MOSAICS, MONUMENTS & MEMORY

From Bishkek’s wedding palaces to lakeside sanatoriums, a journey across Kyrgyzstan reveals how the relics of a vanished regime still shape everyday life.

- Kunal Bhatia and Shuvajit Payne

EVERYONE HAS TO get married here." quips our guide Aibek Adigineev. We're in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, standing in front of a quintessentially USSR relic—the Wedding Palace. It’s a hulking, modernist structure from the 1980s, with abundant marble and stained glass for illusions of grandeur. With religious expression frowned upon, the communist state created a secular version of a mosque or church to host weddings. Although elaborately decorated, no theological iconography is present. Instead, we're surprised to spot the hammer-and-sickle motif in the ceremonial hall.

Despite independence since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, many young couples still marry here. Perhaps it’s a sign of an enduring legacy, a love-hate relationship with the past, or only a matter of time before their parents’ and grandparents’ ways fade. In either case, Aibek notes that, unlike other post-Soviet nations, Kyrgyzstan hasn't begun a sweeping de-Sovietisation process just yet.