Khadi Taktash

(pen name of Khadi Khairullovich Taktashev). Born Dec. 19, 1900 (Jan. 1, 1901), in the village of Syrkydy, in what is now Torbeevo Raion, Mordovian ASSR; died Dec. 8, 1931, in Kazan. Soviet Tatar poet.

Taktash first published in 1918 and began working as a teacher in that same year; he also worked as a journalist. His verse tragedy Sons of the Earth (1921) attacked the foundations of feudal and bourgeois society. In 1923–24, Taktash abandoned abstract romantic poetry and turned to realist civic poetry. The narrative poem Centuries and Minutes (1924), which was inovative in form, reflected the people’s grief over Lenin’s death. Taktash dealt with the revolution and the formation of the new Soviet man in the narrative poems The Village of Syrkydy and After the Storm (both 1924), the drama Buried Weapons (1927), and the unfinished novel The Wind of the Dawn (1928–29). The narrative poems Confession of Love (1927) and Alsu (1929) and the drama Lost Beauty (1928) were concerned with the upbringing of youth. In the lyric epic poem Letters to the Future (1930–31), Taktash created poetic portraits of the builders of the communist future. The socially oriented drama Kamil’ (1930) depicted the class struggle during collectivization.

Taktash enlarged the scope of Tatar syllabic poetry by enriching it with intonational verse and a variety of rhythms and rhymes. His works have been translated into many national languages of the USSR.