A poet from Andijan and one of the founders of modern Uzbek poetry, author of the novel “Night and Day” and the first translator of Shakespeare's Hamlet into Uzbek. He was executed in 1938.
Abdulhamid Sulaymon o'g'li Yunusov, who wrote as Cho'lpon, was born in Andijan in 1897 (some sources say 1893) into a merchant family. He studied at a madrasa in 1908–1912 and then at a Russian-native school, read the classical poets of the East and the Jadid press on his own, and knew several languages. In 1914 he came to Tashkent and worked with the newspaper Sadoi Turkiston. After 1917 he worked for newspapers, magazines and the theatre, spending time in Moscow and Orenburg. His pen name, meaning “morning star”, captures the themes of awakening and freedom that run through his poetry.
Poetry, a novel and translations
His collections “Awakening” (1922), “Springs” (1924), “Secrets of Dawn” (1926) and “The Lute” (1935) renewed Uzbek poetry in form and content with a free, subtle lyricism and reflections on homeland and human dignity. His novel “Night and Day” (1936), on the tragic fate of an Uzbek woman under colonial rule, is counted among the peaks of Uzbek prose. He translated Pushkin's Boris Godunov, works by Gorky and Shakespeare's Hamlet, and wrote the drama “Yorqinoy”. Arrested in 1937, he was shot in Tashkent on 4–5 October 1938; rehabilitated in 1956, he returned to print only in the late 1980s.
Remembrance
His centenary was widely celebrated in 1997, when a house-museum opened in Andijan and the Andijan State Institute of Foreign Languages took his name. He was posthumously awarded the Order of Independence, a statue of him stands in Tashkent, and one of the country's biggest publishing houses is named after him. In Andijan the Cho'lpon museum pairs well with Babur Park.
On the night of 29 May 1898 some 1,500 armed men led by the Naqshbandi sheikh Muhammad Ali Madali, known as Dukchi Ishan, attacked the Russian army camp at Andijan. The rising fed on resentment of colonial rule, taxation and land policy, as well as on religious appeals. The troops quickly recovered and beat off the attack, and within days the revolt was crushed. Dukchi Ishan and other leaders were executed, many participants exiled and their villages punished. The episode pushed the authorities to tighten control over Muslim institutions in Turkestan.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries a reform movement took shape in Turkestan: the Jadids, advocates of usul-i jadid, the “new method”. Inspired by the Crimean Tatar educator Ismail Gasprinsky, Mahmudkhoja Behbudiy, Munavvar Qori, Abdulla Avloniy, Is'hoqxon Ibrat, Abdurauf Fitrat and others opened schools teaching literacy by the phonetic method and wrote textbooks. From 1906 Uzbek-language newspapers such as Taraqqiy and Khurshid appeared in Tashkent, and Behbudiy's play “The Patricide” (Padarkush), staged in 1914, launched a national theatre. The Jadids sought to renew society through education, the press and reform. Many were repressed in the 1920s–1930s; their legacy is being rediscovered today.
On 25 June (8 July) 1916, at the height of the First World War, Nicholas II decreed the conscription of Turkestani men aged 19 to 43 for labour behind the front. Issued at harvest time and enforced through unfair lists, the decree provoked mass unrest. In July there were protests in Khujand, Tashkent and towns of the Fergana Valley; in Jizzakh the rising turned into armed fighting and was crushed with great brutality by punitive detachments, which left the old town badly damaged. The revolt also spread across Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Tens of thousands of labourers were eventually sent to the front zone regardless.
After the October Revolution of 1917, power in Tashkent passed to a Bolshevik-led soviet that excluded the local Muslim majority. In response, the Fourth Extraordinary Congress of Turkestan Muslims, meeting in Kokand on 27 November 1917, proclaimed a Turkestan Autonomy within a Russian federation. Its government was led by Mukhamedzhan Tynyshpaev and then Mustafa Chokay, with Jadids among its members. In February 1918 Red Guard units sent from Tashkent stormed Kokand; much of the city was destroyed and thousands of civilians were killed. Short-lived as it was, the autonomy is seen as a milestone in the region's pursuit of national statehood.
After the Turkestan Autonomy was crushed, an armed movement against Soviet rule spread through the Fergana Valley from 1918. Soviet sources called it the Basmachi movement; Uzbek historians today more often describe it as a struggle for independence. It was led by local commanders, or kurbashi, such as Ergash, Madamin Bek and Shermuhammad Bek (Kurshermat). After 1920 the fighting shifted to Eastern Bukhara and the mountains of Kashkadarya and Surkhandarya, where Ibrahim Bek was a leading figure; the Ottoman general Enver Pasha joined in 1921–1922 and was killed in 1922. Large Red Army forces had largely suppressed the movement by the mid-1920s, though isolated bands held out into the early 1930s.
In February 1920 the Red Army and Young Khivan forces ended the Khanate of Khiva: the last khan, Said Abdullah, abdicated, and in April the Khorezm People's Soviet Republic was proclaimed. On 2 September 1920 the Red Army under Mikhail Frunze, together with the Young Bukharans, took Bukhara after a bombardment that set the Ark and parts of the city ablaze; Emir Alim Khan fled to Eastern Bukhara and in 1921 to Afghanistan. In October the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic was created, headed by Fayzulla Khodjaev, with Fitrat among its ministers. Both republics were dissolved in the national delimitation of 1924.
