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Factory No. 60: The Cartridge Works That Came to Frunze in 1941
In November 1941 a Lugansk cartridge plant was evacuated to Frunze and grew into the Lenin Machine Works. Its long dwindle ended at the president's office.
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Food & Culture
The Rise and Abolition of Kyrgyzstan's Water User Associations
For 23 years farmer associations ran Kyrgyzstan's village canals under a 2002 law. In June 2025 the law was repealed and the…
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Destinations
Abramov Glacier: Fifty Years of Measuring One Piece of Ice
A Soviet station measured one Pamir-Alay glacier monthly from 1968 with 165 stakes. The record stopped in 1999, resumed in 2011, and…
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Food & Culture
Muhammad Kirghiz: The First Kyrgyz Leader History Knows by Name
The first named Kyrgyz leader enters history in a hostile 1540s chronicle: raider, twice a prisoner, once Amir of the Kirghiz. Reading…
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Food & Culture
Krasnaya Rechka: The Giant Buddha an Hour From Bishkek
A colossal reclining Buddha lay a millennium in a temple an hour from Bishkek. Why its published sizes disagree, and what opened…
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Destinations
The River Issyk-Kul Lost: Why the Chu Swerves Past the Lake
The Chu River misses Issyk-Kul by ten kilometres. It once drained the lake, and in the early 1800s it briefly did again,…
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Food & Culture
Suyab: The Tang Dynasty's Westernmost City Is a Field Near Tokmok
Tang China garrisoned a city 50 km from Bishkek from 648 to 719. What Xuanzang's silence means, and what the 2026 dig…
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Food & Culture
Kutessay II: The Mine Behind 80% of Soviet Rare Earths, and Two Very Different Verdicts
One Kemin pit supplied 80 per cent of Soviet rare earths. Then came two arbitrations over the same mine with verdicts eight…
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Food & Culture
Kadamjay: The Town That Smelted the Soviet Union's Antimony
The USSR's first-ranked antimony producer peaked near 17,000 tonnes in 1991 and made 20 in 2023. The fall, the bankruptcy, and the…
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Food & Culture
Kadji-Say: Uranium From Coal Ash, Above an Issyk-Kul Beach
On Issyk-Kul's south shore, uranium was extracted from burned coal ash from 1948 to 1967. What it left, what the fish absorbed,…
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