Dzhansugurov, Ilias

Born May 1, 1894; died 1937. Soviet Kazakh poet. Member of the CPSU from 1924.

Dzhansugurov was born in Aul Number 4, now the Dzhansugurov settlement, Taldy-Kurgan Oblast, Kazakh SSR. He was the son of a peasant. From 1925 to 1928 he studied at the Moscow Communist Institute of Journalism. The verses What Became of Them? (1919) are full of compassion for the common people. In his first long narrative poem, Steppe (1930), Dzhansugurov ably re-creates the historical past of the Kazakh people and praises the accomplishments of Soviet Kazakhstan during the previous ten years. Exposing the remnants of the past is the task of the narrative poem Kulager (1936), which is distinguished by a subtle lyricism. The special characteristics of Dzhansugurov’s talent include a sense of humor and the ability to note the typical phenomena of life and to create satirical scenes and images. In 1933 he published his first long novel, Comrades, which shows the social contradictions in a prerevolutionary Kazakh aul (rural settlement) and the participation of working people in the struggle for Soviet power. He is the author of the plays Turksib, Hatred, andlsatai and Mahambet (1936). He translated A. S. Pushkin’s Evgenii One gin and works of M. Iu. Lermontov, N. A. Nekrasov, and V. V. Mayakovsky into Kazakh.