Musa Jalil is the most famous. Biography of Musa Jalil

Musa Jalil (Musa Mustafovich Zalilov) was born in the Tatar village of Mustafino, Orenburg province (now Sharlyk district, Orenburg region) on February 2 (15), 1906 into a peasant family.
When the family moved to the city, Musa began going to the Orenburg Muslim theological school-madrassa "Khusainiya", which after the October Revolution was transformed into the Tatar Institute of Public Education - TINO.

This is how Musa himself recalled these years: “I first went to study in the village mekteb (school), and after moving to the city I went to primary classes Madrasah "Khusainiya". When my relatives left for the village, I stayed in the madrasah boarding house. During these years, “Khusainiya” was far from the same. The October Revolution, the struggle for Soviet power, and its strengthening greatly influenced the madrasah. Inside “Khusainiya,” the struggle between the children of the lords and the sons of the poor, and revolutionary-minded youth, is intensifying. I always stood on the side of the latter and in the spring of 1919 I signed up for the newly formed Orenburg Komsomol organization and fought for the spread of Komsomol influence in the madrasah.”

The influence of the era - this explains the presence of Komsomol views among the leaders of that time. Whoever you take from the outstanding religious scientists, representatives of Islam, who lived in the 20s and 30s, they were all either “for” the revolution or diametrically “against” it. Despite their differences in views on the revolution and Soviet power, they remained Muslims who sought to benefit the multinational ummah of their country.

Further, Musa Jalil reported about himself: “After my recovery, I, the former shakird of the Khusainiya madrasah, was taken to a pedagogical educational institution founded on the site of the former madrasah. But my studies were of little use; I had not yet recovered from my illness. In 1922, again remembering his passion for poetry, he wrote many poems. During these years, I diligently read Omar Khayyam, Saadi, Hafiz, and among the Tatar poets - Derdmand. And my poems of this time, under their influence, are romantic. Written during these years were “Burn, Peace,” “In Captivity,” “Before Death,” “Throne of Ears of Ears,” “Unanimity,” “Council” and others most characteristic of this period.”

Gradually, Musa Jalil developed as a poet, his works received recognition. His talent has manifested itself in many literary genres: he translates a lot, writes epic poems and librettos. In 1939-1941 he headed the Writers' Union of Tatarstan.

On the very first day of the war, June 22, 1941, Jalil said to his friend the poet Ahmet Ishak: “After the war, some of us will not be counted”... He decisively rejected the opportunity to remain in the rear, believing that his place was among the fighters for the freedom of the country.

Having been drafted into the army, he attends a two-month course for political workers in Menzelinsk and goes to the front. After some time, Musa Jalil became an employee of the military-front newspaper “Courage” on the Volkhov Front, where the 2nd Shock Army fought. In 1942, the situation on the Volkhov Front became more complicated. The second shock army is cut off from the rest of the Soviet troops. On June 26, 1942, senior political instructor Musa Jalil with a group of soldiers and officers, fighting their way out of encirclement, were ambushed by the Nazis. In the ensuing battle, he was seriously wounded in the chest and was taken prisoner in an unconscious state. Thus began his wanderings from one fascist prison to another. And in the Soviet Union at that time he was considered “missing in action.”

While in the Spandau concentration camp, he organized a group that was supposed to prepare an escape. At the same time, he carried out political work among prisoners, issued leaflets, and distributed his poems calling for resistance and struggle. Following the denunciation of an agent provocateur, he was captured by the Gestapo and imprisoned in solitary confinement in the Berlin Moabit prison.

It was there - in the Moabit prison - that Musa wrote down poems, from which the collection “Moabit Notebook” was later compiled. By the way, one of the visitors to the House Museum named after. M. Jalil in Kazan wrote the following words: “But the most important thing, perhaps, was the opportunity to see the famous Moabit notebooks, which I had heard a lot about. Anyone who is familiar with the work of Musa Jalil knows that these immortal works (literally poems on scraps of paper), which miraculously survived to this day, are the main source of connection between the past and the present, between war and peace, between the living and the dead. Thanks to the fact that the notebooks fell into the right hands at one time and were published in the Soviet Union, people learned about the work of Musa Jalil. Now his work is a compulsory literature curriculum at school.”

