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Soviet Union [USSR] Kirgiz
The term Kirgiz was first used in the eighth century in
reference to the tribes occupying the upper reaches of the Yenisey
River. Historians disagree on the early history of the Kirgiz; but
in the tenth century they apparently began migrating south
searching for new pastures or driven by other people--particularly
the Mongols in the thirteenth century--until they settled in the
present-day Kirgiz Republic. By the early sixteenth century, they
were the area's predominant people. Between the sixteenth and the
nineteenth centuries, the Kirgiz people alternated between periods
of tribal independence and foreign conquest. They were overrun by
the Kalmyks late in the seventeenth century, the Manchus in the
mid-eighteenth century, and the Kokand Khanate in the first half of
the nineteenth century.
Russian conquest of the Kirgiz began in the mid-nineteenth
century, and by 1876 they were absorbed into the Russian Empire.
Kirgizia became a major area of Russian colonization, with Russians
and other Slavs given the best land to settle, reducing
considerably the grazing lands used by the Kirgiz nomads. Kirgiz
resentment against Russian colonization policies and conscription
for noncombatant duties in the army led to a major revolt
throughout Russia's Central Asian territory, including Kirgizia.
Casualties were high on both sides, and thousands of Kirgiz fled
with their flocks to Afghanistan and China.
The tsarist government did not recognize the Kirgiz as a
separate national entity or political unit. Kirgizia, along with
other Turkic nations of Central Asia, was included in Russian
Turkestan, created in 1867. At first the Bolshevik attitude toward
the Kirgiz was equally unenlightened. Having defeated the
nationalists, the
White armies (see Glossary), and foreign
interventionists in Kirgizia by 1919, the Bolsheviks included it in
the newly established Turkestan Autonomous Republic. In 1924 the
Kara-Kirgiz Autonomous Oblast was created (called Kara-Kirgiz to
distinguish it from the Kazakh Autonomous Republic, which was named
the Kirgiz Autonomous Republic). In 1925 it was renamed the Kirgiz
Autonomous Oblast and in 1926 the Kirgiz Autonomous Republic. In
1936 it became a union republic.
In the first years of their rule, Soviet authorities continued
the colonization policies of the tsarist regime. The Soviet
government mitigated its policy, however, after the Basmachi
Rebellion, a popular Turkic nationalist movement that swept former
Turkestan from 1918 to 1924 and recurred periodically until 1931.
In the mid-1920s, the Soviet government permitted traditional
Kirgiz culture to flourish. It also promoted the creation of native
leadership and slowed the influx of Slavs into the region. In the
late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, these policies were replaced
by Stalin's program of forced denomadization and collectivization
and replacement of the Kirgiz intelligentsia and leadership with an
ideologically acceptable Stalinist elite. Some Kirgiz protested by
slaughtering their herds or driving them into China. Nevertheless,
by 1933 about 67 percent of the nomads were collectivized. The
Kirgiz intelligentsia was decimated. Many Kirgiz members of the
CPSU in the republic were purged. Despite the turmoil, the Kirgiz
subsequently achieved some industrialization, a higher standard of
living, and substantial achievements in education.
According to the 1989 census, slightly more than 2.5 million
Kirgiz lived in the Soviet Union, 88 percent of them in the Kirgiz
Republic. About 175,000 Kirgiz also resided in the Uzbek Republic.
According to the 1989 census, the Kirgiz, with 52 percent of
the population, for the first time in decades constituted a
majority within their own republic. Russians, with almost 22
percent of the population, were second. Other large minorities
included the Uzbeks, Ukrainians, Germans, and Tatars. Like other
Muslim groups in the Soviet Union, the Kirgiz showed a phenomenal
population growth between 1959 and 1979. While the population of
the Soviet Union grew by 15.8 percent between 1959 and 1970, the
Kirgiz increased by 49.8 percent. As a result, the proportion of
the Kirgiz in the republic has been steadily increasing, while the
Russian share of the population has been declining despite their
continuous immigration into the republic.
The Kirgiz language, which belongs to the Turkic group of
languages prevalent in Soviet Central Asia, has three regional
dialects. A Kirgiz literary language was not fully developed until
the Soviet period. It merges all three dialects and incorporates
Iranian, Arabic, and Russian elements. Like other Turkic languages
of Soviet Central Asia, the Kirgiz language first used an Arabic
script, which later was replaced by a Latin script in 1928 and
finally by a Cyrillic one in the early 1940s. According to the 1989
census, Kirgiz was spoken as a native language by about 97.8
percent of all Kirgiz in the Soviet Union and 99.5 percent of those
living in the Kirgiz Republic.
The Kirgiz were the least urbanized major nationality in the
Soviet Union. During the 1970s, only 14.5 percent of the Kirgiz
lived in urban areas. In the Kirgiz Republic, they constituted less
than one-fifth of the republic's urban population. Russians
residing in the republic were the most urbanized segment of the
population, with over half of them living in towns and cities. In
1989 the Kirgiz Republic was the second least urbanized republic in
the Soviet Union, with 40 percent of its population residing in
urban areas. Frunze, the capital and largest city, had a population
of 616,000, and Osh had over 200,000; but only one other city had
a population of more than 50,000.
In the 1970s, the Kirgiz were eighth among the seventeen major
nationalities in number of students attending institutions of
higher education and fourteenth in the number of scientific workers
per thousand. In 1987 the Kirgiz Republic ranked eleventh among the
fifteen union republics in number of individuals with higher or
secondary education per thousand residents.
In the 1980s, the Kirgiz ranked eleventh in CPSU membership
corresponding to their share of the population. The Kirgiz Republic
ranked twelfth among Soviet republics in the percentage of its
citizens belonging to the CPSU, but Russians residing in the
republic were clearly overrepresented.
Data as of May 1989
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