Sotti Husayn

Sotti Husayn (real name Sotti Husainov) was born in 1906 in Kokand. As a child he attended a new-method school and was then selected for the city boarding school. In 1921–1922 he wrote his first plays, «Duokhon» and «The Plague of Ignorance», which were staged at the Kokand culture club.

In 1922 he came to Tashkent and enrolled at the Central Asian Communist University. In 1927–1928 he edited the newspaper «Yosh Leninchi» and set up a circle of young writers at its office. Later he studied at the Evening Literary Institute in Moscow (1934–1935), worked as a lecturer at the Museum of the Peoples of the USSR, and edited the Uzbek edition of the journal «Collection of Laws of the USSR Government» (1934–1937).

Back in Uzbekistan he served as deputy chairman of the Writers' Union (1937–1938), director of the Institute of Language and Literature (1938–1940) and then head of a department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan (1941–1942). He is also said to have chaired the commission preparing the 500th anniversary of Alisher Navoi.

Husayn wrote many articles on the press, theatre, music, literature and translation; his play «Loykalar» («Victory») was staged at the Uzbek State Drama Theatre in 1930. In the article «Our Creative Path» (1929) he spoke against rejecting the classical heritage and argued for studying it critically. His extensive analysis of Abdulla Qodiriy's novel «Bygone Days», written in 1929–1930, is a notable page of Uzbek criticism: while noting its ideological shortcomings, he judged the book to be skilfully written and the first historical novel in Uzbek literature. He began the study of Hamza Hakimzoda's legacy and in 1941 published the monograph «The Life and Work of Hamza Hakimzoda».

Sotti Husayn died in Tashkent on 9 May 1942. He was one of the victims of the repressions of the early 1940s and, like other members of the intelligentsia, was rehabilitated in 1956. A volume of his selected works appeared in 1974.