Mirjaqip Dulatuli

Mirzhaqyp Dulatov (or Mir-Yaqub Dulatov) (1885 - 1935) was a Kazakh writer and social activist. He is best known for his call to the Kazakh people to resist Russian colonization of their lands.

Early Life

Dulatov was born in 1885 in Turgai Province. Both his parents died while he was very young, and his schooling began only at the hands of a local mullah. His education consisted of attending a Russian-Kazakh school and a one year teaching program which took place at Kostanai. After graduating, he relocated to Omsk and became a teacher there.

Political Life

Dulatov's first significant political act was to join a secret Kazakh organization which was critical of the tsar's policies on Central Asia. He advocated reform to maintain traditional Kazakh lifestyles and stop the suffering of the Kazakhs as they were forced to give up nomadic life. in 1905, he participated in a rally in Qarqaraly to this end.

His nationalist activities continued in 1909 when he published Oyan, Qazaq! (Awake, Kazakh!), a collection of poems with which he wanted to rally the Kazakh people to resist Russian colonization and disintegration of Kazakh society. In 1910 or 1912, he published his first novel (and possibly the first novel in the Kazakh language, Baqytsyz Zhamal (Unhappy Zhamal), which details the story of a girl forced to marry. As a result of these political activities and continued opposition to the tsarist government, Dulatov was arrested multiple times. He assisted Akhmet Baitursynov in the founding of Kazak, a Kazakh newspaper, in 1913. He also contributed a number of articles to it.

Like many other Kazakh intellectuals of his time, he was a leader in the Alash Orda political movement which sought to establish an independent Kazakh state. Also like them, after the Soviets established hegemony in the region, he joined the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Communist Party and continued to work for Kazakh cultural independence. His continued political activity contributed to his eventual arrest in 1928 for "bourgeois nationalism." He was under surveillance until another arrest in 1935. During his subsequent imprisonment at Solovetsk prison, he took ill and died.