The Kyrgyz, a Muslim Turkic people, constitute more than half the population. The history of the Kyrgyz in what is now Kyrgyzstan dates at least to the 17th century. Kyrgyzstan, known under Russian and Soviet (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) rule as Kirgiziya, was conquered by tsarist Russian forces in the 19th century. Formerly a constituent (union) republic of the U.S.S.R., Kyrgyzstan declared its independence on Aug. 31, 1991.

To the southwest are two great hollows, the Fergana Valley and another valley close to Mount Khan-Tengri. The latter valley is bounded by the westward-thrusting arms of the Kungey-Alatau and Terskey-Alatau ranges and contains Lake Ysyk-Köl (Ysyk, Lake) (Issyk-Kul), whose clear, deep waters are fed by the snow-covered peaks. The rugged mountain-and-basin structure of much of the country, and the high alpine plateau of the central and eastern regions, are separated from the Fergana Valley on the west by the Fergana Range, running southeast to northwest, which merges into the Chatkal Range. The Chatkal Range is linked to the Ysyk-Köl region by a final enclosing range, the Kyrgyz. The only other important lowlands in the country are the Chu and Talas river valleys in the north, with the capital, Bishkek, located in the Chu. The country's lowland areas, though occupying only one-seventh of the total area, are home to most of its people.

Snow and ice perpetually cover the crests of Kyrgyzstan's high mountain ranges. The Naryn River, draining into the Fergana Valley, continues northwestward as a tributary of the Syr Darya. The Chu River runs parallel to and forms part of the northern boundary with Kazakhstan. Both the Chu and the Naryn are of major importance to the country.

Kyrgyzstan's great distance from the oceans and the sharp change of elevation from adjacent plains strongly influence the country's climate. Deserts and plains surround Kyrgyzstan on the north, west, and southeast, making the contrast with the climate and landscape of its mountainous interior all the more striking. The lower parts of its fringing ranges lie in belts of high temperature and receive hot, drying winds from the deserts beyond. The amount of precipitation the country's westward- and northward-facing slopes receive increases with their height. The valleys have hot, dry summers, with a mean July temperature of 82° F (28° C). In January the average temperature is −0.5° F (−18° C). Annual precipitation varies from 7 inches (180 millimetres) in the eastern Tien Shan to 30 to 40 inches in the Kyrgyz and Fergana ranges. In the most populous valleys, rainfall ranges from 4 to 20 inches a year.

Woodlands run along the lower valleys and on slopes of the north-facing ranges. These are coniferous forests, containing the striking Tien Shan white spruce and occupying 3 to 4 percent of the country's area. The brown bear, wild pig, lynx, gray wolf, and ermine live in the woodlands. Wooded ravines and the valleys of the mountainous steppe regions provide the abode of the argali, a mountain sheep, along with mountain goats, deer, and snow leopards. In the desert, yellow gophers, jerboas, hares, and a large-eared hedgehog are typical.

The Kyrgyz (Kyrgyzstan) speak a language belonging to the northwestern, or Kipchak, group of the Turkic languages. They were formerly a transhumant (nomadic) people who were settled into collectivized agriculture by the Soviet regime. Besides Kyrgyz, the country's population includes minorities of Russians, Uzbeks (Uzbek), Ukrainians, and Germans (exiled to the region from European parts of the Soviet Union in 1941), as well as Tatars (Tatar), Kazaks (Kazakh), Dungans (Hui) (Hui; Chinese Muslims), Uighurs (Uighur), and Tajiks (Tajik). Since independence in 1991, many Russians and Germans have emigrated.

The people of Kyrgyzstan have traditionally raised livestock and engaged in farming. By the late 20th century the republic had become a source for nonferrous metals, notably of antimony and mercury ores, and a producer of machinery, light industrial products, hydroelectric power, and food products. Gold mining has increased in importance, and Kyrgyzstan possesses substantial coal reserves and some petroleum and natural gas deposits. Hydroelectric power provides more than three-fourths of the country's electric energy.

Industrialization has stimulated the mechanization of agriculture in Kyrgyzstan, and many types of machines necessary to cope with the largely mountainous terrain are manufactured in the republic. Unlike other Central Asian countries, Kyrgyzstan does not suffer from a lack of water; irrigation canals have increased agricultural output substantially, especially cotton production in the Fergana Valley, the country's main source for that crop. Livestock raising, the cultivation of cotton, fruit, vegetables, cereal grains, and tobacco, and wool production are the leading branches of agriculture.

