Ghozi Yunus

Ghozi Yunus (born Ghozimahamat, son of Mahamatyunus) was born in Tashkent, in the Okhunguzar quarter. Sources disagree on the year: some give 1887, others 1889. His father worked as a master builder in the construction of the new city, and his mother, Zulfiya, kept a small school (maktab). She taught him to read and write; he then studied for about eight years at the Barakhan madrasa, learned Arabic and Persian, and received the title of mulla. He also learned to play the dutar and tanbur and was known as a singer.

In 1916, in the wartime labour mobilisation, he was sent to the Baltic front and came back disabled. Before the revolution he served as secretary of a relief committee in Tashkent and was briefly jailed on a false accusation; in prison he wrote the long poem “Prison Memories, or the Calamity of Injustice”. In those years he also appeared on stage with the Turon troupe, playing a part in Abdulla Qodiriy’s drama “The Unfortunate Bridegroom”.

From 1918 he worked actively in the press: he headed a department at the journal Ishchilar dunyosi, organised and edited the newspaper Mehnatkashlar tovushi, and later served on Ishtirokiyun, Qizil bayroq and Turkiston. In 1918–1920 he ran his own publishing house, Nashri Ghozi Yunus, which printed books including Fitrat’s, and helped bring type and printing equipment from Baku and Bukhara. In 1921 the Tashkent city executive committee awarded him the title “Hero of Labour and the Press”.

As a playwright he wrote more than thirty stage works, twenty-eight of which appeared as separate books from the Uzbek State Publishing House in 1926. The best known is the tragedy Zahhoki Moron, drawn from a legend in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh: the author himself played Temirtosh, and the production was directed by Mannon Uyghur. In 1923 he took part in founding the satirical magazine Mushtum and led it for many years; he wrote satirical verse and sketches under many pen names and translated a work by V. Bartold into Uzbek.

In the 1920s he was expelled from the Communist Party and removed from his post for criticising state policy. From 1926 to 1937 he worked as a proofreader at the newspaper Qizil Oʻzbekiston, at publishing houses and at journals. On 6 August 1937 he was arrested as an “enemy of the people”, “pan-Turkist” and “pan-Islamist” and sent to the north of Russia.

Ghozi Yunus died on 5 May 1942 in a prison in Vologda, of hunger and illness. He was rehabilitated on 22 January 1957. His name belongs to the history of the Uzbek Jadid press, national theatre and satire.