Schools in Kyrgyzstan are registered according to a number, but people identify a school by its namesake. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the process of renaming these things has been an important step in shaping national identity. Towns and streets have been Kyrgyz-ified: Sovietskaya Street is now Baitik Baatyr or Abdrahmanov Street, depending on where you are in the capital, which also underwent a name change from Frunze to Bishkek.
My host parents in Cholpon-Ata, whose Russian was quite weak, still referred to Balykchy , a large town on the western tip of lake Issyk-Kul as the Russian Rybachy. Photo cred: my girl Valentina Michelotti. How can we discern how much of this — the renaming of public places, but locally referring to them by their old names — offers some sort of commentary about national and ethnic identity, as opposed to just a force of habit?
Both are surely at play, and after just 25 years of independence from the Soviet Union, questions about what it means to be Kyrgyz and Kyrgyzstani still dominate the forefront of public and state dialogue. Kyrgyzstan is a multiethnic country struggling with how and whether to celebrate that. Sure, there are questions about methodology, but the primary concern about delivering information comes down to language.
In other parts of the country, it seems obvious that a Kyrgyzstani person would only know Kyrgyz. Over 15 ethnic groups call Kyrgyzstan home, but for logistical reasons, schools offer education in Kyrgyz, Russian, and Uzbek plus a tiny handful of Tajik schools in the Batken region. There are practical limitations to which language these classes can be offered in: a shortage of teaching materials, shortage of teachers, or shortage of students.
The vast majority of students are ethnic Kyrgyz. Osmonov published over original poems in Kyrgyz, and translated the work of Shakespeare and Pushkin into his native language. In Dostuk village, Jalal-Abad region, 3 of the 4 Uzbek schools converted to mixed language schools.
