Mechiev, Kiazim

Born 1859, in the aul (village) of Shiki, present-day Kabardinian-Balkar ASSR; died Mar. 25, 1945, near Taldy Kurgan, Kazakh SSR. Soviet Balkar poet. Founder of Balkar literature.

Mechiev was the son of a serf. He worked as a blacksmith. He was taught to read and write by a mullah. He mastered Persian, Arabic, and Turkic languages. Mechiev began his literary career in 1890. His poems were written in the Arabic alphabet. In his prerevolutionary songs of lamentation, Mechiev wrote about unhappy love caused by social inequality; these songs include “Complaint” and “A Girl’s Lamentations.” He called his people to struggle for freedom (“Truth” and “I Compose Verses and Forge Iron”). Mechiev’s narrative poems The Wounded Aurochs (1907) and Buzzhigit (1910–17), in which he expressed his democratic humanism, occupy a special place in his prerevolutionary poetry.

Mechiev welcomed the October Revolution of 1917. He praised the new man in his verses “Take Your Weapons” (1919) and I See: The Bolsheviks’ Way Is Right (1919). A monument to Mechiev has been erected in his homeland in the village of Babugent.