Uyg'un

Uyg'un (a pen name; real name Rahmatulla Otaqo'ziyev, in Russian Rakhmatulla Atakuziev) was born on 14 May 1905 (1 May old style) in the village of Merke, in what is now the Jambyl Region of Kazakhstan, into a working-class family. From 1923 he lived in Tashkent, studied at a pedagogical technical school, graduated in 1925 and taught Uzbek language and literature at an agricultural technical school. His first poems appeared in print in 1927. That year he entered the Pedagogical Academy in Samarkand, graduating in 1930; his first poetry collection, “Joys of Spring” (“Bahor sevinchlari”), was published in 1929.

From 1930 he worked at a publishing house and at the magazine Qurilish, in 1932–1933 at the Institute of Cultural Construction, and in 1933–1943 as a researcher and head of a sector at the Institute of Language and Literature, writing articles on literary heritage and contemporary literature. In the 1930s he produced the lyric-epic poems “Jontemir”, “Brigadir Karim”, “Gulasal” and “The Winds of Ukraine”.

During the Second World War the struggle against fascism became the main theme of his verse, in collections such as “Song of Wrath” (1942) and “Wrath and Love” (1943). He also turned to the stage: he wrote the drama “Mother” and, in 1942, together with Izzat Sulton, the drama “Alisher Navoi”. Staged after the war, it helped develop the historical-biographical drama in Uzbek literature, and Uyg'un was one of the screenwriters of the film “Alisher Navoi” (1948). In 1939 he wrote the libretto of the first Uzbek ballet, “Gulandom”.

In 1947–1948 Uyg'un was deputy artistic director for repertoire at the Hamza drama theatre, and in 1948–1950 head of a department and then editor-in-chief of the magazine Sharq yulduzi. From 1949 he was deputy chairman, and in 1951–1954 chairman, of the board of the Writers' Union of Uzbekistan. After the war he wrote the dramas “Song of Life”, “Oltinko'l” and “Navbahor”, and later the plays “Hurriyat” (1959), “Doubt” (1961), “Flight” (1963) and “The Killer” (1965) and the comedy “The Moth” (1966), which took up village life, the cotton monoculture and the consequences of the personality cult. “Flight” was accused of distorting Soviet reality and was taken off the stage.

Uyg'un was also a translator: into Uzbek he rendered works by Pushkin and Lermontov, Tolstoy's “Hadji Murat”, Chekhov's “The Seagull”, and Shakespeare's “Julius Caesar” and “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”. In the last decades of his life he wrote historical dramas about thinkers of the East: “Abu Rayhon Beruniy” (1973), “Abu Ali ibn Sino” (1979) and “Zebunnisobegim” (1982).

He joined the Communist Party in 1944, served as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek SSR, and in 1974 was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan. He was Honoured Art Worker of the Uzbek SSR (1956), People's Poet of the Uzbek SSR (1965), laureate of the Hamza State Prize of the Uzbek SSR (1967) and, in 1985, Hero of Socialist Labour. Uyg'un died in Tashkent on 22 April 1990 and was buried at the Chigatay cemetery.