Elebaev, Mukai

Born 1905 in the ail (nomadic or seminomadic settlement) of Chon-Tash, in what is now Tiup Raion, Is-syk-Kul’ Oblast; died 1943. Soviet Kirghiz writer.

Elebaev graduated from the Frunze Pedagogical Technicum in 1930. He fought in the Great Patriotic War (1941–45). Elebaev’s works were first published in 1924, and his first collection of poems was published in 1931. This was followed by the collection The Battle (1933), which played a major role in the development of Soviet Kirghiz poetry, particularly for introducing themes drawn from contemporary life and new poetic forms. In 1938 his Complete Collected Poems was published. Elebaev was also the author of the collections of poems on life at the front: The Letter (1941) and The Great March (1943). The autobiographical novella The Long Journey (1936; Russian translation, 1959) is a fictionalized documentary; it evokes the tragedy of the Kirghiz people seeking asylum in a foreign land after the suppression of the uprising of 1916.

Elebaev also translated the works of A. S. Pushkin, L. N. Tolstoy, and D. A. Furmanov into Kirghiz. Elebaev died at the front.