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Kurman-Ghali Karakeev, who is Kyrgyz, was born in 1913 in the village of Kermenty in the Issyk-Kul province or Kyrgyzstan. Though he expected to grow up to be a farmer or shepherd, he rose instead to become the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) and, later, the president of the Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz SSR. Dinara Davlembaeva interviewed him in Bishkek March 18, 2009.

I was born into a poor, rural family near the coast of Lake Issyk-Kul. It was so many years ago, we still used the old calendar. [1]

Like the rest of the rural population, I could pasture sheep and breed livestock and I never thought about education or science. But my destination was not what I expected and my parents made a great contribution to it. My fate started becoming apparent even at an early age. I was a distinctive child, a bright leader, with a creative streak.

My parents sent me to school. Few parents were concerned about the education of their children in the village in those years. After school, I entered Issyk-Kul Agricultural College. During college, I started to get involved in Party activities. At the age of 16, I joined the Komsomol.

Not surprisingly, the Party soon invited me to work as a journalist for the national youth newspaper Leninchil Zhash. From that time onward, I moved up the career ladder quickly. First, I became a chief of department, and later the editor of the newspaper – a great success for a young boy. From 1934 to 1936, I worked as a head of the department of students at the Kyrgyz Regional Committee VLKSM. [2]

Then, the war years came and I was called up to serve in the in the Black Sea navy. Actually, I was very happy for the chance to serve at sea, because I was born near Lake Issyk-Kul and I felt right at home on the water. There, I completed my political training with honours and actively participated in the life and work of the military unit. For my accomplishments, the leadership of the navy personally wrote a thank-you letter to my parents.

It was not easy to work in leadership positions during World War II. But I was a member of the Communist Party, I became deputy editor of the magazine Communist, and at the same time held the position of secretary of the Tian-Shan and Issyk-Kul party committees. My responsibility was organizational work. I was so touched by the troubles of the people and the fate of the country that my heart was bleeding all the time. I worked 24 hours a day, without sleep. I thought out and organized charitable actions to ease the heavy burdens of the soldiers in the war. For example, during one charity event, I gathered a considerable amount of clothing and food and personally accompanied it into blockaded Leningrad.

The pain of millions of people, their spiritual wounds, the tears they shed for all the human losses, the hundreds of destroyed cities and villages, pushed me to document these historical events. I have written about the Stalinist repression of 1937-1938, and the Great Patriotic War [World War II]. I knew all the different perspectives on these events, since at that time, on the one hand, I represented the members of the party – the elite – and on the other hand, I was a representative of the ordinary population, raised in a poor village family.

From 1944 to 1946, I was a student in the Party School of the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] Central Committee in Moscow. And then I became an editor of the national newspaper Sovetik Kyrgyzstan and, later, the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kyrgyzstan.

A part of my political life was my work as a propagandist. During the post-war period, it was necessary to raise the patriotic spirit of the people. From 1946 to 1956 I was involved in campaigning for morality, patriotism, friendship among nations, and internationalism. I always did everything selflessly. It’s part of my character. I was a real patriot. I considered it my personal duty to work for the sake of the motherland.

After graduating from the Higher Party School, I entered into a system where special staff were prepared to educate young people. The main tasks at that time were the improvement of operational management and the promotion of the economy and culture of the country. A series of reforms concerning the forms and methods of political education in the Komsomol were implemented to achieve those goals. By the way, I published some books containing my personal works and experiences during that time.

In February of 1946, I was involved in social and political campaigns leading up to the elections for the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. We organized campaign groups. We trained campaign teams to inform people about the elections. We prepared lectures and reports on the principles of Soviet democracy, the electoral system, and the Constitution. I have published a book about the organization of the Soviet political system, based on my personal experience and knowledge.

The task of the party was to develop the national economy. Cultural educational institutions were strongly involved in propaganda activity. Great importance was attached to lectures about social and political themes. To increase awareness among the people, I was involved in economic education.

