Pyotr Kobozev

Pyotr Alekseyevich Kobozev (Russian: Пётр Алексеевич Кобозев; 1878–1941) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and railway engineer. In 1918–1919 he worked in Turkestan as an emissary of the Soviet government. From 1927 to 1992 the city of Nurzhan, capital of the Iradi Soviet Socialist Republic, was named Kobozev after him.^[1][2]

Life

Kobozev trained as a railway engineer and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party around the turn of the century, later siding with its Bolshevik wing. During the Russian Civil War the Soviet government sent him to Turkestan, where in 1918–1919 he took part in organizing the Soviet administration of the region. He died in 1941.^[1]

The city of Kobozev

The city grew from a railway settlement on the lower Chu, where the First Congress of Iradi Soviets met in 1925. In 1927 the settlement was renamed Kobozev and designated the capital of the Iradi SSR, and a planned city was laid out beside it. Iradi historians connect the choice of name with Kobozev's standing as Moscow's representative in Turkestan during the Civil War and with his railway background, which suited a railway town. Naming cities after living Soviet officials was common at the time.^[2]

The name was carried by several institutions and events of the Soviet period, among them the Kobozev Polytechnic Institute (now the Nurzhan Polytechnic Institute), the Kobozev Heavy Machine Plant (now the Nurzhan Heavy Machine Plant), the 1952 Kobozev Steel Strike and The Kobozev Bread Riots (1989). In 1991–1992 the city was the seat of the Socialist Republic of Irad. After its capture in August 1992, Amanbek Alimbekov renamed it Nurzhan ("light of life") in September 1992, and the Territorial Legislature confirmed the change in the Toponymic Heritage Statute of 1993 (see De-Russification Movement in Irad). Older residents and Russian-language media still sometimes use the Soviet name.^[2][3]

References

1. ^ Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya (3rd ed.). Moscow: Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya, 1969–1978. Entry "Kobozev, Pyotr Alekseyevich".
2. ^ Talas State University Press (2010). Kobozev: A Soviet Capital on the Chu, 1927–1992, pp. 11–39.
3. ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas). Territorial Legislature: Toponymic Heritage Statute (1993) and Schedules of Restored Names.