Ibrohim Rahim

Ibrohim Rahim (born Ibrohim Abdurahimovich Rahimov) was born on 15 October 1916 in the village of Soykeldi in the Quva district of the Fergana region. He lost his father at the age of three and was raised by his mother, To’xtabibi. In the early 1930s he taught at a village school and headed the children’s communist organisation of the Quva district.

In 1933 he moved to Tashkent and became a journalist on the Uzbek-language newspaper Kolxoz yo’li. From 1936 his poems, sketches and essays appeared in Kolxoz yo’li, Lenin uchquni and Yosh leninchi. He was called up into the Red Army in October 1937; his poem “Bahodir”, written in Belarus while he trained on a junior commanders’ course, won second prize in a closed republican literary competition in 1938 and was published in 1939.

Rahim served in two wars: the Soviet–Finnish War of 1939–1940 and, from 23 June 1941, the Second World War. Near Moscow he commanded a sapper squad, then served as a company political instructor and battalion commissar; from November 1942 to January 1943 he was deputy editor of the Uzbek-language edition of the front newspaper Krasnoarmeyskaya pravda. From November 1944 he headed the engineering service of the 19th Guards Tank Brigade in the 3rd Guards Tank Corps and took part in the fighting for Borisov, Minsk, Vilnius and Gdańsk. He finished the war in Germany and was demobilised in October 1946 as a guards major.

After the army he was editor-in-chief of political broadcasting on Uzbek radio (1946–1947) and studied in the journalism department of the Higher Party School in 1947–1950. From 1950 he worked at the newspaper Qizil O’zbekiston, first as head of its propaganda department and then as editor, until 1961; he set up the republic’s Union of Journalists and led it for several years. From the early 1960s until 1966 he was director of the Uzbekfilm studio and first deputy chairman of the Uzbek SSR State Committee for Cinematography, then editor-in-chief of the magazines Guliston (1966–1970) and Mushtum (1971–1984). He was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek SSR and a member of the board and presidium of the Writers’ Union of Uzbekistan.

His novels deal with the heroes of the war and with the life of the country: “Ixlos” (first published as “The Source of Life”, 1953), “The Restless City” (1968, on the aftermath of the 1966 Tashkent earthquake), “The Selfless” (1972) and “General Ravshanov” (1985). He also wrote the short novels “Hilola” and “Olovkor”, the plays “Jonim fido” and “Chaqmoq”, and the screenplay of the film “The Feat of Farhad”. For the novel “Oqibat” he received the Hamza State Prize of the Uzbek SSR in 1983; he was named People’s Writer of the Uzbek SSR in 1976 and Honoured Art Worker of the Uzbek SSR in 1966.

After independence he published the collections “Qurboningman” (1996) and “Hayotni asrang, odamlar” (1997), was awarded the orders “Do’stlik” (1996) and “El-yurt hurmati” (1998), and received the “Ofarin” State Prize in 2001. Ibrohim Rahim died in Tashkent on 22 November 2001 and was buried at the Chigatay cemetery.