Shogentsukov, Ali Askhadovich

Born Oct. 28, 1900, in the village of Kuchmazukino, in what is now Baksan Raion, Kabarda-Balkar ASSR; died Nov. 29, 1941, in Bobruisk. Soviet Kabardin poet. Honored Art Worker of the Kabarda-Balkar ASSR (1939). Member of the CPSU from 1940.

Shogentsukov attended a teachers college in Istanbul from 1917 to 1919. He then returned to his homeland and took part in the construction of a Soviet society, devoting many years to teaching. He served in the Great Patriotic War (1941–45) and perished in a fascist concentration camp.

Shogentsukov’s first published works appeared in 1917. His literary legacy, which includes the first examples of Soviet Kabardin poetry, is a fictional chronicle of the life of the Kabardin people in the prerevolutionary era and under Soviet power. Outstanding are the narrative poem Madina (1933), the heroic narrative poem Past Days of Tembot (1935), and the novel in verse Kambot and Liatsa (1938). Shogentsukov developed traditional poetic forms and provided models of profoundly ideological, realistic poetry. His short stories “A Pood of Flour” and “Under the Old Pear Tree” marked the beginning of Soviet Kabardin prose.

Shogentsukov translated into Kabardin works by A. S. Pushkin, M. Iu. Lermontov, T. G. Shevchenko, M. Gorky, and K. Khetagurov. Works by Shogentsukov have been translated into many languages of the peoples of the USSR.