Yusup Abdrakhmanov executed 76 years ago

Seventy six years ago yesterday the Stalin regime executed Yusup Abdrakhmanov, the man most responsible for the creation of the borders of the modern Kyrgyz state. He was falsely accused of being a member of Alash Orda and shot on 5 November 1938 at age 34. Khrushchev rehabilitated him in 1958. Officially one of the main streets in Bishkek, Sovetskaya, was renamed Abdrakhmanov in his honor following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Despite his extreme importance in creating the current borders of the Kyrgyz Republic and fighting for its upgrade from an autonomous oblast in 1922 to an ASSR in 1925 few people in Kyrgyzstan born after the fall of the Soviet Union have ever heard of him or know what he did. In 1936 Kyrgyzstan would become a full fledged Soviet Republic along with Kazakhstan.  However, Stalin had already removed Abdrakhmanov from Kyrgyzstan and sent him to Samara in 1933.