Gamzat Tsadas biography in full. "Genealogy of the Gamzatov family." We will all die, there are no immortal people

Gamzat Tsadasa(1877-1951) - Avar Soviet poet, statesman. People's poet of the Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (1934). Winner of the Stalin Prize, second degree (1951). Father of Rasul Gamzatov and Gadzhi Gamzatov.

Biography

Born on 9a in the village of Tsada (now the Khunzakh region of Dagestan) to the family of a poor peasant. His surname “Tsadasa” is a pseudonym and comes from the name of the aul “Tsada” (translated from Avar - “from Tsada”). He became an orphan early; his father Yusupil Magoma died when he was 7 years old.

He studied at a madrasah. During three years was a Muslim priest and judge in his native village of Tsad. Later he refused this title. Worked for some time railway and on timber rafting. In 1908-1917 he studied agriculture(grain grower). In 1917-1919, Gamzat Tsadasa was a member of the Khunzakh Sharia Court. In 1921-1922 he worked as editor of the newspaper “Red Mountains”, where he published his first poems.

In 1923-1925 he was the chairman of the Sharia court. In 1925-1932 he worked as a clerk at the Khunzakh regional executive committee. In 1932-1933 he worked as secretary of the editorial office of the regional newspaper "Highlander". Since 1925, Gamzat Tsadasa has been a permanent deputy of the Khunzakh District Council of Workers' Deputies. Member of the USSR SP since 1934. Delegate to the First Congress of Soviet Writers. Since 1950, he was elected as a deputy of the Supreme Council of the USSR of the 3rd convocation, and was also elected for the second time as a deputy of the Supreme Council of the Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

Creation

The beginning of his creative career dates back to 1891, his first poem is “Alibek’s Dog.” His pre-revolutionary poetry was socially accusatory in nature. His poems and jokes were directed against various norms of adat, mullahs, rich people, and traders. After October revolution Gamzat Tsadasa performed as a singer of the new life of the working mountaineers (“October”, “The Old Woman’s Word on March 8th”, “Old and New”, “Stalin”, “To Revenge”, “Mountain Peaks”, “Adat’s Broom”, etc. ). The first collection of poems, “Broom of Adats,” was published in 1934. In the same year, “as the oldest poet, beloved by the broad masses of working mountaineers,” he became the first people's poet of Dagestan.

Gamzat Tsadasa is the first author of Avar fables, poems and fairy tales for children. His songs from the era of the Great Patriotic War, as well as a collection of patriotic poems “For the Motherland,” gained popularity in Dagestan. Gamzat Tsadasa is the author of dramas and comedies “The Shoemaker”, “Meeting in Battle”, “The Marriage of Kadalava”. A significant place in the poet’s work is occupied by poetic fairy tales (“The Elephant and the Ant”, “The Tale of the Hare and the Lion”, etc.) and the fables “The Shepherd Dreamer”, “My Tongue is My Enemy”, etc.). IN last years During his life, he wrote the plays “Chest of Disasters”, “Meeting in Battle” and others, historical poems “Congratulations to Comrade Stalin on his seventieth birthday”, “My Life”, “The Tale of a Shepherd”. The poet's work is associated with Avar folklore. Tsadasa translated the works of A. S. Pushkin into Avar.

Awards and prizes

• Stalin Prize of the second degree (1951) - for the collection of poems “Favorites” (“The Tale of the Shepherd”) (1950)
• Order of Lenin (1944) - in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of creative activity
• Order of the Red Banner of Labor (17.2.1939)
• Medal "For the Defense of the Caucasus"
• Medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945"
• People's Poet of the Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (1934)
• Certificates of honor from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the DASSR

Memory

• In 1967, the Gamzat Tsadasa Museum was opened in the village of Tsada.
• Avar Music and Drama Theater named after G. Tsadas.

Translations into Russian

• Gamzat Tsadasa. Favorites. Translation from Avar by N. Grebnev, D. Golubkov, A. Globa, Y. Kozlovsky, Semyon Lipkin, Yu. M. Neiman, T. Streshneva, L. Penkovsky, V. Kazin, N. S. Tikhonov. - M., Fiction, 1977. - 404 p.

Modern for every new generation

G. G. Gamzatov

The rich and multifaceted literary heritage of Tsadasa, the worthy and honorable place that he occupies in the history of our national culture, the original contribution he made to the treasury of the many-sided poetry of the country, led to unflagging public interest in his life and work, in his civic and poetic personality, in his name and deeds.

Tsadasa's path was by no means simple, but extremely fruitful. The poet lived for seventy-four years and devoted sixty of them to the formation and development of his native Avar poetry and all Dagestan literature. Tsadasa entered the consciousness of his people as a talented master of satire and humor, a popular fabulist and playwright, the author of epic poems and lyric poems. The name of Tsadasa is inextricably linked with the emergence of a number of new genres in national literature and the establishment in it of the principles and traditions of realism.