In prison, Jalil created more than a hundred poetic works. His notebooks with poems were preserved by fellow prisoner Belgian anti-fascist Andre Timmermans. After the war, Timmermans handed them over to the Soviet consul. This is how they ended up in the Soviet Union. The first Moabite homemade notebook, measuring 9.5 x 7.5 cm, contains 60 poems. The second Moabite notebook is also a homemade notebook measuring 10.7x7.5 cm. It contains 50 poems. But it is still unknown how many notebooks there were in total.

In captivity, the poet creates the deepest in thought and most artistically perfect works - “My Songs”, “Don’t Believe”, “The Executioner”, “My Gift”, “In the Country of Alman”, “On Heroism” and a number of other poems, their can be called true masterpieces of poetry. Forced to save every scrap of paper, the poet wrote down in the Moabit notebooks only what he had endured and suffered through to the end. Hence the extraordinary capacity of his poems, their utmost expressiveness. Many lines sound like aphorisms:

If life passes without a trace,

In lowliness, in captivity, what kind of honor is this?

There is beauty only in freedom of life!

Only in a brave heart there is eternity!

(Translated by A. Shpirt)

He was not sure that his homeland would know the truth about the motives of his actions; he did not know whether his poems would be released. He wrote for himself, for his friends, for his cellmates...

On August 25, 1944, Musa Jalil was transferred to the Plötzensee special prison in Berlin. Here he, along with ten other prisoners, was executed by guillotine. His personal card has not been preserved. On the cards of other people executed along with him, it was said: “Crime is subversive activity. The sentence is death." This card is noteworthy in that it makes it possible to understand the paragraph of the charge - “Subversive activities”. Judging by other documents, this was deciphered as follows: “subversive activities for the moral corruption of German troops.” A paragraph for which the fascist Themis had no mercy...

...For a long time the fate of Musa Jalil remained unknown. Only thanks to many years of efforts by pathfinders was his tragic death established. On February 2, 1956 (12 years after his death), by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for the exceptional steadfastness and courage shown in the fight against the Nazi invaders. Another highest government award - the title of Lenin Prize laureate - was awarded to him posthumously for the cycle of poems “The Moabit Notebook”.

Nowadays, interest in the work of Musa Jalil is noticeable not only in literary circles, but also among representatives of Islam. Thus, the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the Nizhny Novgorod Region published the book “Towards Immortality,” which tells about his life and work. Madrasah "Mahinur" held an exhibition dedicated to Jalil. On the website of Nizhny Novgorod Muslims the following words are said about him: “Humanity is learning to remember the lessons of history, and we understand the importance of instilling national self-awareness among young people. One can have different attitudes towards the work of Musa Jalil and his political beliefs, but the fact that the spiritual heritage of this extraordinary personality should today be used to educate the younger generation in the spirit of patriotism, love of freedom, and rejection of fascism is indisputable.”

Musa Jalil - Tatar Soviet poet, Hero of the Soviet Union (1956), Lenin Prize laureate (posthumously, 1957).

Musa Jalil (Musa Mustafovich Zalilov)
(1906-1944)

The purpose of life is this: to live in such a way that even after death you do not die.

Jalil (Dzhalilov) Musa Mustafovich (real name Musa Mustafovich Zalilov) was born on February 15, 1906, the village of Mustafino, now the Orenburg region, the sixth child in the family. Father - Mustafa Zalilov, mother - Rakhima Zalilova (nee Sayfullina). The biography of Jalil Musa in early childhood was closely connected with his native village and was very similar to the life of many of his friends - ordinary village boys: he swam in the Net River, herded geese, loved to listen to Tatar songs that his mother sang to him, and fairy tales that she composed Grandmother Gilmi for her beloved grandson.

When the family moved to the city, Musa began going to the Orenburg Muslim theological school-madrassa "Khusainiya", which after the October Revolution was transformed into the Tatar Institute of Public Education - TINO.

