Soviet Tour In Kyrgyzstan To Postindustry Ghost Towns

Tour to abandoned and unfinished industrial places of the USSR in Kyrgyzstan. Some places were secret and closed towns, military facilities, plants for the development of rare metals, uranium mines and burial grounds. Now these are like ghost towns. But the tour is not dark and ugly, we will visit scenic places, make horseback riding, hotsprings bathing and homestay accomodation.

Kyrgyzstan was a fully agrarian country, actually without any industry, infrastructure like roads and communications. But in the 1920s the active industrialization of the country began. The USSR was waiting for big war and communists began develop the periphery, in particular, Central Asia like industrial supports. Another reason was the fact that in Kyrgyzstan was found a large amount of minerals, deposits of rare-earth metals, radioactive uranium ores etc.

In 1941, when the war with Germany began, military and engineering plants, high-tech industries, research centers and personnel were evacuated from the central part of Russia to Central Asia and Kyrgyzstan. In this way, during the war, Kyrgyzstan became the industrial hinterland and center of the Soviet Union.

After the war, the comminists continued developing. Construction of huge industrial and infrastructure facilities began here. Huge even for the USSR, such as cascades of hydro power plants, mining and metallurgical plants, machine-building and military enterprises and uranium production.

Kyrgyzstan had great chances to become an industrialized region developing advanced technologies for the entire socialist bloc. But in 1991, the USSR collapsed. All ties were cut off, the new leadership of the country failed to preserve the existing industry and now everything has fallen into decay. Many industries destroyed, many towns, including secret and closed type abandoned. They began to simply die or turning into ghost towns, the population began to leave them.