around the monument, and if they resist, we will send the police, tell them so." Returning to Tamga, I told the sanatorium command about what had happened and they also promised to help in any way they could.
Soon five students flew in from Odessa and the work began to boil. A camp of three tents and a fire pit appeared near the future monument. Vadim Kapustin connected his son to our company, the tourist center sent an intern, the sanatorium helped with lunches...
We worked from sunrise to sunset with breaks for Sunday trips to the mountains. The grand opening of the monument was scheduled for the end of August. With its dimensions of 6 x 4.5 x 12 meters and shape, it resembled a flying starship. On the front side there is a sculptural portrait of Gagarin in a space helmet.
The entire rock was tinted to look like a bronze alloy. Five days before the completion of the work, road equipment arrived with a team of workers to improve the area in front of the monument. At the entrance to the site we placed a small stele with a commemorative inscription about the visit of the First Cosmonaut of the Earth Yuri Gagarin to this place."

Authority:
V. Barskov.
https://foto.kg/galereya/1104-barskoon-vozvedenie-monumenta-v-chest-yuriya-gagarina.html

Photos by:
https://foto.kg/galereya/1104-barskoon-vozvedenie-monumenta-v-chest-yuriya-gagarina.html
Alexander Petrov