Mollamurt, Allaberdy Khodzhaniiaz Ogly

Born 1879; died 1930. Soviet Turkmen poet.

Mollamurt was born into a poor family. A well-known prerevolutionary shakhir (poet-improvisor), he wrote in the tradition of the Turkmen classics. Mollamurt was one of the founders of Soviet Turkmen poetry. He extolled the new system in such poems as “The Bolshevik,”“Glorious October,” and “Freedom” and criticized the vestiges of the past in such poems as “The Unwritten Law of the Dark Past.” He also defended the rights of women—for example, in “The Emancipation of Women Is Our First Goal.” A self-taught artist, Mollamurt illustrated the satirical magazine Tokmak (Wooden Pestle), in which he also published his own satirical poems.