Hasan Tufan

Hasan Tufan (real name Khisbulla Fakhriyevich Gulzizin-Khazratov-Kusinov) was a Tatar poet and writer, a public figure, and a laureate of the Republican Prize named after Gabdulla Tukay (1966). He was born on December 9, 1900 in the village of St. Kiremet (now in Aksubayevsky District of the Republic of Tatarstan) into a peasant family. He learned to read and write from his father and then attended the village school. In 1914 his brothers took Hasan with them to the Urals, where he worked as a prospector at copper mines. A decisive influence on his education was his study at the Ufa madrasa "Galiya".

  

From 1918 to 1928 Hasan Tufan taught at schools in Siberia, the Urals, and Kazan; from 1928 to 1930 he traveled through the republics of the Transcaucasus and Central Asia. From 1930 to 1934 Hasan Tufan was the editor of the Tatar Radio Committee. Later he became the executive secretary of the magazine "Sovet әdäbiyaty" (Soviet Literature, now "Kazan Utlary").

  

In 1940 Hasan Tufan was repressed. Two years later he was sentenced to the death penalty, but the execution was commuted to ten years' imprisonment. In 1950, after serving his sentence, the poet was permanently exiled to the Ustarsky District of Novosibirsk Oblast. In 1956, following his rehabilitation, the poet returned to Kazan. Hasan Tufan passed away on June 10, 1981 in Kazan and was buried in the Tatar Cemetery in Kazan.