Dzhusup Turusbekov

Born Dec. 24, 1910, in the village of Kun-Batysh, in what is now Tonskii Raion, Issyk-Kul’ Oblast; died April 1944 at the Kalinin Front. Soviet Kirghiz poet and dramatist. A founder of Soviet Kirghiz literature. Member of the CPSU from 1930.

Turusbekov was orphaned at an early age and was raised in a children’s home. He fought in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45. He was the author of the collections Poems of Dzhusup (1932), Joyous Youth (1933), and The Fatherland (1938). Turusbekov’s principal theme was the revolution, and his poetry was essentially publicistic. He wrote the plays Not Death, But Life (1935) and Events in Besh-Moinok (1937) and the libretto for the opera Aichurek (with K. Malikov and Dzh. Bokonbaev, 1939). He also translated into Kirghiz A. S. Pushkin’s The Stone Guest and the works of H. Heine.

Turusbekov was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor.