Samig Abdullayev

Samig Fayzullovich Abdullayev was born on 25 October 1917 (12 October in the old style) in Tashkent into a peasant family. He finished seven grades of school in 1932 and entered the Tashkent Art College, graduating in 1937.

He joined the Red Army in September 1938 and served in the engineering troops. He fought in the Second World War from October 1941, commanding a sapper squad on the Transcaucasian and North Caucasian fronts. From June 1943 he led a squad in the 97th Separate Motorised Engineer Battalion and distinguished himself in the Novorossiysk–Taman operation.

On the night of 16 September 1943, near the farmstead of Krasny, sappers working under enemy fire located and lifted 97 mines; Abdullayev himself defused 37 of them, opening the way for the tanks. When the Germans blew up the bridge over the Kudako river, his squad rebuilt the crossing in three hours under fire. The next day he crawled to the pier of another bridge and cut the burning fuse; wounded, he stayed in action. Between 16 September and 9 October he located and defused about 2,800 mines of various types under fire.

By a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of 16 May 1944 he was named Hero of the Soviet Union and received the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal. He also took part in the Kerch–Eltigen and Crimean operations and was demobilised in 1945 with the rank of starshina.

After the war he worked as a painter. From 1946 to 1956 he chaired the Union of Artists of the Uzbek SSR, and from 1956 he directed the State Art Museum of Uzbekistan. In 1955 he graduated from the Ostrovsky Tashkent Theatre and Art Institute. Portraits, landscapes and still lifes dominate his work, among them “Self-Portrait” (1946), “The Feat” (1947), “Grandmother and Granddaughter” (1954), “The Tashkent Commissars” (1958) and “A Youth from Mali” (1962). In 1967 he was named Honoured Art Worker of the Uzbek SSR.

Samig Abdullayev died in Tashkent on 10 May 1998.