His first poems were published in the newspaper "Kyzyl Yoldyz" ("Red Star") when he was 13 years old. Gradually, the debut and in many ways naive works of the young author become more and more mature, acquire depth, take shape, and in 1925 his first collection of poems, “We Are Walking,” was published. This period in the author’s early poetry is called “red” by many; constant ebullient and active participation in public life comes into his poetry with images of the crimson banner and the scarlet dawn of freedom (“Red Army”, “Red Power”, “Red Holiday”).
In 1927, Musa Jalil moved to Moscow, where he worked as an editor for children's magazines and entered the literary department of Moscow State University.

After graduating from Moscow State University, Jalil was appointed head of the literature and art department of the Tatar newspaper Kommunist in Moscow.

Collections of poems from the period 1929-1935 - “To a Comrade”, “Ordered Millions”, “Poems and Poems”.
In 1935, Musa Jalil was appointed head of the literary part of the Tatar studio at the Moscow State Conservatory. P.I. Tchaikovsky. The studio was supposed to train national personnel to create the first opera house in Kazan. Jalil wrote the libretto for the operas "Altynchech" ("Golden-Haired") and "Fisherman Girl". In December 1938, the opera house was opened. Musa became the first head of the literary department of the Tatar Opera House. Nowadays the Tatar State Opera and Ballet Theater is named after Musa Jalil. Jalil worked at the theater until July 1941, i.e. before he was drafted into the Red Army. In 1939, Jalil was elected Chairman of the Board of the Union of Writers of Tatarstan.

In 1941 he was drafted into the Red Army. He fought on the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts, and was a correspondent for the newspaper “Courage”.

In June 1942, during the Lyuban operation of the Soviet troops, he was seriously wounded, captured, and imprisoned in Spandau prison. In the concentration camp, Musa, who called himself Gumerov, joined the Wehrmacht unit - the Idel-Ural Legion, which the Germans intended to send to the Eastern Front. In Jedlino (Poland), where the Idel-Ural legion was training, Musa organized an underground group among the legionnaires and arranged escapes for prisoners of war. The first battalion of the Volga-Tatar Legion rebelled and joined the Belarusian partisans in February 1943. For his participation in an underground organization, Musa was executed by guillotine on August 25, 1944 in the Plötzensee military prison in Berlin.

Much has been written about the horrors of fascist captivity. Almost every year new books, plays, films appear on this topic... But no one will talk about it the way the prisoners of concentration camps and prisons, witnesses and victims of the bloody tragedy did. Their testimony contains something more than the harsh certainty of fact. They contain great human truth, for which they paid at the cost of their own lives.

One of such unique documents, scorching with its authenticity, is Jalil’s “Moabit Notebooks”. They contain few everyday details, almost no descriptions of prison cells, ordeals and cruel humiliations to which the prisoners were subjected. These poems have a different kind of concreteness - emotional, psychological. A series of poems written in captivity, namely the notebook that played a major role in the “discovery” of the poetic feat of Musa Jalil and his comrades, was preserved by a member of the anti-fascist resistance, the Belgian Andre Timmermans, who was sitting in the same cell with Jalil in the Moabit prison. At their last meeting, Musa said that he and a group of his Tatar comrades would soon be executed, and gave the notebook to Timmermans, asking him to transfer it to his homeland.

After the end of the war and his release from prison, Andre Timmermans took the notebook to the Soviet embassy. Later, the notebook fell into the hands of the poet Konstantin Simonov, who organized the translation of Jalil’s poems into Russian, removed the slanderous slander against the poet and proved the patriotic activities of his underground group. An article by K. Simonov about Musa Jalil was published in one of the central newspapers in 1953, after which the triumphant “procession” of the feat of the poet and his comrades into the national consciousness began.

I will not bend my knees, executioner, before you,
Although I am your prisoner, I am a slave in your prison.
When my time comes, I will die. But know this: I will die standing,
Although you will cut off my head, villain.

Alas, not a thousand, but only a hundred in battle
I was able to destroy such executioners.
For this, when I return, I will ask for forgiveness,
I bowed my knees at my homeland.

