Memorial tours of historical sites in Kyrgyzstan.

"Dear Comrade, STALIN! The situation of the Kirghiz Republic, the abnormality of which is recognized by almost all Union and RSFSR bodies planning and practically managing the national economic construction of the Union and RSFSR, a situation, the further preservation of which would only lead to a lag in the pace of economic construction of this republic, a situation in which the interests of economic and cultural construction and growth of the republic were put under direct attack, at one time forced me to raise before the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), in your person, the question of the need to transform the Kirghiz Autonomous Republic into a Union Republic. Unfortunately, the issue has not only not been resolved yet, but I could not even obtain your permission to discuss this issue in order to explain in more detail the reasons for such a transformation."

From a letter dated April 15, 1930. "To the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Supreme Communist Party (Bolsheviks)".

Visiting monuments of Yusup Abdrakhmanov on Lake Issyk-Kul.

Yusup Abdrakhmanovich Abdrakhmanov (Kyrgyz: Zhusup Abdrakhman uulu Abdrakhmanov; December 28, 1901, Przhevalsky district, Semirechensk region - November 3, 1938, Tash-Dobe, Kant district, Kirghiz SSR) - a prominent Kyrgyz and Soviet statesman, the first chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Kirghiz ASSR. In 2021, he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Kyrgyz Republic.
He was born on December 21, 1901 in the village of Chirkey, Kungey-Aksuy volost, Przhevalsky district, Semirechye region, into the family of a wealthy manap. His father, Abdyrakhman Balapanov, was a volost administrator and biy. aving received an education in a three-year Russian-native school, Yusup entered a school in the village of Sazanovka (now Ananyevo) at the age of 13.
In 1914, he continued his education at the Karakol Higher Primary School, but was unable to complete it due to the events of the 1916 uprising, in which he took part. Like many Kyrgyz families, his relatives were forced to flee to Western China. During these tragic events, his father died of typhus, and his mother and seven close relatives were killed in the Chon Kapkak area by the Cossacks.
Orphaned at the age of 15, Yusup returned to his homeland with his younger brother Toko (born around 1909). In Karakol, he worked as a groom, a janitor, and did heavy physical labor. Later, he joined the Red Army, fighting on the Semirechye Front, and then actively participated in the creation of the Kyrgyz Komsomol.
In 1920, he became a delegate to the III Congress of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, where he was elected to the presidium. In 1922, a discussion arose about the territorial status of the mountainous region, and Yusup Abdrakhmanov insisted on its inclusion in the RSFSR.
Later, he worked in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), and in 1924 he made a decisive contribution to defining the modern borders of Kyrgyzstan. In an effort to implement the idea of ​​national self-determination, Yusup Abdrakhmanov, together with Abdykerim Sydykov, Ishenaly Arabayev and other like-minded people, back in the early 1920s put forward the initiative to create a Mountain Region within the Turkestan Republic.
He also proposed a large-scale project to form a Kara-Kirghiz-Karakalpak Autonomy, covering the territory from Issyk-Kul to the Aral Sea, with the administrative center in Jalal-Abad. On March 12, 1927, at the age of 26, he was appointed Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Kirghiz ASSR.
While holding this post, he pursued an independent and decisive policy that did not always correspond to the instructions of the union center. In letters to Stalin sent in November 1929 and April 1930, Abdrakhmanov insisted on transforming the Kirghiz ASSR into a union republic and demanded an end to the practice of triple subordination of the republic to the union center, the RSFSR and the Central Asian Bureau.
His position was subsequently assessed as a manifestation of nationalism. Analyzing the economic difficulties of the Kirghiz ASSR in the early 1930s, he was distrustful of Stalin's reforms. In particular, he refused to fulfill inflated grain procurement plans, which made it possible to avoid mass famine in the republic during the years when it engulfed many regions of the USSR. In an explanatory note addressed to the deputy chairman of the Presidium of the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), he wrote:
- "It would be better to be removed for failing to fulfill the plan than for bringing the republic to the state of Kazakhstan." During the mass famine, the Kirghiz ASSR became a haven for hundreds of thousands of refugees who arrived from Kazakhstan, and earlier from Ukraine and the Volga region.
In the 1990s, when the Republic of Kazakhstan sent a request for information on the number of people who had survived in the Kirghiz SSR, only the Kirghiz Republic was able to provide the most accurate data. In September 1933, Yusup Abdrakhmanov was removed from his post, and a month later expelled from the party for “non-party behavior”.
The charges stated that, under the influence of a group of Trotskyists, he only formally supported the decisions of the party, while in fact distorting their essence. His attempts to appeal this decision to the Central Committee were unsuccessful. On April 4, 1937, he was arrested.
The investigation accused him of participating in the mythical “pan-Turkic center” and of having ties to such political figures as Ryskulov, Khodjayev, Asfendiyarov and Khodzhanov. He was also accused of belonging to the non-existent "Social Turanian Party", which allegedly acted in a bloc with a right-wing Trotskyist organization whose goal was to overthrow the Soviet regime, separate Kyrgyzstan from the USSR and create a bourgeois-nationalist state under the auspices of Great Britain.
During the interrogations of Turar Ryskulov, it was noted that Abdrakhmanov was one of the active participants in this fictitious organization. Subjected to cruel methods of investigation, he was brought to a critical state and forced to sign fabricated testimony.
However, later, realizing the consequences, he sent appeals to the Prosecutor General of the USSR Vyshinsky and the head of the NKVD Yezhov, in which he retracted his previously given confessions. In one of his letters, he wrote:
- "Investigator Zelikman N.P., using special methods of influence on me, brought me to a state close to insanity, and forced me to sign the so-called interrogation protocols, which he compiled independently, without conducting the interrogation itself.
All this is a lie. I have never been a member of counter-revolutionary organizations. Moreover, the protocols contain the names of many people whom I allegedly knew as members of these organizations. However, I was never acquainted with them and first heard their names from Zelikman himself.
In connection with the above, I declare that I refuse to sign the interrogation protocols drawn up by the Orenburg Directorate of the NKVD. If the persons indicated in them are brought to trial, my signature should not be considered as evidence of their guilt.
He was shot on November 3, 1938. He was rehabilitated in 1958, and in party terms - in 1989. In 1991, the remains of the dead were discovered after a confession by one of the former employees of the NKVD of Kyrgyzstan. Bubura Kydyralieva's father, while dying in 1980, told his daughter the secret of the mass executions that took place during the years of Stalin's repressions.
After the change of power and the collapse of the USSR, this secret was made public. The bodies of the victims were thrown into a brick kiln in Chon-Tash - among them Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, as well as the founders of the Kyrgyz Soviet state and the first people's commissars.
During the excavations, a 4 x 4 meter area was discovered at a depth of 40 cm, where the remains of 137 people were located. Some of them still had personal documents. After exhumation, the bodies were reburied in the Ata-Beyit cemetery (Pantheon of the Fathers), located 100 meters from the site of the discovery.
On August 30, 1991, a state mourning ceremony was held for the reburial of the victims of Stalin's repressions discovered in Chon-Tash. The very next day, August 31, 1991, the independence of Kyrgyzstan was proclaimed. He was buried in the Ata-Beyit memorial complex.
A tombstone with his name and the name of his wife, who died in 1978, was also installed at the Ala-Archa cemetery. 
Brief chronology of Yusup Abdrakhmanov's life:
1912–1915 – studied at a three-grade Russian-native school in the village of Sazanovka.
1915–April 1916 – a student at the Karakol city higher primary school (did not graduate).
1916–1917 – lived with his uncle.
January–March 1917 – worked as a groom and servant for the ensign of the Karakol garrison, Zheltikov.
March – May 1917 – was a groom and janitor-servant for the military elder of the Semirechensk Cossack army P.V. Bychkov. According to his autobiographical data, he was forcibly taken as a servant and against his will taken by Bychkov to Alma-Ata, from where he soon ran away home.
Beginning of 1918 – registrar of the Semirechensk regional statistical office (according to some sources, he received this position with the assistance of Bychkov).
From March 1918 – private in the Red Guard detachment of Morozov (Verny), then assistant squadron commander in the detachment of Mamontov-Kikhtenko, participated in the battles on the Semirechensk front. The detachment is notorious for extrajudicial executions and punitive actions in the north of the Semirechye region.
From September 1918 - private, then squadron commander in the Red Army.
1918 - joined the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in Verny, but was mechanically expelled due to his departure to Tashkent. Re-admitted to the party in March 1919.
Beginning of 1919 - cadet of the Verny command courses, which were soon disbanded, after which he was transferred to the Tashkent Military School named after V.I. Lenin. Dismissed for health reasons.
1919 - assistant company commander of the battalion named after the 3rd International of the Almaty garrison (for 1.5 months), member of the garrison district committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
December 1919 - demobilized from the Red Army for health reasons.
1919 - member of the Alma-Ata City Council of the Red Socialist Youth, member of the Presidium of the Turkestan Bureau of the RKSM, member of the Semirechye Regional Organizational Bureau of the RKSM.
1920 - delegate from the Semirechye region to the 1st Constituent Congress of the Komsomol of Turkestan, as well as delegate to the 3rd Congress of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League.
Since 1920 - member of the executive bureau of the Semirechye regional committee of the RKSM, chairman of the commission "on work among native youth", representative of the Semirechye regional committee of the RKSM in the regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
1920 - meeting and conversation with V. Lenin.
March - December 1920 - chairman of the Muslim section of the Dzhetysu regional committee of the KSM.
1920 – May 1921 – member of the Alma-Ata district revolutionary committee.
December 1920 – May 9, 1921 – executive secretary of the Alma-Ata district city committee of the Communist Party of Turkestan, in 1921 – member of the Semirechye regional committee of the CPT.
May 12 – October 15, 1921 – executive secretary of the Kopalsky (Taldy-Kurgan) district city committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of the Semirechye region, member of the presidium of the Koshchi/Bednota unions of the Kopalsky and Taldy-Kurgan districts, member of the presidium of the district revolutionary committee.
1921 - member of the Semirechye regional executive committee, member of the regional party investigative commission, member of the editorial board of the Ushkun newspaper, member of the expeditionary troika of the regional committee-revolutionary committee-Cheka in the Kopalsky district, authorized representative of the regional party committee and the regional committee of the union of the poor "Koshchi" on class stratification in the Taldy-Kurgan district, chairman of the district election commission.
January - April 1922 - assistant prosecutor of the Jetysu province for the Pishpek district.
1922 - chairman of the expeditionary troika in the Karakol district, member of the district land management commission.
January - March 1923 - head of the organizational department of the Pishpek district city committee of the Communist Party of Tajikistan. May 1923 – Head of the Organizational Department of the Karakol District City Committee of the Communist Party of Turkmenistan.
October 15, 1923 – Executive Secretary of the Karakol District City Committee of the Communist Party of Turkmenistan.
1923 – Authorized Representative for the Pishpek District Congress of Soviets, Authorized Representative of the Regional Committee for the Purification of the Koshchi Union in the Karakol District.
February 1924 – Deputy Executive Secretary of the Jetysu Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
1924 – Chairman of the “National Organizational Bureau” created by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Turkestan to organize the Kirghiz Autonomous Region.
November 11, 1924 – 1925 – Executive Secretary of the Kirghiz Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (formally held the post of First Secretary, in fact acted as Second Secretary).
November 12, 1924 - member of the presidium of the Kirghiz regional revolutionary committee.
December 1, 1924 - member (chairman) of the organizing bureau for the creation of agricultural cooperation in the Kirghiz region.
Beginning of 1925 - recalled to the disposal of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
April 21, 1925 - August 10, 1926 - deputy head of the Organizational and Distribution Department, instructor of the Central Asian Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on transport issues.
1926 - 1927 - responsible instructor of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). During this period, he maintains friendly relations with V. Mayakovsky.
March 1927 - October 1933 - Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Kirghiz ASSR. Removed from office, expelled from the party on charges of "nationalism".
1933–1937 – works in the cities of Samara and Orenburg.
September 1934 – deputy head of the livestock department of the Middle Volga regional land administration.
Membership and candidacies Yusup Abdrakhmanov:
Member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR. Candidate for membership in the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. Candidate for membership in the Central Asian Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
1927 – January 4, 1934 – member of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.
1933–1935 – Deputy Head of the Livestock Department of the Middle Volga Regional Land Department (Samara).
1935–1937 – Deputy Head of the Regional Land Department for Livestock of the Orenburg Regional Executive Committee.
1937 – Arrested on charges of anti-Soviet activities.
1938 – Repressed.
1958 – Rehabilitated through civil proceedings.
1989 – Rehabilitated through the party.
He had deep feelings (according to some sources, unrequited, according to others, mutual) for the famous futurist and Trotskyist Maria Yakovlevna Natanson. He met her in Moscow, where they attended bohemian gatherings together at Lilya Brik's, and were part of Vladimir Mayakovsky's social circle.
After Abdrakhmanov left Moscow, they continued their correspondence. Maria Natanson, expelled from the party by decision of the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), was sent to Frunze, where she worked in the industrial section of the State Planning Committee. Thanks to her professionalism (she studied at a Leningrad university for several years), she soon became a leading economist.
Yusup Abdrakhmanov wrote in his diary:
- "I have never met a single person in my life who is more truthful and comradely honest than M."
Family of Yu. Abdrakhmanov: 
Wife - Gulya Abdrakhmanovna (born around 1903). Sons – Anvar (born around 1921), Alibek (born around 1923). Daughters – Aida, Raya and Lenina. Author of the "Diary", partially published in Kyrgyzstan in 1990.
Arrest of Yu. Abdrakhmanov:
Detained on April 4, 1937 in Orenburg, brought to the case of the so-called "Social-Turanian Party". Transported to Frunze, where he was sentenced to capital punishment by a visiting session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and executed on the night of November 5 - 6, 1938.
According to the testimony given to the NKVD by the famous Tatar nationalist activist Ilias Alkin (born November 10, 1930), he claimed: "I, Alkin, am related to Abdrakhmanov's wife." (I. Alkin. Documents and Materials. Kazan, 2002, p. 219). The story began back in the distant 1920s.
A young instructor of the powerful apparatus of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Yusup Abdrakhmanov was involved by his "senior comrades" in developing a map of the national-state demarcation of Turkestan.
An ardent, purposeful native of Issyk-Kul enjoyed great authority in the Central Committee. He had a civil war behind him, and was active in the Komsomol. At the III Congress of Youth Unions, he sat in the presidium next to the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Vladimir Ilyich Lenin himself.
The leader asked the young delegate about the situation in Semirechye, language policy and the national composition of the population. These public conversations did not go unnoticed by party and Komsomol functionaries. It was then that Abdrakhmanov came up with the idea of ​​creating a single Kyrgyz-Karakalpak autonomy - from Issyk-Kul to the Aral Sea, with the center in Jalal-Abad. However, the party leaders resisted:
- "The Kyrgyz (then called "Kara-Kirghiz") and Karakalpaks live far from each other. Autonomies should be separate. Besides, what unites the Kyrgyz, except for a common self-name? And then the national epic itself came to Abdrakhmanov's aid.
- We are united by "Manas". The epic is heard in Karakol, Pishpek, and Osh districts! - he said.
Yusup Abdrakhmanov cited many proofs - economic, socio-political, specifically historical. However, the decisive argument was the epic one. This is what the memoirs of contemporaries testify to. Legends of the 20th century that became part of the great epic? Perhaps.
But the historical facts remain unchanged. First, the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Region was created, then the Kirghiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. And in the Academic Center organized in Pishpek-Frunze, Manas studies immediately became one of the key scientific topics.
For the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Kirghiz ASSR, Yusup Abdrakhmanov, this topic was not just important - it became his personal scientific passion. An outstanding statesman, the author of a unique monument of his era - the political and lyrical "Diary", a close friend of Vladimir Mayakovsky, Lilya Brik and many iconic personalities of his time.
And, you can to say, a born Manasologist. However, every Kyrgyz and every Kyrgyzstani is connected to "Manas" to one degree or another. The fate of Yusup Abdrakhmanov was tragic. Tortured, he was shot on trumped-up charges. The main "proof" of his guilt was the allegedly anti-Soviet nature of his sincere, frank "Diary".
Friendship of Yusup Abdrakhmanov with Lilya Brik and Vladimir Mayakovsky. 
In his diary entries, Yusup Abdrakhmanov openly talks about his strong feelings for the famous Futurist and Trotskyist Maria Yakovlevna Natanson. In 1927, after being expelled from the party for supporting Leon Trotsky, Natanson was sent to France, where she worked in the industrial section of the State Planning Committee.
Thanks to her professionalism, she soon became a leading economist. It was there that she met the chairman of the republican Council of People's Commissars, Yusup Abdrakhmanov, which grew into a deep affection. It was Maria Natanson who introduced him to the circle of creative intelligentsia, introducing him to the Brik family.
Since then, Abdrakhmanov became a frequent guest in their apartment on Gendrikovskiy Lane, where writers, poets and artists gathered. Yusup's diary contains an entry from November 29, 1930:
- "At 10 o'clock in the evening I went to the Briks. I saw the Agranovs, met Zlata. She has something in common with Lilya. Vit, like yesterday, is courting Lilya's dog - disgustingly. Lilya is convinced that Vit loves her deeply, but she herself does not respond to him so ardently.
Moreover, she believes that she will painlessly break off the relationship if he does not stop being jealous of her past and does not accept her affection for Oska. In general, he speaks about Vit with restrained flattery, but not too praiseworthy. For some reason, Lilya does not want me to tell my dear about this. She apparently does not realize that I do not have and will not have secrets from Musenka."
Abdrakhmanov often spent time in the company of Mayakovsky and the Briks: they visited museums together, organized literary evenings. As a sign of his friendly disposition, Yusup presented Lilya with an exquisite embroidered suzani, a traditional Uzbek panel, and Vladimir Mayakovsky with a precious lamb, a symbol of the republic's prosperity.
He himself also received gifts from the great Soviet poet: an exquisite inkwell, a marble writing set, and, most notably, a shaving kit from the American company Gillette, a luxury item at the time. Abdrakhmanov felt confident in literary circles, easily finding a common language with the creative intelligentsia. In his book "The Stake Is Life.
Vladimir Mayakovsky and His Circle," Swedish literary scholar and Russian specialist Bengt Jangfeldt describes the retrospective exhibition "20 Years of Work," which took place on December 30, 1929, in the apartment of Mayakovsky and the Briks on Gendrikov Lane.
Since the dining room in their apartment was small, the table was taken out, and mattresses and pillows were laid on the floor along the walls. The interior was decorated with photographs and posters of Mayakovsky, and a long banner with his name written in large letters hung from the ceiling: M-A-Y-K-O-V-S-K-I-Y.
Theatrical director Vsevolod Meyerhold brought with him the props: costumes, wigs, hats, masks and other props, taking on the role of costume designer. The guests were mainly fellow LEF members, employees of the "competent authorities", including Moisei Gorb, Lev Elbert, as well as people with whom Mayakovsky had more complex emotional relationships: Natalya Bryukhanenko, Nora Polonskaya with her husband, Lev Kuleshov and his wife Alexandra Khokhlova.
The evening was also attended by Alexander Krasnoshchekov's daughter, Luella. Among the unexpected guests were the young Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet and the prominent party figure Yusup Abdrakhmanov. When it comes to Liliya, the woman Mayakovsky loved most of all, it is noted that that evening she was shamelessly flirting with yet another high-ranking party patron.
Among her many admirers, the most mysterious figure remains Yusup Abdrakhmanov (1901 – 1938). From Osip’s letter to Zhenya (Yevgenia Gavrilovna Zhemchuzhnaya), it becomes clear that at the end of June 1929, Yusup spent several days with Lili in Leningrad.
His presence did not go unnoticed: his exotic appearance, the traditional skullcap – all this made him stand out from the usual circle of writers and artists. However, they preferred to remain silent about him, most likely because his appearance looked awkward for Mayakovsky.
At his own anniversary, the poet was forced to watch as Lili, without leaving Yusup's side, kept taking the pipe from his mouth, wiping it with a handkerchief and inhaling herself. Mayakovsky's reaction to Yusup's gift - a wooden sheep with a note asking him to write about Kyrgyz sheep - can be judged by his behavior. Instead of putting it on the table with gifts, he simply put it aside without even looking at it.
Memory of Yusup Abdrakhmanov.
On August 31, 2021, in honor of the 120th anniversary of his birth, Yusup Abdrakhmanov was awarded the title "Hero of the Kyrgyz Republic" ("Kyrgyz Respublikasynyn Baatyry") for his outstanding contribution to the formation of Kyrgyz statehood. On the 100th anniversary of his birth, a bust was erected in his native village of Zharkynbaev in the Issyk-Kul region.
In 2010, on the 110th anniversary, a monument was erected in the cultural and ethnographic center "Rukh Ordo" on the shore of Lake Issyk-Kul, perpetuating his role in the history of Kyrgyzstan.
In May 2018, a memorial plaque was unveiled in Orenburg on the house on Naberezhnaya Street, 18, where Abdrakhmanov lived in 1935-1937, working as deputy head of the regional land department for livestock of the Orenburg Regional Executive Committee.
In 2021, a monument to Yusup Abdrakhmanov was erected in Ankara, and the President of the Kyrgyz Republic Sadyr Japarov donated his original diary to the National History Museum, declaring it the most important historical document and national treasure of Kyrgyzstan.
In December 2021, a grand opening of a monument to the statesman took place in Cholpon-Ata (Issyk-Kul region).
In 2023, a documentary film “The Iron Road of Yusup Abdrakhmanov - Kyrgyz Turksib” (running time 1 hour 14 minutes) was shot, directed by Temirbek Abdyldabekovich Smanaliev.
In 2024, a book dedicated to the life and work of Yusup Abdrakhmanov was published in Moscow in the famous series “ZhZL” (Life of Remarkable People).

Authority:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%B1%D0%B4%D1%8
"Yusupov. Selected Works." Compiled by J. Dzhunushaliev et al. B., 2001.
Yu. Abdrakhmanov. "1916. Diaries. Letters to Stalin." Frunze, 1991.