Kyrgyzstan day four

Language

Kyrgyzstan is the perfect place to improve your Russian. It is everywhere, from street signs to shop windows, the language of waiters to taxi drivers, young and old. Kyrgyz is spoken too (see my restaurant experience on day one!) but it is unobtrusive. If you visit, learning some basic Russian will help you a lot.

It is sad to see how many countries are rejecting Russian outright, cancelling a whole linguistic culture. Whilst Russia’s invasion of Ukraine deserves nothing but contempt and outrage, should language itself really be the scapegoat for one autocrat’s evil actions? Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Georgia: the West must absolutely stand by these nations and their rights to democracy and freedom. But should the language of Chekov, Dostoevsky, or Pushkin be so vehemently rejected as a consequence?

Fortunately Russian carries on here, despite the war in Ukraine. I went to the Kyrgyzstan State History museum, which is excellent. It has some stunning pottery and jewellery, preserved for thousands of years, on display there, and a very informative history. From a somewhat naive Western perspective, I anticipated nomadic cultures, warring tribes and a gradual ethnological development towards modernity. Instead, I was humbled by lessons on the early history of islamic study and scientific advances (5–10C AD), then their sophisticated diplomacy both East (towards the Chinese dynasty) and West (towards the Ottoman Empire, and later Russia) from the 12th century onwards.

Kyrgyzstan has a long and rich history. Yet the country is content to continue using Russian alongside its own native tongue. Kyrgyzstan understands the value of diplomacy in the long view, whose foundations are built over decades and centuries out of commerce and trade. A land-locked country, it has no choice but to look not only East and West, but to all the points of its political compass. This demands the most tactful and nuanced of diplomacy, with no bandwidth left for political gesturing over language.

This is one student of Russian who is grateful for its continued use in daily Kyrgyz life. And they may have good reason for it too.