page_title: Bishkek
section_title: Soviet era
hierarchical_section_title: Bishkek / History / Soviet era
caption_attribution_description: English: Bishkek: Statue of Mikhail Frunze near the train station
context_page_description: Bishkek, formerly Pishpek and Frunze, is the capital and largest city of Kyrgyzstan. Bishkek is also the administrative centre of the Chuy Region. The province surrounds the city, although the city itself is not part of the province, but rather a province-level unit of Kyrgyzstan. It is also near the Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan border.
  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 Apollon Zimmermann destroyed the fortress. 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 as Frunze, after the Bolshevik military leader Mikhail Frunze, who was born there.
context_section_description: 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.
caption: Frunze statue near the railway station
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "NIKON", "Image Model": "COOLPIX S8200", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Microsoft Windows Photo Viewer 6.2.9200.16384", "Image DateTime": "2014:01:07 16:15:03", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "2332", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "300", "Thumbnail YResolution": "300", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "7574", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4208", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/640", "EXIF FNumber": "22/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Standard Output Sensitivity", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2013:11:28 03:38:15", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2013:11:28 03:38:15", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "3/10", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "7/2", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "88", "EXIF FocalLength": "25/2", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3456", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "4608", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "7438", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "69", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "3828"}