Muldagaliev, Dzhuban

Born Oct. 5, 1920, near Zhi-landy, in presentday Taipakskii Raion, Ural’sk Oblast. Soviet Kazakh poet. Member of the CPSU since 1942. Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan since 1966.

Muldagaliev graduated from the Ural’sk Agricultural Technicum in 1940. He served in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45. Between 1958 and 1963 he was editor of the journal Zhuldyz (Star) and from 1963 to 1971 he served as secretary of the administrative board of the Writers’ Union of Kazakhstan.

Muldagaliev began appearing in print in 1939, and his first collection of poems, Songs of Victory, was published in 1949. His other collections of poems include Bright Path (1951), The Party Leads (1954), With Eyes of Love (1964), My Regards to You (1967), and The Destruction of the Fetters (1969; Abai State Prize of the Kazakh SSR, 1970). Muldagaliev’s poetry depicts the life of the Soviet man, the builder of communism. His narrative poem The Song Does Not Die (1956) portrays Musa Dzhalil’. The lyric and publicistic narrative poems The Steppe Dastarkhan (1957) and I Am a Kazakh (1964), which depict the recent experiences of the Kazakh people, combine epic form and profound lyricism.

Muldagaliev’s works have been translated into many languages of the peoples of the USSR, as well as into foreign languages. Muldagaliev was a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Kazakh SSR from 1967 to 1971. He has been awarded four orders and several medals.