Mustafin, Gabiden

Born Nov. 13 (26), 1902, in aul (village) no. 3, Akmolinsk District, present-day Tel’manskii Raion, Karaganda Oblast. Soviet Kazakh author and public figure. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR (1958). Member of the CPSU since 1940. Candidate member from 1954 and member since 1956 of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan.

The son of a nomad, Mustafin worked in the mines of Karaganda. He was first published in 1927, and his first collection of short stories, Er Shoiyn (and Other Short Stories), was published in 1929. His novel Life or Death (1941) was among the first works of Kazakh prose devoted to the working class. The novel Shiganak (1945; Russian translation, 1947) tells the story of the millet grower Shiganak Bersiev. The novella The Millionaire (1948) deals with the labors of Kazakh kolkhozniks, while the novel Karaganda (1952; Abai Kunanbaev State Prize of the Kazakh SSR, 1953), with the miners of Karaganda. The novel After the Storm (1959) describes how socialism transformed a Kazakh aul (village). The first part of the autobiographical novel Eyewitness (Russian translation, 1965) appeared in 1963. Mustafin’s works have been translated into many languages.

Mustafin has served as chairman (1953–56) and as first secretary (1962–64) of the administrative board of the Writers’ Union of Kazakhstan. He was a deputy to the sixth convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He has been awarded two Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and several medals.