Village of Tsada. The house where Gamzat Tsadasa was born and lived. Nowadays it is the poet's memorial house-museum.

For many decades, Tsadasa had a huge impact on the formation of the spiritual image and aesthetic tastes of the mountain reader. “This was the sharpest mind of modern Avaria, a poet who killed the enemies of the new with words, a sage, experienced in all the intricacies of folk life, merciless to everything false, a brave fighter against ignorance, stupidity, self-interest,” wrote the outstanding Russian poet N.S. Tikhonov , recalling his meetings with Tsadasa.

In 1950, for the book “Favorites”, Gamzat Tsadasa was awarded State Prize THE USSR.

More than half a century has passed since Gamzat Tsadasa passed away. But his memory lives on. His legacy continues to live on. The element of his immortal poetry becomes richer and more beautiful. The Institute of Language, Literature and Art of the Dagestan Scientific Center is named after Tsadasa Russian Academy Sciences, Avar State Musical and Drama Theatre, Gotsatlinsky Art Factory, many collective farms, schools, streets. The endless expanses of the world's oceans are plowed by a motor ship, on board of which is inscribed the name that is infinitely dear to us - “Gamzat Tsadasa”.

“My birthday was forgotten in my native village,” wrote Tsadasa in the poem “My Life.” Meanwhile, the meager lines of the entry made by the father of the future poet Yusupil Magoma on the title of one Arabic book reproduce the exact date of Gamzat’s birth - August 21, 1877.

The birthplace of the poet Tsada is an Avar village, according to Tsadasa’s figurative definition, “the size of a donkey’s head,” belonged to

Khunzakh section of the Avar district. From the name of his native village, the poet’s pseudonym: “Tsadasa” means “from Tsada.” The Avar district reflected the specific features inherent in the social and spiritual appearance of the population of Mountainous Dagestan. And its administrative and cultural center, ancient Khunzakh, still retained the imprint of the once powerful residence of the Avar Khanate.

The parents of the future poet - father Yusupil Magoma and mother Begun - were considered poor people. Gamzat was 7 years old when his father died, “he died without knowing about the undershirt.” Soon the seriously ill mother also left the world. “Among the seven scarves, I was the only one who wore a hat,” the poet wrote, remembering himself and his sisters who were orphaned with him.

In those days, perhaps the only accessible educational institution in Dagestan was the Arab spiritual so-called primechet school - madrasah. In the villages of Ginichutl, Gotsatl, Kharikolo, Gamzat was educated in schools of this type by the will of his guardian. For twenty years he wandered from village to village in search of “good” teachers and “wealthy” schools and managed to accumulate extensive knowledge in theology, logic, ethics, Islamic law, and some natural disciplines. The poet also excelled in the areas of grammar, vocabulary and stylistics Arabic, oriental versification, gained access to the literary, historical and philosophical works of the East, the works of great artists - representatives of the Muslim Renaissance.

First national poets of Dagestan Gamzat Tsadasa, Abdulla Magomedov and Suleiman Stalsky. 1934

And yet, Tsadasa’s school of life turned out to be much more thorough and fruitful. While still a young man, he had to earn bread for his long-suffering family, often go out to work, work hard on the construction of the railway in Grozny, and work as a timber raftman on the spurs of the Main Caucasus Range. “No matter how long my studies were, life taught me the main lessons,” the poet wrote. Tsadas learned the science of life during his subsequent career, mainly during the years of work in the positions of rural dibir, Sharia judge, and teacher of theological school.

Start creative biography Tsadasy dates back to 1891, when a fourteen-year-old boy wrote and published his first independent work, known as “Alibek’s Dog.” The caustic satire on the poet's wealthy neighbor was received with glee by the villagers, and by the dog's owner with deep resentment.

On the lawn in my native village. 1948

From the very beginning, Tsadasa’s poetic talent was characterized by the desire to extract poetry from life, turning to images and themes suggested by the realities of reality, and not by literary tradition.

My soul does not belong to love songs, I want to serve the country with a formidable, full-blooded word, - the poet wrote, characterizing his aesthetic credo, which received the eloquent definition of “the third string of the ancient mountain pandur.” It is no coincidence that Tsadasa’s very first poems, with their feigned pathos and irony, reduced the subject to the ridiculous. But the remarkable thing is that Tsadas achieved his highest effect by parodying not only the phenomena of reality, but also the established and outdated genre and style canons of national artistic practice, and their humorous stylization. Tsadasa innovatively captured the moment of crisis of a certain model of national artistic thinking, say, such as so-called songs about raids or songs about love affairs.

Gamzat Tsadasa with his wife Khandulai. Makhachkala, 1950

Gamzat Tsadasa with his son Rasul at his native village of Tsada. 1948

Gamzat Tsadasa with his son Gadzhi. Buynaksk, 1950

Even the pre-revolutionary period of Tsadasa’s creative path allows us to admit that the most strong point his realism was satirical depiction reality. The poet was merciless, for example, towards such disgusting features of social evil as money-grubbing, hoarding, veneration of rank, various manifestations of the ideology of clericalism and patriarchy.

Why do I need wealth obtained everywhere?

Where does meanness reign, where is bondage hard?

I won’t envy the little soul,

Who brazenly grows fat at the expense of the poor,

- the poet wrote back in late XIX centuries in “Poems about a Tavern,” asserting the moral superiority of honest poverty over parasitism. In a different vein, the problem of the clash of interests of the people and the authorities, the problem of social injustice in the poem “Alarm Trip” is solved. Tsadasa’s expression is allegorical, implying in Aesopian style “ powerful of the world"and "slaves obedient to them":

The buffaloes that devoured the wheat field are free,

Toothless calves were driven into prison.

This is what an impressive satirical generalization of reality Tsadasa has risen to. These lines already then became part of the lexical idiom of the Avars. And now they sound like they were written today. Or let’s turn to Tsadasa’s famous fable-satire “Dibir and the Hamster”. In it, as in the parody “Alil Magoma - Dibiru,” Tsadasa came close to denying the notorious non-resistance to evil through violence, the most reactionary concept of reconciliation with reality. These are not just manifestations of blasphemy and disrespect for the wealthy. Criticizing the hypocrisy and hypocrisy, selfishness and selfishness of newly-minted entrepreneurs and the reactionary clergy, Tsadasa moved towards the establishment of a positive ideal, and this ideal was inspired by the moral and aesthetic criteria of realism - humanism and democracy.

In 1944, Gamzat Tsadasa was awarded the Order of Lenin in connection with the 50th anniversary of literary activity.

The poet's humanism and democracy were best and most clearly manifested in the initial appeal of his work to the social lower classes of mountain society, the disadvantaged and oppressed by life and circumstances, to people who are inconspicuous, weak, weak-willed, and humiliated. At the same time, human normality and social concreteness as character traits Tsadasa's typifications have as their subtext a feeling of the people as a potential force, a feeling of the anxieties of life, but not a preaching of reconciliation, pacification, and prosperity. Populating our works not with exceptional heroes, but with the most ordinary, simple, so-called “little people” from mountain reality, painting truthful pictures of the national life of the Dagestan village, expressing bitter truths about the peasant psychology of doomed people, about the slavish habit of obedience and silence - let us remember Hasai’s confession, they say, “the back hurts, since the burden does not press,” Tsadasa opens the eyes of the mountaineers to the truth of life, raises their self-awareness. Turning to the ideological aspects of the pre-revolutionary work of G. Tsadasa, it should be borne in mind that the poet belonged to the galaxy of national democratic intelligentsia, which, as if groping, sometimes intuitively, went to comprehend the surrounding world in its social contradictions, although it did not represent it in clear class categories . The starting position of his realism was an acute conflict between popular consciousness and injustices modern society. This also determined the process of concentration, accumulation and strengthening of elements of critical realism that took place in his pre-revolutionary work. Tsadasa's critical attitude to reality is aesthetically clearly differentiated in satire and humor, in the rich variety of their techniques and types. It was in satire and humor that loyalty to the truth of life and the popular character of the vision of reality were most clearly expressed. They also contain the moral and democratic pathos of the poet’s work. Satire and humor are Tsadasa’s creative destiny as an artist and a realist. Tsadasa could repeat after Leo Tolstoy: “The hero of my works is the truth.”

A delegation from the USSR Writers' Union is visiting Gamzat Tsadasa. Sat down. Arani, Khunzakh fortress near the village of Tsada. From left to right: commandant of the fortress red partisan A. Magomaev, Gazmzat Tsadasa, N. Tikhonov, VLugovskoy, P. Pavlenko. 1933

The ideological and artistic origins of Tsadasa’s creativity should be seen in the native folklore and literary traditions of the people. Without folk art, without previous national literature represented by the creators of new Avar poetry - Ali-Gadzhi from Inkho, Eldarilava from Rugudzha, Chanki from Batlaich, Mahmud from Kahab-Roso - Gamzat Tsadasa as a national poet would have been impossible. But, as you know, Tsadasa did not rehash, but affirmed, developed and enriched the artistic experience accumulated before him. This circumstance, obviously, was what he had in mind when he wrote: “I continued my path in the mountains.”

