Chingiz Aitmatov Bio
Chinghiz Aitmatov was a Soviet and Kyrgyz author and one of the best known authors in Kyrgyz literature.
Born on December 12th 1928 in Seker, Kyrgyzstan, he got his early education at a Soviet school, as Kyrgyzstan was becoming a part of the newly formed USSR, established in 1922, during Aitamatov’s early childhood. Aitmatov’s parents were heavily involved in the Soviet political realm. Aitmatov’s father worked a number of positions in the Party apparatus, and his mother was committed to fighting for a number of social issues including women’s rights, literacy, land and water reforms, and eliminating the remaining influences of Islam on Kyrgyz society. In 1937, when he was just a young boy, Aitmatov’s father was charged with "bourgeois nationalism" (considered a crime by the communist government because this practice of deliberately dividing people by nationality, race, etc. is intended to prevent peoples from banding together to initiate class warfare). He was taken to Moscow, arrested, and executed in 1938. In 1942, when Aitmatov was 14, he worked as an assistant to the Secretary at the Village Soviet, the district office of the Soviet government. In 1946 he began studying at the Animal Husbandry Division of the Kirghiz Agricultural Institute in Frunze, but later switched to literary studies at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow. In 1951 he married Keres Shamshibaeva with whom he had three sons and a daughter. The marriage, however, would be short lived as they divorced some years later.
From 1956 to 1958 Aitmatov lived in Moscow and worked for Pravda; one of the most influential papers in the Soviet Union and the official paper of the Communist party. While working at Pravda, Aitmatov published the first of many of his important works: A Difficult Passage in 1956, Face to Face in 1957, and Jamilia in 1958. In 1963 he published Tales of the Mountains and Steppes which gained him plenty of recognition; he was awarded the Lenin Prize for literature that same year. In 1968 he won the State Prize for his first novel Farewell Gyulsary. He would go on to win the prize again in 1977 and 1983.
In the early 1970s Aitmatov began writing his works in Russian and also ventured into the performing arts with his contributions to the play The Ascent of Mount Fuji which was first performed in 1973. It was considered very provocative in Soviet Russia as it featured and examined themes of authority and dissent. In 1981 he would publish The Day Lasts Longer than a Hundred Years, a narrative seemingly inspired by his own life: the protagonist struggles with his own identity, torn between the culture of his native country and the constructed ideal of the “Soviet Man." In addition to this hardship this clash of cultures and traditions is no doubt a conflict Aitmatov himself experienced; Aitmatov himself had to hold his family together at the age of 9 when his own father was taken away. This novel also would heavily influence the film Mankurt released in 1990 and written by his second wife Mariya Urmatova. He lived in Kazan at the time the filming was taking place in the city. Interestingly he actually coined the term "mankurt" to mean a Central Asian who opts to become this new “Soviet person,” and the term is now used derisively by Central Asians.
Aitmatov continued to write even though he became busy with a political career and some of his short stories became widely available in English translation when they were featured in the 1989 collections Piebald Dog Running Along the Shore, and Other Stories and Mother Earth, and Other Stories. His novels covered many themes including love and friendship, heroism in wartime, and the emancipation of Kyrgyz youth from restrictive tradition; drawing from his own experiences with Kyrgyzstan’s dissolution and working for the Village Soviet during war-times. The messages of Aitmatov’s novels evolved to fit the times. His final novel When the Mountains Fall Down: The Eternal Bride, published in 2005, had environmental themes: encouraging the mindful preservation of nature, and making an appeal to his fellow countrymen to protect the Celestial Mountains of his home country.
Aitmatov began his political career in 1966 when he became a member of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. A year later in 1967 he would also become a member of the Executive Board of The Writers’ Union of the U.S.S.R. Perhaps in reaction to his own father's arrest and subsequent death, Aitmatov’s specific political views were not so strongly displayed, at least in his earlier life. Though the USSR’s absorption of Kyrgyzstan was greatly disruptive to Aitmatov’s native country, his novels, often in the genre of Soviet Realism, captured the Soviet experience with honesty and avoided outright or too overt criticisms of the Soviet government. Perhaps it was this sense of caution he took throughout his political career that appealed to Mikhail Gorbachev when he decided to make Aitmatov one of his advisors as he became President of the U.S.S.R. Aitmatov would also serve as the Soviet ambassador to Luxembourg. After the breakup of the Soviet Union he continued his ambassadorship this time as the Kyrgyz ambassador to the European Union as well as many other European countries. He would eventually serve as a member of parliament in Kyrgyzstan. He and his writings were quite widely respected even in disparate political circles. Politicians of all parties from his native country of Kyrgyzstan sought his public support. When he died in Nurnberg, Germany on June 10, 2008, his death was mourned by the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and the current Russian President Vladimir Putin alike, and even his critics acknowledged the quality of his novels.
Aitmatov’s life was uniquely positioned in time; he was able to chart the decline of Kyrgyzstan and losses in Central Asian culture with the take-over of the Soviet Union and the following collapse of the Soviet Union itself. He then participated in the resurrection of his own home country and other Central Asian States; Aitmatov helped represent his country as an ambassador to the European Union and NATO among others, and on the world stage with his writing.
Although he wasn’t so direct in his criticisms of the Soviet Union, his novels often had other themes of social and political activism. In his most popular novel, “Jamila”, he confronts the discrepancies in the traditional treatment of women in Central Asian Society. The novel raises issues of discrimination, denial of education, and mistreatment with a strong female protaginist at the center. This, and other societal commentary, stem from Aitmatov’s deep-seated love for all of humanity; he believed in a “love that wishes all who have been born on this planet happiness and freedom” and that “no ideology or national structure is more important than this.” This message in all his books is perhaps the reason he was so widely appreciated.
A fuller perspective on his life philosophies is perhaps better communicated by the following quote:
"The responsibility of a writer is to bring forth words that capture, through painful personal experience, people's suffering, pain, faith and hope. This is because a writer is charged with the mission of speaking on behalf of his fellow human beings. Everything that happens in the world is happening to me personally.”
He always held human dignity in the highest regard and served the Kyrgyz people throughout his life. His attitudes towards the human experience are evident in his work based on the progression past restrictive tradition and the trials and heroism of war.
Bibliography
Balski, G., ed. Directory of Eastern European Film-Makers and Films 1945-1991. Greenwood, 1992
‘Chingiz Aytmatov | Kyrgyz Author’. Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Chingiz-Aytmatov.
“Death Of A Modern Hero.” RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, 23 June 2008, www.rferl.org/a/1144589.html.
“Prominent Russians: Chinghiz Aitmatov.” Chinghiz Aitmatov – Russiapedia Literature Prominent Russians, 11 June 2008,russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/literature/chinghiz-aitmatov/.
