The return to dialogue: Kyrgyzstan and Russia

Abstract

The article analyses the dynamics of Kyrgyz art in the context of the 20^th and 21^st century culture. We are witness to an integrative breakthrough currently taking place: due to the creation and growth of the Eurasian Union, a new large-scale geopolitical integrity is being formed. The Kyrgyz Republic has become a full member of the Eurasian Union and has begun to establish new economic ties. However, a lasting alliance cannot exist without common ideological paradigms and goals, without the many common values accumulated over the last century in the spheres of science, education, social structure, security, and common historical memory. Above all is the value of friendship and cooperation between nations that generates joint creative activity in all spheres of Eurasian cultural space.

The article briefly recounts the development stages of the Soviet art of Kirghizia, influenced by the paradigm of the revolutionary 1920s and 1930s, tested by the hardship of war and post-war times, promoted during the era of high civilisational achievements of the 1960s and 1970s, affected during the subsequent sociocultural crisis, and, finally, revitalized in the period of cultural transformation in sovereign Kyrgyzstan. The author raises the issue of the modern development of art based on the cultural dialogue between Russia and the countries of the Eurasian Union with the emphasis on the need for cultural understanding of the Eurasian phenomenon and its systematic components of interconnected loci in the context of modern science. Art can also become an indispensable institution integrating the Eurasian space, a universal platform for a dialogue between cultures. From this point of view, it is necessary to return to the established formats of dialogue between Russian and Kyrgyz artists and also to create specific new ways of interaction in the field of visual arts.