Most of the arable land is devoted to pasturage for livestock and to growing hay. Livestock consists mainly of sheep and goats, along with milk and beef cattle, notably in the Chu valley and the Ysyk-Köl littoral. Horses serve as draft animals as well as a source of meat; the Kyrgyz like to drink koumiss, fermented mare's milk, and use it in courses of treatment at health resorts.

Tobacco is cultivated in the Naukat Valley in the south and also in the Talas Valley of the north. Horticulture and viticulture are developed in the Chu River valley and the Fergana area, with the mulberry trees of the latter supporting the raising of silkworms.

The chief industries are the manufacture of machinery and electronic components, but food processing and light industries are also important and utilize local agricultural materials such as meat, fruit, and vegetables. Wool is the most exportable product, and mills weave cotton and silk fabrics, worsted cloth, and knitted garments. Leather goods are also produced.

Before 1924 the only railways in Kyrgyzstan were two narrow-gauge lines leading from the border areas to the coal deposits of Kok-Yangak and Sülüktü. The construction of a line from Bishkek through the Chu valley and over the border to Lūgovoe in Kazakhstan joined the north of the republic to the Turkistan-Siberian main railway line and, through it, to southern Kazakhstan and the entire railway network of the U.S.S.R. In 1948 a link extended the line up the valley from Bishkek (then called Frunze) to Ysyk-Köl (then called Rybachye) at the western tip of Lake Ysyk-Köl. Southern lines reached the coal mines at Tash-Kömür and Kyzyl-Kyya.

Highways, nevertheless, have been developed as the basic answer to the topographic problems confronting land transportation. One main route climbs from Bishkek to Ysyk-Köl (with extensions along the north and south shores of Lake Ysyk-Köl), then swings south across difficult central terrain to Naryn and proceeds through the high Torugart Pass across the frontier with China and down to the city of Kashgar in China. The other major artery, the “route beyond the clouds,” from Bishkek to Osh, crosses the Kyrgyz-Alatau crest through a 10,500-foot tunnel. An important southern link is provided by the road joining Osh, via the Alay Pass, to the Pamir region of Tajikistan. An offshoot runs eastward through Irkeshtam to Kashgar.

Kyrgyzstan's 1993 constitution, which replaced the Soviet-era constitution that had been in effect since 1978, recognizes numerous rights and freedoms for citizens. It establishes legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government but gives the president, who is the head of state, the ability to implement important policies or constitutional amendments through a national referendum.

The new constitution originally created a unicameral parliament, but in 1994 voters approved a bicameral legislature, with a lower chamber (the Legislative Assembly) consisting of 35 nationally elected deputies and an upper chamber (the Assembly of People's Representatives) consisting of 70 regionally elected, part-time members. The president, elected directly for a maximum of two consecutive five-year terms, appoints the prime minister, the cabinet, and members of the high courts, subject to approval by the parliament. The president also appoints the administrators of Kyrgyzstan's six oblasti (provinces). The judicial branch includes local courts and three high courts: the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Economic Court, for commercial cases.

During the Soviet period, the Communist Party of Kirgiziya (CPK), a branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), determined the makeup of the government and dominated the political process. The CPK transformed itself into the People's Democratic Party during the Soviet Union's collapse and declined in influence after Kyrgyzstan, in contested elections in 1989, had gained its first democratically elected president, Askar Akayev, a former university professor and computer scientist. Informal political groups such as Ashar (“Solidarity”) have since helped to open up the political process further.

Kyrgyzstan's schools and colleges have undergone a drastic reorganization since emerging from the ideological control of the Communist Party. The republic made Kyrgyz (Kyrgyz language) the official state language in 1989, and since that time Kyrgyz has begun to play a primary role in education; whole generations of students previously received much of their training entirely in Russian (Russian language), which was obligatory. As a consequence, the Kyrgyz language lacked a thoroughly modern technical vocabulary. Another obstacle to research and scholarship is the general lack of competence in European languages among educated Kyrgyz. After independence Kyrgyzstan's contacts with the outside world increased dramatically, with Kyrgyz students, scholars, and officials traveling to Middle Eastern and Western countries for specialized and technical training. The Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences and Kyrgyz State University, both in Bishkek, are the major institutions of higher education.

