The status of ‘founding father’ of any nation is normally bestowed not by politicians, but via the consensus of the population, as distilled by trained historians. Not so in Kyrgyzstan. For Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, the roots of the country’s statehood stretch back only to the Soviet era. He issued a decree in late July anointing five Bolshevik functionaries as the founders of Kyrgyzstan’s statehood. Those designated as “fathers who founded the modern Kyrgyz statehood,” are: Zhusup Abdrakhmanov: effectively the territory’s prime minister from 1927-1933 when Kyrgyzstan enjoyed autonomous …