Kekilov, Shali

Born 1906, in the aul (village) of Keshi, present-day Ashkhabad Raion; died Oct. 8, 1943. Soviet Turkmen poet.

Kekilov began to publish in 1927. His first important works —“The Girls’ Plea” (1928), “Garden of Freedom” (1928), and “For Girls” (1932)—dealt with the emancipation of the women of Turkmenia. Kekilov also wrote poems about industrialization and collectivization, notably “The Kolkhoz Way Is the Socialist Way” (1931) and “At the Kyzyl-Arvatskii Repair Factory” (1932). He is the author of the narrative poems Uncle Ivan (1942) and In the Karelian Forest (1943). Kekilov served as the executive secretary of the Union of Writers of Turkmenia from 1932 to 1936. He was killed in the Great Patriotic War in fighting above the arctic circle.