Sadriddin Ayni

Sadriddin Ayni (Tajik: Садриддин Айнӣ, Persian: صدرالدين عيني, also Sadriddin Aini; 27 April 1878 - 15 July 1954) was a Tajik intellectual who wrote poetry, fiction, journalism, history and lexicography. He is regarded as Tajikistan's national poet and one of the most important writers in the country's history.

Biography

Ayni was born in a peasant family in the village of Soktare in what was then the Emirate of Bukhara. He became an orphan at 12 and moved to join his older brother in Bukhara, where he attended a madrasa and learned to write in Arabic.

In the early 1920s Ayni helped to propagate the Russian Revolution in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In 1934 he attended the Soviet Congress of Writers as the Tajik representative. By purporting national identity in his writings, he was able to escape the Soviet censors that quieted many intellectuals in Central Asia. Ayni survived the Soviet Purges, and even outlived Stalin by one year. He was member of the Supreme Soviet of Tajikistan for 20 years, was awarded the Order of Lenin three times, and was the first president of the Academy of Sciences of Tajik SSR. After 1992, his writing helped to bind together a sense of Tajik nationalism that survived the collapse of the Soviet Union.