Kyrgyzstan, along with the other Central Asian republics, suffers from one of the highest rates of infant morbidity and mortality among the world's developed countries. Medical care is substandard; Kyrgyzstan's standard of living and educational and economic levels are among the lowest of the former Soviet republics.

Starting in the 1920s and '30s, several Kyrgyz-language newspapers appeared regularly in the republic, but they were subject to Soviet censorship. With the collapse of Moscow's control over the press, the editorial policies of the republic's publications have changed noticeably, and new press outlets have appeared, though press freedom has occasionally been curtailed. Kyrgyzstan has a television network, extensive radio broadcasting, cinemas, and theatres. Kyrgyz cultural life has been greatly influenced by the rich oral literary tradition (including epic cycles and lyric poetry) of the region, by the development of a modern literary language, and by the change from the Arabic alphabet to Roman and finally to Cyrillic (with diacritical markings added) beginning in 1940. The Kyrgyz planned a return to the Roman alphabet in the 1990s, in concert with the other Turkic-speaking countries of Central Asia. Kyrgyz folk singers still recite the lengthy verse epic Manas and other heroic and lyric poetry, often to the accompaniment of the three-stringed komuz, which is plucked like a lute.

During the Soviet period Kyrgyz poets strove to adjust their writings to communist ideology and the tenets of Socialist Realism. But the character of Kyrgyz cultural life has undergone considerable change in the wake of the dissolution of the Communist Party and the cessation of its tight ideological controls.

The Kyrgyz take pride in the renown of Chingiz Aytmatov (Aytmatov, Chingiz), a novelist and storywriter who wrote mainly in Russian but also in Kyrgyz. His Povesti gor i stepey (1963; Tales of Mountains and Steppes) and the more recent I dol'she veka dlit'sia den' (1980; The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years) and Plakha (1986; The Place of the Skull) have received wide circulation in Russian and in English translations. Aytmatov's play Voskhozhdenie na Fudziiamu (1973; The Ascent of Mt. Fuji), written with Kazak playwright Kaltay Muhamedjanov, discusses rather openly the moral compromises made under the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. This play created a sensation when it was first staged in Moscow in 1973 and later in English-language productions abroad.

State-sponsored folk dance troupes, a theatre of opera and ballet, and the Kyrgyzstan Philharmonic Orchestra perform in concert halls and theatre buildings erected during the Soviet period. The Museum of History and the Arts is located in Bishkek.

Kyrgyz history can be traced at least to the 1st century BC. The probable abodes of the early Kyrgyz were in the upper Yenisey River valley of central Siberia, and the Tashtyk culture (1st century BC–5th century AD), an amalgam of Asiatic and European peoples, may have been theirs. Chinese and Muslim sources of the 7th–12th centuries AD describe the Kyrgyz as red-haired with fair complexion and green (blue) eyes. They were viewed as a forest-dwelling “northern” people who used skis and practiced shamanism. In the mid-9th century the Kyrgyz, by then certainly Turkic-speaking, overthrew the Uighur empire in Mongolia but did not settle there; they essentially remained a people of the forest. According to the Persian geography Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam (982), the Kyrgyz lived at the edge of the “Uninhabited Lands of the North”; the 11th-century grammarian Maḥmūd al-Kāshgharī mentions that their language was Turkic. Because of their secluded habitats, the Kyrgyz remained outside the mainstream of Inner Asian history, a fact that allowed them to survive the Mongol (Yuan dynasty) deluge that completely altered the Inner Asian political landscape. In 1207 the Kyrgyz surrendered to Genghis Khan's son Jöchi. By so doing, they not only escaped destruction but also remained beyond the immediate reach of Islam. In the late 16th century shamanism was still flourishing among them.

By the 16th–17th century most of the remaining Kyrgyz tribes lived in the Tien Shan range as mountain nomads (nomadism), divided into two wings (left and right), though the advancing Russians still encountered remnants of the Yenisey branch of the Kyrgyz. In 1703, under pressure from the Dzungars (Dzungar) (a tribe of western Mongols), the Yenisey Kyrgyz moved to the Semirechye, but hostilities between the two peoples continued until China's defeat of the Dzungar leader Amursana in 1757. In the mid-18th century, nominally at least, the Kyrgyz became part of the Qing (Manchu) empire of China. Between 1825 and 1830 they were conquered by Muhammad ʿAli, the khan of Kokand; Bishkek (Pishpek), the future capital city of the Kyrgyz, was built by that khanate. Through these contacts, Islam was gradually adopted by the more-southern Kyrgyz, although it has remained merely a veneer on the national culture.

