Gabit Musrepov

Born Mar. 9 (22), 1902, in what is now Kustanai Oblast, Kazakh SSR. Soviet Kazakh writer and public figure. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR (1958). Member of the CPSU since 1926.

The son of a peasant, Musrepov studied at the Omsk Agricultural Institute (1926–27). He began to appear in print in 1926. His first novella, In the Abyss (1928), deals with the events of the Civil War of 1918–20. The class struggle in the Kazakh aul (village) and the creation of a new life in the kolkhoz are depicted in Musrepov’s short stories “Kos-Shalkar” (1928), “The Neighbors From the Blue House” (1929), “The Tunnel” (1930), and “Summer Lightning” (1934) and in the novella The First Steps (1932). In 1934, Musrepov published the cycle of short stories A Mother’s Courage.

Musrepov’s novel A Soldier From Kazakhstan (1949) is devoted to the exploits of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45. The novel The Awakened Land (1953) examines the formation of the Kazakh working class in prerevolutionary Karaganda. Both novels represent important stages in the development of Kazakh prose.

In 1967, Musrepov published the novella Once and for All, which earned Musrepov the Abai Kunanbaev State Prize of the Kazakh SSR (1968). His dramatic works occupy an important place in the repertoire of Kazakh theaters; these include the libretto to the opera Kyz-Zhibek (1934) and the plays Amangel’dy (1936; staged in 1937 and 1952), Kozy-Korpesh and BaianSlu (1939), and The Tragedy of a Poet (1958; 1st ed. published under the title Akhan-Sere and Aktokty, 1942).

Musrepov has served as chairman of the administrative board of the Writers’ Union of the Kazakh SSR (1956–62 and 1964–66) and as secretary of the Writers’ Union of the USSR (beginning in 1959). He was a deputy to the fifth convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and to the Supreme Soviet of the Kazakh SSR. Musrepov has been awarded two Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and several medals.