Place:Bishkek, Chüy, Kyrgyzstan

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Bishkek), formerly Pishpek and Frunze, is the capital and largest city of Kyrgyzstan. Bishkek is also the administrative centre of the Chüy Region. The region surrounds the city, although the city itself is not part of the region but rather a region-level unit of Kyrgyzstan. It is also near the Kazakhstan–Kyrgyzstan border. Its population was 1,074,075 in 2021.

In 1825, the Khanate of Kokand established the fortress of "Pishpek" to control local caravan routes and to collect tribute from Kyrgyz tribes. On 4 September 1860, with the approval of the Kyrgyz, Russian forces led by Colonel destroyed the fortress. Nowadays the fortress ruins can be found little bit north from the Jibek jolu street, nearby the new main mosque. In 1868, a Russian settlement was established on the site of the fortress under its original name, "Pishpek." It lay within the General Governorship of Russian Turkestan and its Semirechye Oblast.

In 1925, the Kara-Kirghiz Autonomous Oblast was established in Russian Turkestan, promoting Pishpek to its capital. In 1926, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union renamed the city "Frunze," after the Bolshevik military leader Mikhail Frunze (1885–1925), who was born there. In 1936, the city of Frunze became the capital of the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic, during the final stages of national delimitation in the Soviet Union. In 1991, the Kyrgyz parliament changed the capital's name to "Bishkek."

Bishkek is situated at an altitude of about , just off the northern fringe of the Kyrgyz Ala-Too Range, an extension of the Tian Shan mountain range. These mountains rise to a height of . North of the city, a fertile and gently undulating steppe extends far north into neighbouring Kazakhstan. The river Chüy drains most of the area. Bishkek is connected to the Turkestan–Siberia Railway by a spur line.

Bishkek is a city of wide boulevards and marble-faced public buildings combined with numerous Soviet-style apartment blocks surrounding interior courtyards. There are also thousands of smaller, privately built houses, mostly outside the city centre. Streets follow a grid pattern, with most flanked on both sides by narrow irrigation channels, watering innumerable trees to provide shade in the hot summers.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Based on DNA evidence, the area near Bishkek is considered one of the possible origins of the Black Death between 1346 A.D. and 1353 A.D.

Kokhand rule

Originally a caravan rest stop (possibly founded by the Sogdians) on one of the branches of the Silk Road through the Tian Shan range, the location was fortified in 1825 by the khan of Kokand with a mud fort. In the last years of Kokhand rule, the Pishpek fortress was led by Atabek, the Datka.

Tsarist era

In 1860, Imperial Russia annexed the area, and the military forces of Colonel took and razed the fort. Colonel Zimmermann rebuilt the town over the destroyed fort and appointed field-Poruchik Titov as head of a new Russian garrison. The Imperial Russian government redeveloped the site from 1877 onward, encouraging the settlement of Russian peasants by giving them fertile land to develop.

Soviet era

In 1926, the city became the capital of the newly established Kirghiz ASSR and was renamed "Frunze" after Mikhail Frunze, Lenin's close associate who was born in Bishkek and played key roles during the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and during the Russian Civil War of the early 1920s.

Independence era

The early 1990s were tumultuous. In June 1990, a state of emergency was declared following severe ethnic riots in southern Kyrgyzstan that threatened to spread to the capital. The city was renamed Bishkek on 5 February 1991 and Kyrgyzstan achieved independence later that year during the breakup of the Soviet Union. Before independence, the majority of Bishkek's population were ethnic Russians. In 2004, Russians made up approximately 20% of the city's population, and about in 2011.

Today, Bishkek is a modern city with many restaurants and cafes and many second-hand European and Japanese cars and minibusses crowding its streets. However, streets and sidewalks have fallen into disrepair since the 1990s. At the same time, Bishkek still preserves much of its former Soviet feel with Soviet-period buildings and gardens prevailing over newer structures. Since the early 2010s, the city has seen a tremendous amount of new construction that is starting to remove some of the old Soviet feels, especially on the city's southern side.

Bishkek is also the country's financial centre, with all of the country's 21 commercial banks headquartered there. During the Soviet era, the city was home to many industrial plants, but most have been shut down since 1991 or now operate on a much-reduced scale. One of Bishkek's largest employment centres today is the Dordoy Bazaar open market, where many of the Chinese goods imported to CIS countries are sold.

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