Today, June 20, the official opening ceremony of the Bolot Yunusaliev Institute of Language was held at the National Academy of Sciences. The event was attended by Kanatbek Abdrakhmatov, President of the National Academy of Sciences, Bolot Chynybaev, Chairman of the “Kemin” Society, Kutpidin Abdrakhmanov, Akim of the Kemin District, public and political figure Cholpon Baekova, heads of the rural municipalities of the Kemin District, scholars from Osh and Jalal-Abad State Universities, academicians, linguists, as well as relatives and grandchildren of Bolot Yunusaliev.

Syrtbay Musaev, Academician and Director of the Bolot Yunusaliev Institute of Linguistics, noted: "Previously, the institute functioned as an independent institution led by well-known figures. Later, it was dissolved and merged into another division. Today, thanks to the initiative of the Department of Social Sciences and with the consent of the President of the National Academy of Sciences, Kanatbek Ermekovich, the institute has been officially reopened. We have named it after a renowned Kyrgyz scholar who was respected not only by Kyrgyz but also by Moscow-based Turkologists during the Soviet era — Academician Bolot Yunusaliev."

Event participants — scholars, linguists, and the president of the academy — shared their views on the importance and development of the Kyrgyz language. Bolot Yunusaliev’s grandson recounted a story told by his grandfather: during the Urkun (the 1916 revolt), Bolot, then only three years old, was saved by his mother who grabbed him by the collar as he was falling from the Kakshaal Mountains. Later, while in China, he once again narrowly escaped death. His father was Junushaly and his grandfather was Murataly. The scholar’s full name was Murataliev Bolot Junushalievich. However, starting from 1939, he signed his articles in the “Kyzyl Kyrgyzstan” newspaper as Bolot Junushaliev.

Bolot Yunusaliev was born in 1913 in the Kemin District. He graduated from the Moscow Pedagogical Institute and the Higher Party School. He worked as a teacher, editor at the Kyrgyz edition of the “Bulletin of the Supreme Soviet,” and deputy editor-in-chief. During the Great Patriotic War, he worked as a journalist and deputy editor-in-chief of the Kazakh-language newspaper Pravda of the Red Army. From 1946 to 1951, he served as Minister of Education of the Kyrgyz SSR. In 1954, he defended his doctoral dissertation, was elected an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz SSR, and was appointed rector of the Kyrgyz State University, where he worked until 1960. Later, he served as a senior researcher in the “Manas” department at the Academy of Sciences. He passed away at the age of 57.

The scholar’s major works were dedicated to the history of the Kyrgyz language, dialectology, linguistics, and the literary Kyrgyz language. He was also a Manas scholar, linguist, and Turkologist. Special recognition should be given to Academician Syrtbay Musaev, who actively promoted the idea of restoring the Institute of Linguistics as an independent structure, provided scholarly justification for it, and initiated the proposal to name the institution after Bolot Yunusaliev.