Story of Interhelpo
11.12.2015 / 10:15 | Aktualizováno: 01.02.2018 / 16:21
On December 10, 2015 the Embassy of Kyrgyz Republic in Brussels with the support of the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Belgium and the Embassy of the Slovak Republik in Belgium organized a photo exhibition "Story of Interhelpo".
The Interhelpo was a cooperative of Czechoslovak workers and farmers (also esperantists and idists) established with the aim of helping to build socialism in Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic. The story starts by their departure from Žilina in 1923 and ends in 1943. Among those who left was Alexander Dubček then 3 years old boy. Interhelpo workers built many industrial facilities like an electric power station, a textile factory, a melting-house, a furniture factory, railroads, hospitals, main government building in the capital of Kyrgyzstan. In 1925, the Interhelpo was declared the best cooperative in the USSR. In 1934 it made 20 percent of Kyrgyzstan's industrial products. At the end many workers fell victims of stalinist purges and some of them were executed. Cooperative itself was liquidated but is warmly remembered in today´s Kyrgyzstan.
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