Mannur, Shaykhs

Born in a poor peasant family, received primary education in a madrasah, then studied at a secular school in Shamak and at teacher training courses in Mamadysh. In 1921, he moved with his family to Kuzbass, where he began working at the Anzherka-Sudzhenka mine. In 1923 he entered the Sverdlovsk Party School and made his debut in print at the same time - in a number of newspapers, first in the Urals, then in Kazan and Moscow, his poems and essays were published.

In 1924, he went to Siberia for three years, where he lived in different places and worked in different jobs. In the years 1927-1929 he served in the army. After completing military service, he left for Donbass, where he got a job first as a distributor at a metallurgical plant, later he was a school teacher and concrete worker at the construction of the Dnepropetrovsk hydroelectric station; there he intensified his literary work. Later, for some time, he worked in the editorial office of the Tatar-language newspaper Esche (Worker), and in 1933 he moved to Kazan, where he graduated from Kazan Pedagogical University in 1937. During the Great Patriotic War he was at the front as a war correspondent, in 1944 he joined the Communist Party (however, he was subsequently expelled from the party for his position on certain issues). In 1946, he was appointed head of the literary part of the Kazan Opera and Ballet Theater named after M. Jalil and worked in this position until 1948. From 1949 until the end of his life he was a professional writer.

His first collection of poems, "From the Depths of the Taiga", was published in 1928. Among the most famous early poems of Shaykhi Mannur are "Over the Pyrite Mountains" (1929) and "Cast-Iron Streams" (1930). Before the Great Patriotic War, his collections of lyric poems “Songs of the Heart” (1934), “Young Carrier” (1940) and others were released. In addition, before the war, he wrote the poems “Grandfather Gaijan” (1934) and “One of Thousand Evenings” (1935), in which the poet expressed support for the collectivization carried out by the Soviet authorities in Tatarstan. After the war, he wrote the poem "The Girl from Kazan" (1946). In 1956, his poem Beauty was the Daughter of Mother Earth came out, which he dedicated to the oil workers of Tatarstan. In the 1960s and 1970s, Shayhi Mannur wrote mostly prose - his works of this period include the novel Musa (1968, Russian translation - 1983), the story of Musa Jalil, the autobiographical novel “Looking at the Flowing Waters” ( 1974, Russian translation - 1991), the lyric novel "Is There True Love?" (1980). He also wrote a number of patriotic poems, many poems and several poems for a children's audience, a number of journalistic works and literary and critical articles. In 1951, Mannur translated “The Word of Igor’s Regiment” into the Tatar language, also translated fables by I. A. Krylov, poetry by A. S. Pushkin (including the translation of “Eugene Onegin” in 1949), M. Yu. Lermontov , V.V. Mayakovsky, A.P. Chekhov's prose; in addition, translated by S. Rustaveli and T. Shevchenko.

In 1957, a library was built at his expense in his native village of Mannura; in 1980, this library was named after him, and since 1995, it has been a branch of the State United Museum of Tatarstan and is called the museum-library. In 1981, the Mannur Sheikh Prize was established, which is awarded annually on January 15, on his birthday.

According to critics, Mannur’s prose is distinguished by a great originality of the language and significant use of all kinds of dialecticisms and phraseologisms, it is also typical for him to introduce all kinds of Tatar proverbs and sayings into the story. In 1957, he gained fame in narrow circles by sending a letter addressed to Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, in which he spoke about the need to develop education among the Tatars and rehabilitation of the Crimean Tatars ^[1] .

He was buried, according to his will, in his native village.

• Order of the Red Banner of Labor (01/31/1939)
• Order of Friendship of Peoples (01/22/1975)

• History of Tatar Soviet literature, M., 1965:
• Giniyatullina A., Writers of Soviet Tatarstan. Bibliographic reference, Kaz., 1970.

• Mannur Shayhi Fakhrullovich - article from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia .