Shakarim Kudaibergenov

The land of Chinghiztau gave the mankind Abai, Shakarim, Auezov, the steppe poets Magauin, Turagul and Akylbai. But ter­rible times came to this land in early XX-th - collectivization, repression, famine... The years of 1932 that dashed past Kazakhstan, like plague, carried away the most brilliant repre­sentatives of Kazakh intelligentsia Saken Seifullin, Beimbet Mailin, Ilias Dzansugurov, Akhmed Baitursynov, Sandrash Asfendiarov, and Shakarim Kydaibergenov.

Shakarim was a son of Abai's eldest brother and, left with­out a father at the age of six, was brought up by his great uncle. Before the death Abai sent his nephew on a journey about Turkey, Arabia, Egypt. Shakarim visited Mecca, Medina, Alexandria and Paris. He learned Turkish, Arabic Persian, had a perfect knowledge of Russian. He was in correspondence with the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoi, translated Pushkin's novel «Dubrovsky» for the Kazakh, the prose of L.Tolstoi and Beecher Stow, poems of Fizuli and Navoi, verses of Lermontov, Nekrasov and Bairon. He wrote a novel “Adil and Mariam”, a “Chronicle of Kazakh Khans” and philosophical treatise “Mohammedanism” and only death prevented him from finishing a multiple ethnophilosophical book”Kazakhs”.

Shakarim was a progressive man of his time. Alien to him were clan and national prejudices, as he believed that conscience and memory are the bedrock of human life. Shakarim returned boundless freedom to the literary language. There is a peculiar charm and a fascinating ease in his lines.

Abai and Shakarim have become a model of nobleness and a criterion of truth for the Kazakhs. “There is no place on the earth, where truth would not triumph” – wrote Shakarim and his words have proved prophetic. Only yesterday we could neither read Shakarim nor find his books, today we can admire every word of his verses and say, that justice in the long run has been restored. The literary legacy of the biggest long – suffering poet, philosopher and thinker of the late XIX – early XX-th centuries Shakarim Kudaibergenov has now been made accessible to wide readers.