Nuri, Zaki

(pen name of Zaki Sharafutdinovich Nurutdinov). Born Dec. 12, 1921, in Tatarskie Tiuki, in what is now Buinsk Raion, Tatar ASSR. Soviet Tatar poet. Member of the CPSU since 1948.

Nuri graduated from the Lubiany Forestry Technicum in 1941. During the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45 he served as head of reconnaissance in K. Zaslonov’s partisan detachment.

Nuri’s first works appeared in 1937. His poetry depicts the steadfastness and heroism of Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War; it also deals with the intellectual world of his contemporaries. His works include the narrative poems Road of Glory (1949) and The Ascent (1956), the poetry collections We Live on the Volga (1951; Russian translation, 1956), A Frank Conversation (1955), With a Straightforward Glance (1963), and Years and Roads (1971) and the collection of short stories about the partisans And the Dead Took Revenge (1962). Nuri also writes for children. He has translated works by N. A. Nekrasov and V. V. Mayakovsky into Tatar.

From 1957 to 1968, Nuri was executive secretary of the Tatar Writers’ Union and from 1971 to 1974 chairman of the union’s administrative board. In 1971 he became secretary of the administrative board of the Writers’ Union of the USSR. He was a deputy to the seventh and eighth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the Tatar ASSR and a member of its presidium. Nuri has been awarded two orders and a number of medals.