A process of startling intensity — a sudden cultural rise — swept through the whole of European culture in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. This phenomenon of modernisation, or rather of an unprecedented cultural ascent, found its fullest and deepest expression in the Russian Silver Age. The Kumyks were not left out of the general tide. This ought not to surprise us: like their Mozdok neighbours the Ossetians — one should remember that alongside Kosta Khetagurov the Ossetian heritage also produced the fine novelist and poet Akhmed Tsalikov and the renowned Russian émigré classic Gaito Gazdanov — they were the most Europeanised people of the North Caucasus. Not for nothing did the anthropologist Ivan Pantyukhov — father of the "Russian Kafka" Mikhail Pantyukhov, who died so young — write in his sketch on the Kumyks that they most of all reminded him of the inhabitants of Eastern Europe.
Already before the Revolution several groups had taken shape among the Kumyk cultural figures. The largest was the Aksay group, which included Manay Alibekov, Nukhay Batyrmurzaev, Abush Karamurzaev, Kochchakay — Dzhamalutdin Khanakaev — and, in part, Magomed-Kadi Dibirov. Manay Alibekov was a universal figure: a reclamation engineer (the Manay-Tataul canal was named after him), architect, ethnographer and, finally, poet. The novellas of Nukhay Batyrmurzaev — Neschastnaya Khabibat ("Unhappy Khabibat"), Davud i Layla ("Davud and Layla") — were the first shoots of literary prose in the Kumyk language. Dzhamalutdin Khanakaev, better known as Kochchakay, gave us a cycle of poems about the despotism of tsarist officials, about war and about prison. Already in the post-revolutionary years, three notable writers emerged from the circle around Nukhay's son Zaynal Batyrmurzaev: his brother Abdulgamid, Abdulla Bashirov and Bagautdin Astemirov. Such a flowering of talent would, naturally, have been impossible without the help of patrons — in particular of Shaykh Abdulvagab Dydymov. The Soviet historian Mansur Gaydarbekov put it this way: "There is also a known tendency among well-to-do men of Aksay to open private madrasas at their own expense and to compete with one another in attracting the best teachers and in training the best graduates."
An interesting circle of literary men also formed in Endirey. It included the future singer of Soviet power Kaziyav Ali; Adil-Gerey Izmailov, a keeper of old lore who recast legends into verse; and Ansar Kadiev, a master of love lyric.
A third such group was the Kazanishche group, centred on the Kumyk pioneer-printer, poet and folklorist Abusufyan Akaev and his circle — the folklorist Bilal Alibekov, Nazhmutdin Gaydarbekov — and close in spirit to them were the residents of neighbouring villages, Shikhammat-Kadi of Erpeli and Abdulkhalim of Dzhengutay. Abusufyan Akaev published the books Qılıq kitap ("The Book of Piety"), Yangı mavlid ("A New Mawlid"), Du'a majmu' ("A Collection of Prayers"), as well as arithmetic and geography textbooks. In 1912, under his editorship, there appeared a collection of monuments of folk creation; some of those pieces are in a language no longer accessible to every modern Kumyk. Akaev was a pupil and ally of the brilliant Crimean Tatar thinker Ismail Gasprinsky, whose Tercüman awakened the whole Turkic world.
The fourth group was the one at Temir-Khan-Shura. A theatre circle was formed there in 1910. It consisted of the Kumyks Temirbolat Beybulatov, Gadzhi Alkhasov, Mukhtar and Murza Temirkhanov; the Azerbaijanis Abduldzhapar and Amirarslan Aliskerov, Guseyn Abdullaev, Meshadi Ali Guseynov, Meshadi Alisker Shirmamedov, Ibrahim Samet-zade; and the Tabasaran Muratkhan Murtakhanov. They staged plays in Kumyk and in Azerbaijani. The proceeds went towards opening a small school teaching in Turkic and a four-bed clinic. Shortly before the Revolution the Temir-Khan-Shura group was joined by the Aksay native Adil Shemshedinov, who as early as 1902 had published in Etnograficheskoe obozrenie his remarkable Legends and Tales of the Kumyks in his own literary reworking — a piece that showed both his erudition and his excellent command of Russian.
Of course, poets did not live only in these four settlements. Among those active at this time are the Khamamatyurt natives — the agach-qomuz player Alipmurza Devletmurzaev and Magomed Kazanbiev, author of a literary adaptation of the life of the Prophet Muhammad, Nürlü Tavarih ("Sacred History").
The Botayurt man Achakan Kazbekov translated the fables of Krylov in 1916.
That same year, 1916, the Kizlyar native Abdulguseyn Ibragimov-Kizlyarsky brought forth a historical novel, Amanhor. Despite its historical canvas, the novel is full of colourful lyrical pages recounting the hero's love for the beautiful Dilbar.
The February Revolution gave the sharpest possible stimulus for a fresh cultural leap forward.
The first newspapers in the Kumyk language appeared, edited by Murtaza-Gadzhi Payzulaev and Magomed-Mirza Mavraev.
In 1917 both the Daghestan Theatrical and Literary Society and the journal Tang-Cholpan ("Morning Star") were founded — both of them were Temirbulat Beybulatov's creations. The journal Tang-Cholpan played an outstanding role in the history of Kumyk culture. Its editors were, in turn, Temirbulat Beybulatov, Nukhay Batyrmurzaev and Adil Shemshedinov. They published in the journal articles, novellas and poems — their own and those of like-minded contributors. For instance, Khalil-Bek Musaev — a pupil of Evgeny Lanceray and Adolf Dirr — published in Tang-Cholpan, in Kumyk, an essay "Aesthetics — the Nourishment of the Soul".
On the basis of the Daghestan Theatrical and Literary Society an amateur theatre sprang up in Temir-Khan-Shura.
Zumrud Kaitbekova translated Chekhov's one-act The Bear into Kumyk; she is also the first actress of the Kumyk theatre.
It is on this theatre's boards that Ullubiy Buynaksky tried his hand as an actor.
In 1918 Temirbulat Beybulatov published a series of articles on the issues of the day in the newspaper Dagestan. Despite their topical subject, they are not without a certain artistic value.
The Civil War could not but affect the Kumyk intelligentsia, which split into opposing camps and suffered conspicuous losses. In 1919 Nukhay and Zaynalabid Batyrmurzaev were killed, as was the would-be Kumyk actor Ullubiy Buynaksky. Alongside the latter there also fell, before a firing-squad's rifles, his comrade — a friend of Ilya Ehrenburg — the gifted decadent poet Oskar Leshchinsky, who while abroad had written a book of verse, Silver Ash, and a book on French painting, From Impressionism to Our Day.
With the end of the Civil War and the transition to the NEP, the conditions appeared for a restoration of cultural forces that had been squandered in the fratricidal nightmare.
In 1925 a book by the young Kumyk lyric poet Alim-Pasha Salavatov appeared, under the emblematic title Beginning. Salavatov regarded himself as a pupil of Temirbulat Beybulatov and named his sons in his teacher's honour — Temir and Bolat. Another pupil of Temirbulat was Mikail Kambulatov, today almost wholly forgotten.
In 1926 Temir-Bulat Beybulatov published a Collection of Poems and Songs, an event of great literary weight in the life of the Kumyks. The book offered material at once for linguistic research, for poetics and for the theory of music. Beybulatov sets himself the aim "to preserve in his creations the archaic forms of the language that are dying out"; he works on stylistic refinement and on a reform of versification, collects and notates folk-song melodies, and seeks to transplant the music of other peoples onto native soil. He is the first to write dramatic plays in the Kumyk language.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s T. Beybulatov wrote the operas Tang-Cholpan and Shamil at Akhulgo, as well as a number of plays for the Kumyk theatre. In particular he wrote the four-act play Suvperi ("The Water-Sprite"), based on a folk tale. He translated Shakespeare's Othello and Macbeth for the Kumyk theatre, and the theatre toured Buynaksky district with a production of Othello.
Literary translation in general played a major role in the 1920s. The gifted translator Abdulla Aliev rendered the works of Mikhail Lermontov into Kumyk. Abdulla Tamaev — who would become Daghestan's first professional historian — translated for the Kumyk theatre, in the early 1920s, Nariman Narimanov's Shamdam-bek, along with The Secrets of Our City, Khor-Khor, Two Pies, The Mullah Came to the Madrasa and others.
The 1920s saw the unfolding of the talent of the Kumyk opera singers Tatam Muradov and Zagir Daud. In those years the incomparable Bariyat Muradova took her first roles.
A universal man too was the poet, physicist-inventor, Arabist-Orientalist and folklorist Abdurakhman Kaziev.
Among the singers of Soviet power there were also evidently gifted men: the much-travelled Kaziyav Ali, the only "People's Singer of Daghestan"; the folk storyteller Ayav Akavov; the prose writer Magomed Khangishiev; and Nabi Khanmurzaev, who wrote a history of Daghestan in verse.
Active in print and on stage were also poets of the second and even third rank in talent — such as the "people's poet" Dadav Magomedov, or his namesake, also a "people's poet", Abdulla Magomedov, whose work bore the stamp of official commission. At the very end of the 1920s, the newspaper Lenin yolu gave generous pages to a polyphony of young voices: Abdurashid Abakarov, Shakhsoltan Alavatov, Latip A., Vakha Dydymov, Tagir Abakarov, Echiv Adzhieva. Their work is marked by optimism, an intoxication with life, a search for new and interesting forms previously unknown to the Kumyk language. Some of Latip's verses, in the sophistication of their form, were a match for the work of his contemporary Semyon Kirsanov. Abdurashid Abakarov wrote under the influence of Mayakovsky, Yesenin, Zaynal Batyrmurzaev and Nâzım Hikmet. His talent promised much, but his life was short: he died tragically in his twenty-first year.
In this period early works also managed to appear from Anvar Adzhiev, Atkay Adzhamatov and Abdulvagab Suleymanov. The last of these was examined by Temirbulat Beybulatov in an essay on versification. It was said of Atkay Adzhamatov, incidentally, that he "writes worse than Akhmatova"; we know of his friendship with the Acmeist Mikhail Zenkevich.
Effendi Kapiev too tried his pen in the Kumyk language, noting down legends and other folklore samples from the Kumyk prince Budaykhan.
Painting was also developing. In the 1920s the first major works appeared from Muetdin Dzhamal — a pupil of the Mir iskusstva painter and academician Evgeny Lanceray, a man of exceptional talent and courage — and from Yusup Mollaev, a graduate of the VKhUTEIN.
In 1928 the swift dismantling of the NEP began, and with it of the relative freedom of speech and self-expression. It is common knowledge that genuine literature is impossible in a system of unfreedom, and Yury Olesha was thrice right when he declared that "literature ended in 1931". In 1932, as is well known, all literary associations were placed outside the law, while the writers themselves were attached to the "Trade Union of Paper Workers and Printers". At the First Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1934, the sole permissible method in literature was declared to be the infamous socialist realism. This method, originally devised for the literature of power, was soon extended to the other arts.
Certainly something of value was still being made, still being written, after 1934. How could it be otherwise? But more for the desk drawer. A number of striking plays appeared — Aygazi and Karachach by Alim-Pasha Salavatov, Molla Nasretdin by Magomed Kurbanov, probably the most striking plays in the history of our theatre — but these were meteors in a dark, empty sky crowded with grey clouds of talentless odes to Stalin. Genuine literature was revived only during the Great Patriotic War, when what was needed once again was not the officially commissioned but the sincere and deeply human verse and prose. By then, however, it was another age, another century.
In 1937 Temirbolat Beybulatov, Bagautdin Astemirov, Magaram Karagishiev, Amir Kurbanov and Yusup Gereev were torn from the literary process by repression. Atkay spent fifteen months behind bars. Mikail Kambulatov died tragically. Earlier still, in 1929, Abusufyan Akaev and Magomed-Kadi Dibirov had been arrested.