Kerbabaev, Berdy Muradovich

Born Mar. 3 (15), 1894, in the aul (village) of Kouki-Zeren, in present-day Tedzhen Raion, Turkmen SSR. Soviet Turkmen writer. One of the pioneers of Soviet Turkmen literature. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Turkmen SSR (1951). People’s Writer of the Turkmen SSR. Hero of Socialist Labor (1969). Member of the CPSU since 1948.

Kerbabaev studied in the department of Oriental studies at Leningrad State University (1927–28). His works were first published in 1923; they consisted of satirical poems. In the narrative poems A Girl’s Inner World (1927) and The Enslaved Girl, or the Victim of Adat (1928), as well as in a number of other poetic works, Kerbabaev spoke out in favor of Soviet norms of morality and against survivals of the past. In 1930 he began work on the first part (published in 1940) of his revolutionary-historical novel The Decisive Step —the first novel in Soviet Turkmen literature. The complete version of the novel was published in Turkmen in 1947 (State Prize of the USSR, 1948); a new version of the work appeared in 1955.

Kerbabaev wrote in many genres. Among the works that he wrote during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45 are the novella Kurban Durdy (1942), the narrative poem Ailar (1943), and the plays Brothers and Makhtumkuli (both published in 1943). The novella Aisoltan From the Land of White Gold (1949; State Prize of the USSR, 1951) deals with life in the kolkhoz aul. The novel Nebit-Dag (1957), which describes the life of oil workers, is an important achievement in Turkmen literature. Kerbabaev’s novel Miraculously Born (1965) is about the distinguished Turkmen revolutionary and state figure K. Atabaev. During the 1960’s, Kerbabaev worked a great deal on lyric poetry. He translated into Turkmen the works of such writers as A. S. Pushkin, L. N. Tolstoy, and M. Gorky. He served as chairman of the Board of the Writers’ Union of Turkmenia from 1942 to 1950. He received the Makhtumkuli Republic Prize (1970). Kerbabaev has been awarded three Orders of Lenin, three other orders, and various medals.