Tugelbai Sydykbekov

Born May 1 (14), 1912, in the ail (settlement) of Ken-Su, now in Tiup Raion. Soviet Kirghiz writer. People’s Writer of the Kirghiz SSR (1968). Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Kirghiz SSR (1954).

Sydykbekov began publishing in 1928. The poems in his collections The Battle (1933), Heroes (1936), and Poet-Nightingale (1938) dealt mainly with labor; even these early works revealed an epic tendency. Sydykbekov wrote the novels Ken-Su (books 1–2, 1937–38), about the first kolkhozes, Temir (1939–40), about the Completion of collectivization, People of Our Time (1948; State Prize of the USSR, 1949), about the labor of kolkhoz workers during the war, and Children of the Hills (1953). Of particular importance among Sydykbekov’s writings is the novel Among the Hills (books 1–2, 1955–58; a revised version of Ken-Su). This is a work on a grand scale with an abundance of characters and episodes. In 1966, Sydykbekov published the first two books of the trilogy The Women (Russian translation, 1972).

Sydykbekov was a deputy to the fourth convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and to the third and the fifth through eighth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the Kirghiz SSR. He has been awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and several medals.