CAPTURE OF THE PISHPEK FORTRESS BY THE IMPERIAL TROOPS AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PISHPEK SETTLEMENT NEAR ITS RUINS1
“... Since the late 1850s, as the imperial forces advanced deeper into Semirechye, the significance of Pishpek as one of the strongest fortified outposts on the northern borders of the Kokand territories increasingly grew. The khanate government took measures almost annually to strengthen the fortress and garrison, also trying to maintain influence over the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz who were nomadic nearby.
In turn, striving to seize Kyrgyzstan and other regions of Central Asia, the imperial government placed great importance on the firm occupation of Pishpek...
After the capture of Tokmak on August 26, 1860, a detachment [a two-thousand-strong unit under the command of Colonel of the General Staff I.E. Zimmermann] reached Pishpek soon after, after two marches with an overnight stay on the Issyk-Ata River. ... Surrounding Pishpek with Cossack posts and patrols, the detachment took up new positions two versts west of the fortress, where an orchard of fruit trees was located close to it (the area was open on other sides, and to the north was a marsh overgrown with reeds). With artillery fire continuing for five days, the besiegers damaged the outer wall of the fortress and the southwestern corner tower, where a breach in the defense was planned. The Kokand forces lost almost a tenth of their garrison - 20 killed and about 50 wounded, while the Russians lost only 7 men. In the evening of September 4, the Kokand forces requested mercy...
The final fall of the Pishpek fortress was accelerated by an uprising of the Chuy Kyrgyz against the oppression of the Kokand feudal lords that broke out in early September of the same year.... The insurgents could not take the fortress without artillery, even with the support of their tribesmen, who managed to capture the unfinished Tokmak from the Kokand forces.
Sending a messenger for help to Verny, they besieged Pishpek.
Receiving information about the situation in the Chuy Valley and an order from Omsk to seize Pishpek and level it to the ground, the head of the Alatau District G.A. Kolpakovsky set out from Verny on October 3, 1862, with a detachment of 1,400 men and artillery. ... G.A. Kolpakovsky began a full siege of the fortress, destroying the towers and fortifications with artillery fire, preparing to blow up the outer wall.
The besieged actively defended themselves all the time... However, seeing the futility of further resistance, at noon on October 24, 1862, the Kokand forces surrendered. ... In revenge against the Kokand forces, the Kyrgyz completely destroyed their settlement near the fortress...
The revival of Pishpek - first as a stronghold for Russian troops, then as a peasant settlement, and later as an urban center - occurred after the final consolidation of Russia in the Chuy Valley and the growing migration movement from the central provinces of the country in the late 1860s and early 1870s.
The establishment of Russian peasant settlements in Semirechye along the main roads corresponded to the new colonial goals of the Semirechye administration, which requested permission from the regional authorities in January and September 1868 to settle 50 peasant families in Pishpek who wished to settle in the Tokmak District. It was these settlers and similar migrants who apparently founded two peasant settlements along the postal route (near the ruins of the Kokand Pishpek): the large village of Alamedin (in 1868), and then, not far from it, a smaller village - Pishpek itself (no later than 1870), named after the area and the former fortress (which later transferred its name to the postal station, the settlement, and the new city)....
Due to persistently spreading rumors that the new settlement was to become the district city, merchants - Uzbeks from Tashkent, Namangan, and other regions of Uzbekistan joined the first settlers of Pishpek,...
... A new influx of residents was noted in the second half of the 1870s; like the first settlers, they settled not far from the former fortress along the roadways, on the future streets of Tashkent (now 50th Anniversary of the Kyrgyz SSR Street)1 and Verny (Alma-Ata Street).
At that time, Pishpek did not differ from the newly established Russian-Ukrainian settlements in the region. Among its unremarkable mud huts, 13 houses of European type stood out, including a postal station (made of adobe), a tavern (later temporarily closed until the new settlers established their households), as well as the houses of economically stable, well-to-do residents. According to one of the experts on Russian Turkestan, the settlement of Pishpek was already larger than Chaldovar or Sokuluk, which had 20 courtyards each, and was comparable to Belovodsk, which had 80 courtyards....
Such was Pishpek on the eve of its transformation into a city - the administrative center of the district, which later became a hub for communications and connections in the region. Here, postal roads converged from Verny (Alma-Ata), Karakol (Przhevalsk), Naryn, and Tashkent, caravan routes from Kashgar, Syr-Darya, and Fergana regions intersected, and there were a post office and a telegraph station...”
Galitsky V.Ya. History of the City of Pishpek (1878-1917): Monograph. Frunze, 1980. pp. 26-36
Comments:
1 Published based on the monograph of the well-known historian in the republic V.Ya. Galitsky.
2. Currently - street named after I. Akhunbaev.
Pishpek Fortress