Akhniaf Kireev

(pseudonym, Kirei Mergen). Born June 28 (July 11), 1912, in the village of Kigazy, in present-day Mishkino Raion, Bashkir ASSR. Soviet Bashkir writer, literary critic and historian, and specialist in folklore. Member of the CPSU since 1941.

Kireev graduated from the Academy of Social Sciences of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1954. From 1954 to 1965 he served as director of the literature and folklore sector of the Scientific Research Institute of History, Language, and Literature of the Bashkir branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He became a professor at Bashkir University in 1965. He first appeared in print in 1930. Kireev has written about kolkhoz labor, working youth, and the feats of Bashkir soldiers during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45 (as in the novella Karaidel’ 1949, and the novel On the Slopes of Narysh-Tau, 1951). His works on literature and folklore are well known. They include Epic Works of the Bashkir People (1961) and A Notebook of Songs (1964).