Forty years full of worries and anxieties were behind Gamzat Tsadasa when the seventeenth year came, which marked the beginning of the breakdown of the modern social and spiritual structure of man and society. The logic of his entire previous life inevitably had to lead and led Tsadasa to a relatively painless choice in a difficult situation, when “for three winters and three springs people lived in the fog,” when in Dagestan, “just as drinking buddies pass a glass to each other, so does one bandit and the thief transferred power to another.” At a turning point in the history of his region, the national poet was able to sensitively listen to the pulse of his native people. He becomes not just a supporter, but also a poetic herald of the renewal of life in the mountains. The poet collaborates in the bodies of the new people's government, works as a member and chairman of the Avar district Sharia court, chairman of the food committee and commissar of the national economy of the Khunzakh section, secretary of the editorial office of the regional Avar newspaper "Red Mountains", secretary of the Khunzakh district and district executive committee.

For G. Tsadasa, this meant a milestone beyond which a new, incomparably more meaningful, richer, more inspired period of creative and life biography. From now on, literature becomes the main activity of his life; it determined his civic and public persona as a singer of the working people.

“To the Mountain Poor” (1920) – this is how Tsadasa titled one of his first post-revolutionary works, published in 1921 in the newspaper “Red Mountains”. These verses were a poetic appeal to the mountain peasant, explaining to him the meaning of “freedom gained through the blood,” warning him against “friendship with an enemy.”

“Who to elect to the Soviets” (1921) - Tsadas poses the question in an address of the same name to the mountaineers, who for the first time in history were awarded the right to elect and be elected to bodies state power, people's self-government, and he himself answers: elect from the people, for “true heroes are hidden under sheepskin coats.”

Look among the people.

You will always find among the people

– the poet wrote in his poetic instructions. Tsadasa believed in the meaning of the revolution that had yet to be accomplished in the psychology of the mountaineer, in his consciousness; I wanted the farmhand to learn a master’s attitude towards the new life, so that he would learn that the freedom he has won is his freedom and the new power is his power. And that this freedom did not come on its own, but was taken by force and cost considerable sacrifices. And it is given to them, the farm laborers, to use it. “The state is ours, we ourselves are the state,” said Tsadasa.

The first book of poems by Gamzat Tsadasa in the Avar language “Broom of Adats”. Edition 1934 Daggiz. Cover art M. Yunusilau.

A new angle of view, a new direction of art, new principles were born and developed in the crucible of the struggle for the transformation of the social structure of society, in defense of the gains of the working people, overcoming the resistance of the overthrown classes in the course of the nationwide movement for a new culture and a new way of life, in a rapid attack on the bastions of ignorance, in the campaigns of the “Kultsansturm”, in the enthusiasm for the renewal and revival of the material and spiritual life of the people, for the formation and strengthening of the creative forces of the new society. What was remarkable was that the process of incorporating a huge variety of national literatures of the Avars, Dargins, Kumyks, Laks, Lezgins, etc., far from identical artistic experiences, divergent aesthetic traditions and stylistic movements, rationalistic and romantic skills into a new and unified one, turned out to be so painless and successful. the direction of their development and switching them to a fundamentally different way of functioning, the way of conscious and purposeful serving the interests of the people.

According to the apt description of A.M. Gorky, young Soviet literature lived “in a state of war with the old world and in the intense construction of a new world.” It is possible without exaggeration to believe that there are few - and not only in Dagestan literature - artists of words who, with such ideological intransigence and aesthetic persuasiveness, would fight against the untruths of the old world, deny the abominations of life, challenge such a powerful and tenacious evil as inertia and prejudices, routine and remnants, backward views and harmful customs that pretended to be unchangeable national traditions, with which Tsadasa did it. At the same time, the poet unmistakably distinguished the truly national from the pseudonational. We all understand, for example, Tsadasa’s merciless struggle against the barbaric adat of blood feud, perpetuated by the ancient morality of old: “Blood does not dry, debt does not disappear.”

Moscow. At the 1st Congress of Soviet Writers. From left to right: in the first row - E. Kapiev, G. Tsadasa, B. Astemirov, S. Stalsky; in the second row - I.-Kh. Kurbanaliev, T. Melevich, A. Bezymensky, R. Nurov, N. Tikhonov, R. Dinmagomedov, Atkai. 1934

The poet’s cycle of satires on the theme of the dagger is a bold and skillful moral discrediting of an evil relic.

Tsadas carried out a genuine moral and ethical judgment on the shameful manifestations of female lawlessness. The poet advocated for the emancipation of the mountain woman, defended her from humiliation, and complained that “because of the wrong view of a woman, the world is limping on one leg.” In conditions when the past, although it has been turned upside down, has not been eliminated, and the present has not yet been verified, tested, confirmed by experience, or consolidated, the very point of view of the artist entering into the struggle with the old world is so important.

The remarkable thing is that Tsadasa’s struggle with the remnants of the social past was not limited to preaching. More Eph. Kapiev noted the acute effectiveness of the Avar poet’s satire. Following the fresh trail of Tsadasa’s just published poetic feuilletons and philosophical and ethical instructions, messages and responses were received from the regions and villages of the mountains about how the poet’s poems became the agenda of village gatherings, at which decisions were made on the refusal of mountain women, say, from wearing chokhto. It is a fact of history that Tsadasa’s cycle of satires, which debunked the cult of blood feud, had such a public resonance that in the early 30s it appeared mass movement under the motto “Down with the dagger.” Under the same name, artisanal artels arose in the mountains, engaged in reforging daggers into sickles. The examples can be continued.

From right to left: Seated: E. Kapiev, G. Tsadasa, S. Milyan. Standing: H.-B. Askar-Sarydzha, N. Lakov, R. Fatuev, M. Dzhemal. 1938

But it was not only elements of the old, decayed society that had to be fought. There were also difficulties along the way, the emergence of which was associated with the mistakes of the new government. Tsadasa's satirical pen debunked the vices of bureaucracy and arrogance, all kinds of distortions and abuses, manifestations of degeneration and apostasy, philistinism and bungling.

On the Khunzakh plateau near the village of Tsada. 1946

A kind of cumulative satirical image was created of the newly minted tradesman and opportunist, the sycophant and the pleaser, the scoundrel and the scoundrel, who, as A.M. Gorky aptly noted, “quite successfully begins to build for himself cheap prosperity in a country where the people paid with streams of their blood for the right build your own culture." How consonant is this with what G. Tsadasa wrote about and published back in 1921 in the newspaper “Red Mountains”:

Oh grace, huriyat,

What a treat!

If only it weren't for the scoundrels in the ranks,

That they tear her apart.

Oh Freedom - may she live -

How beautiful she is!

If it weren't for the predators among us,

That they are stealing away the goods.

(Interlinear translation)

The poet remained true to his commandment - “to publicly shame a liar and a scoundrel, regardless of rank and rank”, “to expose in verse injustice and disorder, abuse and stupidity, ignorance and laziness.” Tsadasa seemed to follow Lenin’s saying about how “life forces you to look at yourself without taking your eyes off both its most sublime and its most base sides.” Because of this, the perception and affirmation of the new world and the new man was accompanied and achieved by the denial of the old world and the former, false hero. The negative types created by Tsadasa, such as Yahya, Sultanbek and Kodolav, are still alive in the critical consciousness of the people...

Among the grandchildren. Sat down. Tsada, 1948

In my native village. 1947–1949

Meeting of two correspondence friends - the people's poet of Dagestan and the famous Ural storyteller P. Bazhov at the 1st All-Union Conference of Peace Supporters. Moscow, House of Soviets, 1949

The first collection of poems by G. Tsadasa became a unique artistic phenomenon, which, at the will of the author, received the eloquent name “Broom of Adats”, something akin to the well-known satirical practice of V. Mayakovsky. “The Broom...” is also a kind of truthful picture of a given era at the moment of its parting with the past, parting, so to speak, with laughter. This is a bold, daring, confident story from a seasoned artist, filtered through the imagination and intuition of a skilled craftsman who masterfully wields the weapon of satire. This is a talented criticism of the ugly and vicious, though addressed not to the past, but to the future. The existential basis and everyday truth - this is what the artistic world of “The Broom...” of Tsadasa was built on.

The works of G. Tsadasa are distinguished by a high culture of laughter. His laughter is not a product of irritability, a bilious, painful mood. Laughter for the sake of fun and idle amusement is alien to Tsadase. It is based on the comedy of living truth. This laughter is kind, noble, honest. He is picky and selective. He easily distinguishes between “friends” and “strangers”. He punishes some, heals others. Tsadasa's laughter has always been cathartic and remains so to this day. It is no coincidence that Gamzat liked to call himself a “doctor.”