Between 1835 and 1858 two Tien Shan Kyrgyz tribes, the Sarybagysh and the Bugu, engaged in a fratricidal war in which both sides alternately sought and obtained Kokandian or Russian help. In 1855 the Bugu voluntarily submitted to the Russians, and it was at their request that the Russians built the fort of Aksu in 1863.

The Kyrgyz tribes thus entered the modern era divided, harassed by Russians and Kokandians alike. The periodic revolts of the southern Kyrgyz against the Kokand khanate in the mid-19th century received no Russian support. But Russian immigration into Kyrgyz territories, rather than warfare, posed the real threat to Kyrgyz existence. Poor Russian peasants escaping from servitude and famine appropriated the winter pasturelands of the Kyrgyz, forcing them to move into the mountains. The Russian colonists did teach the Kyrgyz some new agricultural techniques, but on the whole their impact was nothing short of disastrous. In 1916 Kyrgyz discontent erupted in a serious revolt, which was met with brutal and prolonged repression that continued even after the fall of Russia's tsarist regime.

Under Soviet rule the Kyrgyz found it difficult to assert themselves as a separate national entity. Confusion concerning their very name persists in the West because, under the tsars, the Kyrgyz were wrongly labeled Kara-Kirgiz in order to distinguish them from the Kazaks (Kazakh), whom the Russians called Kirgiz to distinguish them from the Cossacks (Cossack) (Russian: Kazaky). In 1924 an autonomous Kirgiz oblast (province) was created within the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. In 1926 its status was transformed into that of an autonomous republic, and in 1936 a full union republic was created, the Kirgiz Soviet Socialist Republic, often called Kirgiziya.

In the second half of the 20th century, economic progress and general modernization did not succeed in eradicating tensions between Russians and Kyrgyz. Among the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), Kyrgyzstan was perhaps the most eager to obtain full independence. After more than 1,000 years of disunity, statelessness, and foreign subjection, Kyrgyzstan joined the world's independent countries on August 31, 1991.

Under President Askar Akayev, Kyrgyzstan developed all the institutions of a modern democracy, including an open press, an independent judiciary, and a freely elected parliament. Yet the new country experienced numerous challenges. Kyrgyzstan saw a sharp economic decline beginning in the mid-1990s, in part because of a shortage of raw materials and the emigration of many Russian and German professionals. Moreover, Akayev's government was accused of widespread corruption, and the president was denounced for abusing his power. The press, though ostensibly free, was subject to official intimidation and, from 1995, to a series of state regulations. The country's main external threat was the infiltration of large numbers of Islamist guerrillas moving between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. In 2001 the government granted U.S. and allied forces the right to use a Kyrgyz air base to conduct operations against Muslim militants in Afghanistan. A Russian air base was established in Kyrgyzstan in 2003 to support a Commonwealth of Independent States rapid reaction force intended to combat Muslim guerrillas. Flawed parliamentary elections in 2005 and a widespread perception of government corruption led to mass demonstrations in March of that year. These protests, quite surprisingly, led to the sudden and rapid collapse of the Akayev government. The president fled the country on March 24 and resigned several days later. In July elections, which were largely deemed free and fair by Western observers, Kurmanbek Bakiyev was chosen president.

In October 2007 a referendum proposing a new code of electoral law and a series of significant constitutional changes was overwhelmingly approved in an election criticized by observers for its failure to meet international standards. The referendum increased the number of seats in parliament and provided for their allotment on the basis of party lists rather than individual candidacy; this was widely seen as a move by Bakiyev to bolster his newly formed Ak Zhol party and further undermine the opposition. The referendum also granted the president the right to dissolve the government at will. Bakiyev accordingly did so immediately following the announcement of the referendum results and called for early elections, which were held in December. Ak Zhol won the majority of the seats, controlling nearly four-fifths of the newly expanded Kyrgyz parliament. Although Bakiyev lauded the election proceedings, both local and international observers expressed concern about reports of widespread violations, including purchased votes and the elimination of opposition candidates from the election.