Literature didn’t escape the Party’s attention, either. The Party emphasized art as a way of promoting ideology. The goal was to develop all genres of fiction. But, by the 90s this niche was filled by Western fiction. National folk art and amateur art was crowded out.

I played was involved in cultural, social, economic, and political reorganizations. I was part of the system that created history, created the state’s structure, and promoted ideology. At different times I felt the joy of victory, the bitterness of defeat, and, eventually, the destruction of our ideals. A republic with cultural and intellectual potential broke up before my eyes. It was difficult to see how the world the Party had built was being ruined.

A member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kyrgyzstan, a delegate to the twenty-second, twenty-third, and twenty-fifth conventions of the CPSU, a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and the Supreme Soviet of the Kyrgyz SSR – these were my public activities. Anyone interested in politics would be jealous of these successes. But, after all this political activity, I changed my perspective on my work. I wanted to do something else.

After earning my Ph.D. at the CPSU Central Committee’s Academy of Social Sciences in 1959, I was appointed president of the Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz SSR. During my two decades of service there, the Academy achieved enormous things. And they were not only for the scientific community, but for the country as a whole.

In 1954, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of the Kyrgyz SSR was founded as a branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. It gathered together the most prominent and distinctive personalities of the time. It involved about 1,200 workers, 550 of whom were doctors and or “candidates” of the sciences.

The NAS cultivated new professionals and contributed to an increase in Kyrgyzstan’s scientific potential. The results of our years of work were the development of major theoretical propositions and valuable practical advice; and an increase in the efficiency of scientific and technological progress. This, in turn, promoted economic development, exploitation of natural resources, increased productivity, and improved production technology.

I will name a few of the achievements of the specialists of the Academy during the period when I headed it: Kyrgyz scientists created a geological map predicting where rare minerals could be found, carried out space research, and developed machinery for collecting soil samples on the Moon. Also, it was during this time that Academician P.I. Chalov made his discovery about uranium. Over the years, the Academy of Sciences has made contributions to the development of the Kyrgyz language. It has also studied folk art, literature, and the Manas epos. [3] In 1965, a Kyrgyz-Russian dictionary was published. The Scientific Institute of Language and Literature under the Academy of Sciences was closely involved in working to improve the grammar of the Kyrgyz language by creating educational materials.

I am the author of more than 300 works, including monographs, books and pamphlets about history, beginning from the time of the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Region [4] until the time of the creation of an independent Kyrgyzstan. Some of my works are: The History of Cultural Construction in the Kyrgyz Republic, The Great October Revolution and Science in Soviet Kyrgyzstan.

Also, I supported the creation of such books as The History of Communist Organizations in Central Asia, Omitting Capitalism on the Way to Socialism, The Participation of the Workers of the Kyrgyz Republic in Building Socialism, Celebration of the Ideas of the Great October Revolution,
The All-Conquering Power of Leninist Ideas, and Problems in the Management and Construction of a Multinational Soviet State.”

Back then, the Academy of Sciences was effective. But the golden age of science in Kyrgyzstan was mainly during the Soviet era. Now, a lack of financing, combined with higher prices for equipment, materials, services, and so on, are making trouble for science in Kyrgyzstan. Over time, research is becoming more difficult. I am disappointed that the development of science here has almost stopped. For many years, the Academy has not been receiving enough attention, but despite this, its staff continue to work for the present and the future of Kyrgyzstan.

Even after I left the presidency of the Academy, I continued to help students and monitor the results of their work. I was asked for advice and I did not decline to help young scientists, because doing so is not work, but pleasure. Students of promise, some of whom later became professors at universities and headed scientific institutions, came out from under my wing. I supervised and assisted 20 master’s and doctoral theses.

By now, the college where I studied in my youth is named in my honour. For all my achievements and contributions to national science, the former President of the Kyrgyz Republic awarded me the Order of Manas. My name is mentioned in the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia, the Historical Encyclopaedia, the Encyclopaedic Dictionary, and in the History of Kyrgyzstan.