From left to right: Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the DASSR A.D. Daniyalov, People's Poet of Dagestan Gamzat Tsadasa, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the DASSR A.-G. Takhtarov, First Secretary of the Dagestan Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks A.M. Aliev, Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Hero Socialist Labor I.I. Meshchaninov, 1949

The poet with his literary secretary Magomed Kebedov at the Khunzakh waterfall. 1946

As you know, art at its core is always a struggle “for” and “against”. If one wing of the emerging and strengthening new Dagestan literature was the fight against the old, then the second was the affirmation of new principles of reality. “New World” was the most common combination of words characteristic of the era of the 20-30s. It served as the name of printed organs and poetry collections. How not to remember: the “miracle of the world” - the Chokh commune, the famous Stalinaul collective farm, newfound villages and people who moved from the narrow mountains to the open spaces of the plains, the colorful landscape of gardens planted on the slopes of the Alpine highlands, the first loudspeaker in a mountain village and Ilyich’s first light bulb in a sakla highlander, the first car racing along newly paved mountain serpentines, the first tractor plowing the boundaries of arable land, the first plane over ridges and valleys native land- here they are, living witnesses of social innovation, an object of admiration and inspiration for the literary artists of Dagestan. Hence the major intonation, the concentrated mood, the sublimity of perception, “the need often not to say, but to shout” (A. Voronsky). Then the voice of G. Tsadasa sounded throughout Dagestan:

We pacified the gray rivers' rapids,

And the rivers work, turning turbines.

We Bolsheviks are inspired people,

We won’t do anything else!

A certain degree of admixture of romance and an ideal interpretation of phenomena were characteristic of the art of the 30s in general. No, we are not talking about pathos, not about rhetoric in this case, but about pathos as a special ideological and emotional impulse. The romantic elation of literature comes from the romance of reality itself.

In the poetry of G. Tsadasa, the feat of labor was commensurate with the remaking of “human material”, with the hardening of people, with the improvement of personality. “How do people forge?” – this is what G. Tsadas called one of the best poetic works of the early 30s, in which he approached the development of the theme of labor from the philosophical and ethical side.

Only work raises people

But work with soul and inspiration.

If the people strike at once,

Even with a pickaxe you can crush rocks.

Friendly efforts of people

Can raise new mountains.

(Interlinear translation)

Unforgettable pre-war time! In the poetry of those years there was so much feeling of love for the homeland, pride in its defenders, confidence in the future. Poetry breathed sensitively with a premonition of formidable trials and future victories. “The day will come, the hour will come, the country will call us to a heroic deed,” wrote Suleiman Stalsky. Gamzat Tsadas also kept his gunpowder dry. And when the hour really came, the poet equated the pen to the bayonet. And Tsadasa fought not only in verse. He traveled to villages and auls, encouraging people with his living words. More than once the elderly poet visited military units and at the forefront of the front, inspiring soldiers to heroism. Tsadasa’s fiery words sounded from the stands of anti-fascist rallies, from the pages of the central press and on the radio. And not only... Tsadasa sent two of his sons to the front, and they died a heroic death - one in Sevastopol, the other near Stalingrad.

Tsadasa’s touching correspondence with front-line soldiers deserves special mention. It was intense, voluminous, warm. Letters came not only from relatives and friends, but also from distant and unfamiliar people. They wrote, as they say, both in prose and poetry. People shared their joys and sorrows, asked for advice, and “reported” to the poet about their military successes. And Tsadasa initiated the creation of a periodical printed organ for this correspondence between the front and the rear. “Dagestan to its front-line soldiers” was the name of the newspaper, which in those harsh years became a unique and unrepeatable phenomenon.

However, the main role was played, fighting and winning, by Tsadasa’s poetry, patriotically appealing, satirically incriminating, sharp, apt, honest. Enriched in genre and style diversity, it was an active, effective force. And, paradoxically, Dagestan lyrics spoke with particular force during the war years. Poetic messages to and from the front, letters from a friend to a loved one and his response from the battlefield, songs of mothers and sisters - there is a huge range of varieties of lyrical genres that flourished in Tsadasa’s work. His songs were sung at the front and in the rear.

The post-war period in the life and work of the oldest poet of Dagestan turned out to be surprisingly fruitful. Now, in his declining years, wise with rich life experience, Tsadasa creates new inspired works, full of love and gratitude to the party, the Motherland, and the people. His deep thoughts about what he had lived and experienced, and his serious concern for the future resulted in a wonderful poetic cycle dedicated to friendship between peoples and peace on earth.

The newspaper “Dagestan - to its front-line soldiers” with an appeal from the national poet of Dagestan Gamzat Tsadasa. 1943

Son of Gamzat Tsadasa Magomed (1917–1943). Killed at Stalingrad.

Son of Gamzat Tsadasa Akhilchi (1920–1942). Died near Sevastopol.

The poet with his first granddaughter Patimat, the daughter of Magomed, who died in the war. Makhachkala, 1947

The poet's voice sounded brightly in 1948 at the First All-Union Conference of Peace Supporters in Moscow. Of course, Tsadasa was not free from all-powerful cult trends, but they did not determine the pathos and content of the creative image of the realist poet, who remained faithful to the truth of life and only to it.

