Togolok Moldo

(pen name of Baiymbet Abdyrakhmanov). Born June 10,1860, in the region of Kurtka in the Tien-Shan, in what is now Ak-Tala Raion, Naryn Oblast, Kirghiz SSR; died there Jan. 4,1942. Soviet Kirghiz national poet.

Togolok Moldo studied at a rural Muslim school and worked as a farm laborer. He wrote laments in verse and song, as well as satirical poems; he also composed the first Kirghiz fables. In his satirical poems and the narrative poems Kemchontoi (1900) and Babyrkany (1900), Togolok Moldo denounced the greed of the rich. In the narrative poem A Tale of Waterfowl and Land Birds (1908), he depicted social contradictions in allegorical form. Togolok Moldo greeted the October Revolution of 1917 with enthusiasm and wrote the narrative poems Revolution (1918) and Freedom (1919–23). He was well known as a reciter of the epic poem Manas. Togolok Moldo’s poems have been translated into many languages of the peoples of the USSR.

Togolok Moldo was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor.