kĭrgēstänˈ, officially Kyrgyz Republic, republic (1997 est. pop. 4,574,100), c.76,600 sq mi (198,400 sq km), central Asia. It borders on China in the southeast, on Kazakhstan in the north, on Uzbekistan in the west, and on Tajikistan in the southwest. Bishkek, the capital, and Osh are the chief cities.

Land and People, and Government

Kyrgyzstan is a mountainous country in the Tian Shan and Pamir systems, rising to 24,409 ft (7,440 m) at Pobeda Peak on the Chinese border. Ninety-four percent of the country is over 3,300 ft (1,000 m) above sea level, with an average elevation of 9,020 ft (2,750 m). Lake Issyk-Kul lies in the northeast. The climate is extremely continental with great regional variations. The Kyrgyz, a Sunni Muslim, Turkic-speaking pastoral people, constitute more than half of the population; the rest are Russians (about 18% of the people), Uzbeks (more than 10%), Ukrainians, Germans, and other minorities. About two thirds of the population is rural. The Kyrgyz State National Univ. was established in 1951 and the Kyrgyzstan Academy of Sciences in 1954; by the late 1990s there were over 20 universities in the country.

Government

Kyrgyzstan was the first of the Central Asian republics to acquire democratic institutions. Governed under the constitution of 1993, it has a bicameral parliament consisting of the 60-member Legislative Asssembly and the 45-member People's Representative Assembly; members of both are elected for five-year terms. The president, elected by popular vote for a five-year term, is head of state. The country is divided into six administrative regions and the capital area.

Economy

Kyrgyzstan has rich pasturage for goats, sheep, cattle, and horses. Over 80% of the cultivated area is irrigated. Cotton, potatoes, sugar beets, tobacco, vegetables, fruit, and grapes are grown; sericulture is carried on, and grain crops are cultivated in the nonirrigated areas. The Kyrgyz have traditionally excelled in wood carving, carpet weaving, and jewelry making. Kyrgyzstan has deposits of antimony, gold, molybdenum, tin, coal, tungsten, mercury, uranium, petroleum, and natural gas. Industries include food processing, sugar refining, nonferrous metallurgy, and the manufacture of agricultural machinery, textiles, building materials, appliances, furniture, and electric motors. The leading exports are cotton, wool, meat, tobacco, metals (particularly gold, mercury, uranium, and steel), hydropower, and machinery; chief imports are grain, lumber, industrial products, ferrous metals, and fuel. The main trading partners are other former Soviet republics and China. In 1998, Kyrgyzstan became the first former Soviet republic to join the World Trade Organization.

History

Formerly known as the Kara [black] Kyrgyz to distinguish them from the Kazakhs (at one time called Kirghiz or Kyrgyz), the Kyrgyz migrated to Kyrgyzstan from the region of the upper Yenisei, where they had lived from the 7th to the 17th cent. The area came under the rule of the Kokand khanate in the 19th cent. and was gradually annexed by Russia between 1855 and 1876. The nomadic Kyrgyz resisted conscription into the czarist army in 1916 and fought the establishment of Bolshevik control from 1917 to 1921. As a result of war devastation, there was a famine in 1921–22 in which over 500,000 Kyrgyz died. The area was formed into the Kara-Kirghiz Autonomous Region within the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic in 1924, becoming an autonomous republic in 1926 and a constituent republic in 1936.

In 1990, Askar Akayev, president of the republic's Academy of Sciences and a non-Communist, was elected president by the legislature. After fighting off an attempted coup in 1991, the government declared Kyrgyzstan independent of the Soviet Union. Kyrgyzstan subsequently became a member of the Russian-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States, and a new consitutution was approved.

Akayev, who remained president, fostered ties with China and other neighboring nations and initiated an ambitious program of free-market reforms. He retained his post in the 1995 elections, which were denounced by opposition leaders but given guarded support by UN observers. Also in 1995, Kyrgyzstan, along with Belarus and Kazakhstan, signed a pact with Russia providing for close economic cooperation. In 1996, Akayev won a referendum on amending the constitution to increase the presidency's powers. Islamic militants seized several towns near the border with Tajikistan (where a civil war began in 1992) in 1999, and in 2000 Kyrgyzstani forces fought Uzbek guerrillas based in Tajikistan that had infiltrated into the Fergana Valley. Akayev was reelected president in Oct., 2000, in a contest that observers said was marred by intimidation and ballot fraud. A Feb., 2003, referendum approved constitutional changes and affirmed Akayev's current term in office. The vote was prompted by unrest prior to 2003, but the constitutional changes and outcome of the vote were denounced by those opposed to Akayev.

Bibliography

See S. Akinev, Islamic Peoples of the Soviet Union (1986).

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