The brightest page in Tsadasa’s creative biography of this period should be recognized as the creation of a multifaceted poetic canvas - epic poem“The Tale of the Shepherd”, regarded by literary criticism as a significant phenomenon in modern Soviet poetry and has gone through multiple editions in the country and abroad. This is a true poetic chronicle of radical social transformations carried out in the mountains, a figurative tale about the fate of the Dagestan peasantry, a picture of the struggle with the old and the establishment of the new, a convincing demonstration of how widely the boundaries have expanded spiritual world modern highlander. Through the mouth of the main character of his poem, Ali Khirachev, Tsadasa says:

We are not only for the region -

We are responsible for the whole country,

For the power whose law is

The fairest in the world.

Joyfully motherland

To see in glory and prosperity,

And when you want to know

We are responsible for the whole world.

Understanding one’s civic and patriotic responsibility for the destinies of people and society, and asserting this responsibility is one of the main results of the creative path of the Avar poet. But the poet does not simply declare his ideal. He gives a whole program of its moral justification. This program was developed by the poet in a complete cycle of instructions addressed to the new generation, moral fables and fairy tales, in the wonderful ethical and philosophical poem “Life Lessons”, etc. Here is one of Tsadasa’s masterpieces:

There are caskets in our days,

There are always twenty-four of them,

Are going there

Our conscience is a creation.

At midnight, clear when

Silence in the sublunary world,

Unlock them and take a look

What are your deeds?

There are so many worthless things there.

How many important, real,

How many good and bad

How many are dull and shiny?

You deserve praise

Or worthy of reproach?

How much have you done?

For the people, for the Fatherland?

We continue to be amazed by the breadth of Tsadasa's creative range. An outstanding master of the poetic word, he was an extraordinary playwright, whose tragedies and comedies laid the foundations of the national theater of the Avars. Tsadasa is also known as the author of wonderful fables and fairy tales, which are included in the treasury of verbal art of the peoples of Dagestan. The people's poet has written a valuable study on the work of the immortal classic of Avar lyricism, Mahmud of Kahab-Roso and his contemporaries. Tsadasa’s enthusiastic work on translations of a large cycle of political lyrics and the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila” by A.S. Pushkin, recognized as the best examples of poetic translation into the Avar language, turned out to be extremely fruitful.

In a press interview in the 1930s, Tsadasa lamented: “I need help like air, I need more communication with big world, with our great country, to see more people and their lives.” And this help came to the Avar poet primarily from distant Russian fellow writers - Nikolai Tikhonov, Vladimir Lugovsky, Pyotr Pavlenko and many others who visited Dagestan, Ashaga-Stal, and Tsada back in 1933. It is thanks to the care and attention of representatives of Russian culture that many Dagestan word artists received access to the all-Union arena. Entered Big world poetry and Gamzat Tsadas.

Gamzat Tsadasa, writer Kravchenko and Avar poet M. Suleymanov in Tashkent at the anniversary of Alisher Navoi in 1948.

His circle of communication and friendship expanded throughout the great country. The names of S. Aini and Lahuti, Dzhambul and Gulia, Kupala and Kolas, Tabidze and Leonidze, Bezymensky and Pogodin became close and dear to him... Such wonderful Russian poets as D. Bedny, N. took part in the translation of the Avar poet into Russian. Aseev, N. Tikhonov, V. Kazin, N. Ushakov, L. Penkovsky, especially S. Lipkin, with whom the poet was associated good friendship. Tsadas never lost his sense of gratitude to the great Russian culture and the Russian artistic intelligentsia.

G. Tsadasa’s personality was extraordinary, and his talent was extraordinary. They brought the poet national recognition. In 1934, simultaneously with S. Stalsky and A. Magomedov, Tsadase, as “the oldest poet, beloved by the broad masses of working mountaineers, a satirist, a merciless exposer of the remnants of the old way of life and an active social activist,” was awarded the newly established honorary title “People's Poet of Dagestan.” At the same time, the poet was elected a member of the Dag Central Executive Committee. A member of the USSR Writers' Union, Tsadasa takes part in the work of the first All-Dagestan and All-Union Congresses of Soviet Writers as a delegate. The name and deeds of Tsadasa become the property of the all-Union reader. In 1939, Tsadasa, among the prominent Soviet writers, was awarded the highest award of the Motherland - the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and in 1944 and 1947 - the Order of Lenin. In 1950, the national poet was awarded the USSR State Prize. Tsadasa is elected as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the DASSR and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

