Gafurov, Bobodzhan Gafurovich

Born Dec. 18 (31), 1908, in the kishlak (village) of Ispisar, in present-day Khodzhent Raion, Tadzhik SSR. Soviet Party figure, historian, and Orientalist; academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Tadzhik SSR (1950); academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1968; corresponding member, 1958). Became a member of the CPSU in 1932.

Gafurov graduated from the All-Union Communist Institute of Journalism in 1935. He worked as a journalist and taught at higher educational institutions in Tadzhikistan. From 1941 to 1944 he was secretary for propaganda of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Tadzhikistan; from 1944 to 1946 he was second secretary, and from 1946 to 1956 first secretary, of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Tadzhikistan. In 1956 he became director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. His works deal with the history of the peoples of Middle Asia and the history of Islam. At the Nineteenth and Twentieth Congresses of the Party he was elected a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU. He was a deputy to the second, third, fourth, fifth, and seventh convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In 1968 he received the J. Nehru International Prize. He has been awarded six Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and medals.