Davletshina, Khadiia

Born March 1905, in the village of Khasanovo, in present-day Kuibyshev Oblast; died Dec. 5, 1954, in Birsk. Soviet Bashkir writer. The first Bashkir woman writer. Born into the family of a poor peasant.

Davletshina published her first work in 1927. Her novella Aibike (1930; Russian translation. 1936) deals with the transformation of a former woman farm-laborer into a leader of the kolkhoz movement. The spiritual rebirth of a formerly oppressed Bashkir woman farm-laborer is the basic theme of many of Davletshina’s short stories (Collected Stories, 1935). Her novel Irgiz, which was published in 1957, depicts the revolutionary struggle of the Bashkir people from 1902 through the 1920’s. Under the influence of the Russian revolutionaries, Aibulat, the hero of the novel, grows into a conscious defender of the interests of the people.