Battal, Salikh

(pseudonym of Salikh Vazykhovich Batalov). Born 1905 in the village of Bol’shoi Tiganali in the Middle Volga Region. Soviet Tatar writer. Born into a peasant family; became a pilot.

Battal began publishing in 1924. His first collection of poems, Song of the Years, appeared in 1929; later collections were Verses (1940) and Motherland (1944). His other works include the novel Pilots (1935), the plays The Hand-Painted Kerchief (1933) and The Ordeal (1941), the novella in verse On the High Road (1950), the short stories “Notes of a Pilot” (1951) and “Soviet People” (1962), and the novel in verse On the Cheremshan (1967). Battal has also translated the works of Pushkin and Mayakovsky into the Tatar language.