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Abdukhapar Bekebaev, who is Kyrgyz, was born in 1945 in the village of Kyzl Suu, near Osh, Kyrgyzstan. He is a teacher. Rayhon Jonbekova interviewed him in Osh on March 11, 2009.

I was born into a well-educated family. There were 12 children in my family. My father was the chairman of a collective farm and we lived a good life. We had land, so we had enough food to eat and clothes to wear. My brothers and sisters all have higher educations.

After finishing high school, I studied at OGPI. [1] When I finished, there was only one university: Osh State University. After finishing, I stayed and taught there, like a good alumnus. I worked as a teacher all my life. I am still teaching at the same institute, in the General Education Department.

Before, the education system worked very well. The Soviet Union gave us a broad education. We were trained very deeply and studied a broad range of courses. Currently, of course there are many positive developments. For example, the specializations are narrower and more focused. Students take all the courses for their specialization and they also have the opportunity to choose classes by themselves. In our time, we were told which classes to take.

There is a big difference between the current generation and our generation. The older professors claim that students these days read less. I think students now live in different conditions. They use the Internet and, through the ‘net can find all kinds of materials. They don’t have to read several books in order to write a paper – it is easier to find summaries on the Internet. Once I told my student that he wrote a very good paper and said I thought he must have worked a lot on it. He told me that he found it on the Internet. It is technological development. We didn’t have such opportunities. The negative thing is that, nowadays, students don’t read books. Russians read a lot, but Asians don’t read much.

Osh is the oldest city in Kyrgyzstan. There is a second Osh, in France. Recently, we celebrated the 3,000th anniversary of Osh. The word Osh comes from a Chinese scientist, who spelled it “o-osh” (with two Os) meaning “to barter.” The Silk Road ran through Osh and silk was brought from China and diamonds and other goods were brought from the West. So, Osh was a place where this barter between Chinese and Western merchants took place.

During the socialist regime, Kyrgyzstan was a place where animals were raised. There were also about 20 factories. But later, the leaders didn’t pay enough attention to Osh, so it is not that developed.

Many holy monuments were destroyed. The politicians were against religion. For example: Babur’s [2] house on Suleiman Mountain was destroyed. [3] And some madrassas were destroyed; Alymbek Madrassa, for example, which was one of the biggest, was destroyed.

The Communists claimed religion was against the government. From one perspective, that was good, because a country will not be very well developed if it is too religious. For example: In Iran women wear the hijab. Does it mean that they are better than we are? Does it mean that they are more developed? No. If religion was that helpful, they would live better than us. We have a balance between religion and economics.

Talking about political regimes, there have been two parts: the socialist regime, in the past; and the current, democratic regime. Both of these regimes have positive and negative sides. It is difficult to define democracy. Even Americans can’t define the whole meaning of this word, although they have been living with it for about 200 years. In all democratic regimes, there should be strict rule of law. Without laws, a person is like a cockroach. In Kyrgyzstan, the leaders don’t understand the word democracy. They lead in more traditional way. But what they are doing is right, because, in our society, people do not understand freedom. Therefore, they jump too high, which is bad, because if they fall, it would be painful. Therefore they shouldn’t jump that high.

Currently, people have more freedom than they did in the past. Kyrgyzstan, especially, is the most democratic country in Central Asia. In our republic, the political situation is stable, because we have a good group of politicians – the law should be strict.

America is a wise nation. We Asians, on the other hand, are trying to develop quickly, which is impossible. We need to go through the evolution of democratization. Right now, we are still very “young.” We have to take steps, to learn and grow up.