The square of names
Red granite slabs around a tunduk.
Hux — Public domain · Press Service of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan — CC BY 4.0
Ata-Beyit, Kyrgyz for Grave of the Fathers, is Kyrgyzstan's national historical and memorial complex, on a mountain slope near Chong-Tash, south of Bishkek. Opened on 8 July 2000 around the once-secret grave of 138 victims of Stalin's Great Terror, it is also the writer Chinghiz Aitmatov's resting place. In early November 1938 the Soviet secret police shot 137 men, including Yusup Abdrakhmanov, Soviet Kyrgyzstan's first head of government, and secretly buried them in an old brick kiln with an unidentified woman. A guard who saw the burial told his daughter before he died; the grave was found in 1991. The remains were reburied nearby on 30 August, the eve of independence. Aitmatov, whose father Törökul was among the dead, named the site and was buried here in 2008. Stairs lead past a sculpture of three suffering figures to a square where red granite name slabs ring a tunduk, a yurt's crown, laid on the ground in mourning and since raised. A yurt-shaped museum shows the victims' documents, photographs and belongings, and Aitmatov's white grave lies beside the square. Higher up, the 2016 Urkun memorial to the dead of the 1916 uprising and exodus to China rises in three red granite steles to a tunduk 21 m up. Below lies a memorial to the dead of April 2010. As the crow flies, it lies 17 km south of Ala-Too Square and 13 km north-east of Ala-Archa National Park. By road it is 23 km from the centre, 30 to 45 minutes by taxi; no public transport goes all the way.
Red granite slabs around a tunduk.
The victims' papers, photos and belongings.
Steles rising 21 m to a tunduk.
Chong-Tash, in the foothills south of Bishkek
Yes. The old brick kiln is part of the complex, about 100 m from the cemetery, and lies under a dome in the style of a traditional Kyrgyz mausoleum.
The main ones fall on 7–8 November, the Days of History and Commemoration of Ancestors, a two-day national holiday so named since 2017 that recalls the events of 1916. A procession comes to the memorial, the president lays a wreath for the victims, and officials lay flowers.