>>74905826China, and in the early 19th century by the Uzbek Khanate of Kokand.[28] In 1842, the Kyrgyz tribes broke away from Kokand and united into the Kara-Kyrgyz Khanate [ky], led by Ormon Khan. Following Ormon's death in 1854, the khanate disintegrated.[29]
Russian conquest
Group of Kirghiz men posing with a local Russian Governor, his wife, and their child in front of a yurt
In the late nineteenth century, the eastern part of what is today Kyrgyzstan, mainly the Issyk-Kul Region, was ceded to the Russian Empire by Qing China through the Treaty of Tarbagatai.[30] The territory, then known in Russian as "Kirghizia", was formally incorporated into the Empire in 1876. The Russian takeover was met with numerous revolts, and many of the Kyrgyz opted to relocate to the Pamir Mountains and Afghanistan.
In addition, the suppression of the 1916 rebellion against Russian rule in Central Asia caused many Kyrgyz later to migrate to China.[31] Since many ethnic groups in the region were, and still are, split between neighboring states at a time when borders were more porous and less regulated, it was common to move back and forth over the mountains, depending on where life was perceived as better; this might mean better rains for pasture or better government during oppression.
Soviet Kyrgyzstan (1919–1991)
Soviet power was initially established in the region in 1919, and the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast was created within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR). The phrase Kara-Kirghiz was used until the mid-1920s by the Russians to distinguish them from the Kazakhs, who were also referred to as Kirghiz. On 5 December 1936, the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic was established as a constituent Union Republic of the Soviet Union.
After the Russian Civil War, the period of the New Economic Policy (NEP), began, which lasted roughly to 1928.[32] The Bolsheviks made an effort to establish a standardized tax system, with higher taxes for nomads to discourage the wandering livelihood and they divided the Central Asia region into five nation-states.[32][33][34] Kyrgyzstan developed considerably in cultural, educational, and social life, literacy was greatly improved. Economic and social development also was notable.[35] Under Stalin a great focus was put on Kyrgyz national identity. The Soviet state was fighting tribalism: its social organization based on patrilineal kinship contradicted the concept of the modern nation state.[35][33] In a region that did not previously know national institutions or consciousness, the process of nation-building was, from the indigenous perspective, a difficult and ambivalent one.[34]
By the end of the 1920s, the Soviet Union developed a series of five-year plans, centered around industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture, including the creation of huge "kolkhoz" collective farming systems, needed to feed the new workers in the industries.[36] Because of the plan's reliance on rapidity, major economic and cultural changes had to occur, which led to conflicts. In Kyrgyzstan, Russian settlers acquired the best pasture land, creating much hardship for most of its original inhabitants, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Turkmen nomads, who were also forced to settle down on soil that hadn't enough agricultural potential.[37] [34] The changes caused unrest, and between 1928 and 1932, nomads and peasants made it clear through methods like passive resistance that they did not agree with these policies, in the Kirgiziya area also guerrilla opposition occurred.[34][32][37] The region suffered relatively more deaths from collectivization than any other.[32]
Nomadic farming in the Suusamyr Valley, Kyrgyzstan
The early years of glasnost, in the late 1980s, had little effect on the political climate in Kyrgyzstan. However, the Republic's press was permitted to adopt a more liberal stance and to establish a new publication, Literaturny Kirghizstan, by the Union of Writers. Unofficial political groups were forbidden, but several groups that emerged in 1989 to deal with the acute housing crisis were permitted to function.
According to the last Soviet census in 1989, ethnic Kyrgyz made up only 22% of the residents of the northern city of Frunze (now Bishkek), while more than 60% were Russians, Ukrainians, and people from other Slavic nations. Nearly 10% of the capital's population were Jewish (a rather unique fact, for almost any place in the Soviet Union, except the Jewish Autonomous Oblast).
In June 1990, ethnic tensions between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz surfaced in the Osh Region (southern Kyrgyzstan), where Uzbeks form a minority of the population.[38] The tensions between Kyrgyzs and Uzbeks in Osis led to 186 deaths.[39] Attempts to appropriate Uzbek collective farms for housing development triggered the Osh Riots. A state of emergency and curfew were introduced[40] and Askar Akayev, the youngest of five sons born into a family of collective farm workers (in northern Kyrgyzstan), was el
