Red Army Day

Today is Red Army Day in Kyrgyzstan. The government has renamed it Defenders' Day, but it is still the old Soviet holiday to celebrate the formation of the Red Army by Leon Trotsky in 1918. It has evolved in Kyrgyzstan into a kind of Men's Day to serve as a counterpart to International Women's Day on March Eighth. The women in our department got us pizza for lunch on Friday and gave each of the men in the department a card and a handkerchief as a gift.