Kyrgyzstan drops Russian Revolution anniversary as holiday

BISHKEK -- Ex-Soviet Kyrgyzstan Tuesday (November 7) did not commemorate the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia for the first time in a century.

Rather than mark the centenary of the revolution that brought Vladimir Lenin to power in Russia, Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev in late October ordered his country to stop commemorating the event because "the date is losing its significance".

Kyrgyzstan instead would use November 7 to honour the victims of a bloody Tsarist crackdown in the region in 1916, the order said.

It also set aside Wednesday (November 8) to remember the Kyrgyz victims of Stalinist repression.

The move left Belarus as the only country in the former Soviet Union still marking the October Revolution after Russia abandoned the holiday in 2005.