Kant is a city in the Chui Valley of northern Kyrgyzstan, some 20 km from the capital of Bishkek. The Kyrgyz word for sugar is "Kant", and the city received its name when a sugar plant was built there in the 1930s. (It is an often repeated myth that the town was named after the German philosopher Immanuel Kant). Kant is an industrial and service center. Among notable local enterprises is the Abdysh Ata Brewery, whose products are well known throughout Kyrgyzstan. During the Soviet era, Kant and its surrounding area were home to a large number of ethnic Germans who had been forcibly relocated to Central Asia in 1941 from the Volga region when the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was abolished. Most left for Germany during the 1990s and after the demise of the Soviet Union when the factories where they had worked shut down. Several other nearby settlements, such as Luxemburg and Bergtal, still carry their German names, but retain only very small remnants of their Volga German and Russian Mennonite founders. An airport near the city (Russian: Авиабаза Кант) is now host to theRussian Air Force's 5th Air Army's 999th Air Base positioned in Kyrgyzstan in response to the United States presence at Manas Air Base. Kant is the administrative center of the Ysyk-Ata District (formerly Kant District).
