Chemenzeminli

(real name, Iusif Vezir Mirbaba ogly). Born Aug. 31 (Sept. 12), 1887; died 1943. Soviet Azerbaijani writer.

Chemenzeminli was born in the city of Shusha, in what is now the Azerbaijan SSR. He graduated from the law faculty of the University of Kiev in 1915. His work first appeared in print in 1907. Chemenzeminli’s first publicistic articles, stories, and feuilletons were published in such periodicals as the satirical magazine Molla Nasreddin. In these early works, he criticized religious fanaticism, ignorance, and backwardness and portrayed the bitter fate of the common man and the difficult lot of Azerbaijani women.

Chemenzeminli lived in Istanbul and Paris between 1919 and 1925; he returned to Azerbaijan in 1926. In such short-story collections as Pages From the Past (1926) and From Darkness to Light (1933), he condemned the social vices of feudal-bourgeois society and depicted the new Soviet man and the upsurge in the social and cultural life of the people. In his two-part work The Students (1914–35) and in 1917 (1931–34) he portrayed the student revolutionary movement in tsarist Russia. He subsequently wrote the novel Maiden Spring (1934) and the novel Covered with Blood (published 1960–61), which describes 18th-century Azerbaijan and portrays the humanist poet Vagif. Chemenzeminli also wrote on the history of Azerbaijani literature and folklore.