Abselâm Islâmov (; 1 April 1907 — 1 December 1995) was a Crimean Tatar

party A party is a gathering of people who have been invited by a Hospitality, host for the purposes of socializing, conversation, recreation, or as part of a festival or other commemoration or celebration of a special occasion. A party will oft ...

worker, commissar, and journalist. For 25 years, he was the chief editor of the

Crimean Tatar language Crimean Tatar (), also called Crimean (), is a Turkic languages, Turkic language spoken in Crimea and the Crimean Tatar diasporas of Uzbekistan, Turkey and Bulgaria, as well as small communities in the United States and Canada. It should not ...

newspaper

Lenin Bayrağı ''Yani dyunya'' () is a Crimean Tatar-language weekly newspaper, published in Simferopol. Its history dates back to 1918, when it was established in Moscow. In 2015, the newspaper was merged with the magazine ''Yildiz''. History The newspaper ...

. For his work, he was awarded the title Honored Culture Worker of the Uzbek SSR.

Early life

Islâmov was born on 1 April 1907 in Tai-Vakuf village to an extremely poor Crimean Tatar family with many siblings. His family rented land from a landowner to run a farm, and what little money they had leftover went to food for the family. His parents and many of his siblings died in the famine of the 1920s, and he survived because he lived in the Subhi Children's Home at the time. He became a member of the

Komsomol The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, usually known as Komsomol, was a political youth organization in the Soviet Union. It is sometimes described as the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), although it w ...

in 1923, and in 1930 he was admitted to the Communist Party. From 1929 to 1932 he attended the Frunze Pedagogical Institute of Crimea, which he graduated from with honors. He entered the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

in 1935, but until the start of the

Great Patriotic War The Eastern Front, also known as the Great Patriotic War (term), Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union and its successor states, and the German–Soviet War in modern Germany and Ukraine, was a Theater (warfare), theatre of World War II ...

he did civilian work, working at the Higher Agricultural School and later the Institute for Mass Training of Activists. Throughout the 1930s he did many jobs, being an instructor at a regional Komsomol committee, the head of a department at the newspaper Qızıl Qırım, and worked at a pioneer youth magazine. His career in the Communist Party steadily grew in the latter part of the 1930s: he became the head of the Crimean branch of the Institute for the Training of Party Activists, and in 1938 he became a member of the Crimean Regional Party Control Commission. He was called up to the Red Army again in 1940, when many other political workers were mobilized. He taught economics at the Kachin Aviation School and was later sent to the Pavlograd Aviation School.

World War II

During the war, Islâmov was the head of the political department of the 220th Fighter Aviation Division, which later became the 1st Guards Fighter Aviation Division. He was often praised by his commanders for his attentive work in educating pilots and journalism about the division. He ended the war with the rank of major, and was stationed in Dresden until 1946.

Life in exile

From 1946 he lived in exile, he first lived in

Samarkand Samarkand ( ; Uzbek language, Uzbek and Tajik language, Tajik: Самарқанд / Samarqand, ) is a city in southeastern Uzbekistan and among the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited cities in Central As ...

, and worked as the head of the ideological department in the Samarkand Regional Party Committee. Later he was given an apartment in Tashkent. In 1957 he was charged with establishing the Crimean Tatar language newspaper

and the given the position of editor-in-chief of the newly restarted newspaper; for 25 years, he was the chief editor of the newspaper. He worked hard to maintain the peace between editorial staff, which was complicated by the fact that

Sharof Rashidov Sharof Rashidovich Rashidov (Uzbek Cyrillic: Шароф Рашидович Рашидов, ; ; – 31 October 1983) was the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan from 1959 until his death in 1983. During h ...

would frequently send him letters from staff denouncing each other. In addition to his work at the newspaper, he was elected as a deputy to the

Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek SSR The Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek SSR (; ) was the supreme soviet (main legislative institution) of the Uzbek SSR from 1938 to 1991. The Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek SSR was preceded by the All-Uzbek Congress of Soviets which operated from 1925 ...

. In 1977 he was awarded the title of Honored Worker of Culture of Uzbekistan; he retired in 1981 and died on 1 December 1995 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. While he did not return to Crimea, his son Zemfir did move to Crimea after the fall of the Soviet Union.

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Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Islâmov, Abselâm 1901 births 1995 deaths Recipients of the Order of the Badge of Honour Soviet editors Crimean Tatar journalists