Musa Jalil (Musa Mustafovich Zalilov)

Musa Jalil (full name Musa Mustafovich Zalilov) was a Soviet Tatar poet and journalist, and a war correspondent. Musa Jalil was born in the village of Mustafino in the Orenburg Governorate. He received his initial education at the Husainiya Muslim theological school in Orenburg. In 1919 he joined the Komsomol, and in 1925 he published his first collection of poems, 'We Are Marching'. From 1927 to 1931 he studied at Moscow State University, first in the ethnology faculty and then in the literature faculty. After graduating he worked in Kazan as an editor of children's magazines. In 1933 he moved to Moscow, where he took the position of head of the literature and arts department at the Tatar newspaper 'Kommunist'.

 

In 1934 two poetry collections by Jalil were published: 'Verses and Epics' and 'The Decorated Millions'. In 1935 he became head of the literary section of the Tatar studio at the Moscow State Conservatory named after Tchaikovsky. In 1938 Jalil wrote the librettos for the operas 'Altynchech' and 'The Fisher Girl', which were staged at the Kazan Opera Theatre. In 1939 he headed the board of the Union of Writers of Tatarstan. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War Jalil went to the front, where in 1942 he was taken prisoner. While imprisoned he created a cycle of poems known as the 'Moabit Notebooks', which were secretly smuggled out to freedom by his cellmates. After his liberation these poems were translated into Russian. Musa Jalil was executed in Berlin on August 25, 1944. In 1956 he was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, and in 1957 he became a laureate of the Lenin Prize.