Gamzat Tsadasa has reached the highest levels of recognition and fame. At the same time, the poet’s path was not entirely strewn with roses; it was not always and not at all stages smooth and ceremonial. There were steep climbs, headwinds, and underwater reefs along the way. At times it was difficult to overcome barriers and attacks. There was a time, especially in the 30s, when proletkult subverters declared the poet to be devoid of real prospects. Vulgarizers included Tsadasa in the category of fellow travelers, discredited him as coming from an alien environment, bearing in mind the poet’s spiritual past. From the pages of the republican newspaper there were scathing denunciations of Tsadasa’s “political myopia” and his poems’ “counter-revolutionary essence”. The unsurpassed master of national verse was arrogantly taught how to write poetry, and this was done by random, poorly educated, semi-literary businessmen, artistic careerists. There was a time when the poet was in complete isolation. As Eph. testified. Kapiev in 1937, for a year and a half not a single new poem by Tsadasa saw the light of day. His poems were either rejected or simply lost in the Dagestan Writers' Union. Every now and then they were engaged in petty baiting of the national poet, or even outright persecution of him.

But Tsadasa was a proven fighter. And he punished slanderers with both pen and word.

If anyone asks, say quietly and gently,

That there is no rest from sparrows and forty.

Tell me that there is no end to the pack of slanderers,

That is entangled in a web of street squabbles.

I open and close the doors of the court chambers,

I didn’t come here until I was now gray.

They began to investigate the grandfather’s genealogy,

The one who lay down under the stove a century before the revolution.

(Interlinear translation)

And subsequently, various kinds of far-fetched reproaches and claims were widely circulated, artificially linked to well-known “guidelines” on so-called rootless cosmopolitanism, on overcoming servility to the East, on suppressing the apology of the “reactionary past”, “idealization of Shamil and Muridism.” Every now and then the standard accusations were made about the absence of a positive hero in Tsadasa’s satires and the predominance of negative types. Taste in assessments, overlap in judgments, subversive excitement, passion for vigilance - all this created false stereotypes of the real process, and Gamzat Tsadasa, as a satirist, suffered the most. But the poet remained unshaken. He boldly defended his convictions, although this was not always safe for his well-being.

Gamzat Tsadasa. Last photo during illness. 1951

The republic remembers, for example, Tsadasa’s public speeches in defense of the legendary hero Khochbar, whom in the 30s they tried to discredit as a lone robber, in defense of the people’s liberation character of the movement of the mountaineers of Dagestan, which they tried to present in the late 40s as reactionary and inspired from abroad, in defense of the truly national nature of the work of the famous Mahmud from Kahab-Roso, whose unique talent they tried to make completely dependent on the medieval Arab poetic tradition. Tsadasa handled the historical and spiritual memory of the people with great tact, sensitivity and rare legibility and was able to distinguish truly national, progressive, humanistic traditions from pseudo-national, reactionary layers and distortions. This revealed the bright image of Tsadasa as a convinced humanist and educator, as a truly folk poet.

“The ability to create is a talent,” wrote V. G. Belinsky in an article dedicated to I. A. Krylov, “and the ability to be popular in creativity is another talent, not always, but, on the contrary, very rarely appearing together with the first.” Gamzat Tsadasa had both one and the other. His work is about the people and for the people. He was a people's poet in the deepest, broadest, true sense of this concept. “I am a poet born of the people, and I have a weapon sharpened by the people. And my library was the people, and my audience was the people. He took from the people, he gave to the people,” the poet said in 1950 in a speech to voters.

The legacy of Gamzat Tsadasa lives on. It is always modern. It is still alive today. He is a convinced fighter against the inert and routine, as a supporter of everything advanced and progressive - together with us, among the true fighters for overcoming evil, for the improvement of morals, for the renewal of life.

Monument to Gamzat Tsadase, erected in the center of the capital of Dagestan, Makhachkala. The sculptor is Honored Artist of Dagestan Khas-Bulat Askar-Sarydzha.

...In the small Avar village of Tsada, located at the foot of rocky cliffs on the high-mountainous Khunzakh plateau, in a modest mountain sakla, built from simple local stone, where Gamzat Tsadas was born and spent many decades of his life, the State Literary and Cultural Center has been functioning for four decades now. Memorial Museum of the Dagestan poet. People from all over the world come to this museum - from their native Avaria and the many-sided Dagestan, from distant and close regions and republics of the country, and there are often guests from abroad. Generations after generations go by. And I remember the words spoken in 1977 at the anniversary evening of Gamzat Tsadasa by the wonderful Russian poetess Lyudmila Tatyanicheva: “Boys and girls in the distant years of 2000 and 3000 will have a joyful meeting with the eternally young, life-affirming talent of Gamzat Tsadasa.

According to the new style The next person to improve the European calendar was Pope Gregory XIII (Gregorius XIII; 1502–1585). He was a very educated man, he was a doctor of law from the University of Bologna. In social life his name was Ugo Boncompagni. Hugo