Do you know that

In May 1945, one of the units of the Soviet troops that stormed Berlin broke into the courtyard of the fascist Moabit prison. There was no one there anymore - neither guards nor prisoners. The wind carried scraps of papers and garbage across the empty yard. One of the fighters drew attention to a piece of paper with familiar Russian letters. He picked it up, smoothed it out (it turned out to be a page torn from some German book) and read the following lines: “I, the famous Tatar writer Musa Jalil, am imprisoned in the Moabit prison as a prisoner facing political charges, and, probably, I will soon shot. If any of the Russians get this recording, let them convey greetings from me to my fellow writers in Moscow.” Then there was a list of the names of the writers to whom the poet sent his last greetings, and the address of the family.
This is how the first news about the feat of the Tatar patriotic poet came home. Soon after the end of the war, the poet's songs returned in a roundabout way, through France and Belgium - two small homemade notebooks containing about a hundred poems. These poems have become world famous today.

In February 1956, for the exceptional tenacity and courage shown in the fight against the Nazi invaders, senior political instructor Musa Jalil was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. And in 1957, for the cycle of poems “The Moabit Notebook”, he was the first among poets to be awarded the Lenin Prize.
He wrote 4 librettos for the operas “Altyn Chech” (“Golden-haired”, 1941, music by composer N. Zhiganov) and “Ildar” (1941).

In the concentration camp, Jalil continued to write poetry, in total he wrote at least 125 poems, which after the war were transferred to his homeland by his cellmate.

The Tatar State Opera and Ballet Theater, whose literary studio he headed, and one of the central streets of the city bear the name of Musa Jalil.

Musa Jalil's apartment museum is located in the poet's apartment, where he lived in 1940-1941. There is a unique exhibition here, which consists of the poet’s personal belongings, photographs and interior items.

Monument to the Tatar poet, Hero of the Soviet Union, Lenin Prize laureate Musa Jalil in Kazan

Internet resources:

Musa Jalil. Poetry/ M. Jalil // Poems of classical and modern authors. – Access mode: http://stroki.net/content/blogcategory/48/56

Musa Jalil. Moabit notebook/ M. Jalil // Young Guard. – Access mode: http://web.archive.org/web/20060406214741/http://molodguard.narod.ru/heroes20.htm

Musa Jalil. Poetry/ M. Jalil // National Library of the Republic of Tatarstan. – Access mode: http://kitaphane.tatarstan.ru/jal_3.htm

Musa Jalil. Favorites/ M. Jalil // Library of Maxim Moshkov. – Access mode: http://lib.ru/POEZIQ/DZHALIL/izbrannoe.txt_with-big-pictures.html

Aphorisms and quotes:

If life passes without a trace,
In lowliness, in captivity, what kind of honor is this?
There is beauty only in freedom of life!
Only in a brave heart there is eternity!

...Our life is just a spark of the whole life of the Motherland.

Be bold in right deeds, modest in words.

It is useless to live - it is better not to live.

Live in such a way that you don’t die even after death.

We will forever glorify that woman whose name is Mother.

It’s not scary to know that death is coming to you, If you die for your people.

Shine on our descendants like a beacon, Shine like a man, not a firefly.

Is it possible to hide old age?
You know, honey, no matter how you dance -
No oven could do it
Ice to melt frozen souls.

It doesn’t matter what you are, you’re out of sight
The essence would be bright.
Be human to the end.
Be with a high heart

Heart with the last breath of life
He will fulfill his firm oath:
I always dedicated songs to my fatherland,
Now I give my life to my fatherland.

I have often met elephant people,
I marveled at their monstrous bodies,
But I recognized him as a person
Only a man according to his deeds.

Biography and episodes of life Musa Jalil. When born and died Musa Jalil, memorable places and dates of important events in his life. Quotes from a poet, journalist, publicist, Photo and video.

Years of life of Musa Jalil:

born February 2, 1906, died August 25, 1944

Epitaph

“Eternal memory to the poet-fighter!
We remember him to this day.
By his death he proved to the Creator:
The Word is not a ghost in the desert.”
From a poem by Igor Sulga in memory of Musa Jalil

Biography

The biography of Musa Jalil is the story of an amazing person. His wonderful poems became a real testimony of struggle and courage, the truth about which was revealed only years later. Coming from a poor peasant family, a graduate of the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, a talented poet and journalist, during the Great Patriotic War he undertook a brave feat, risking his own life - and losing it.

When the war began, Musa Jalil already had a successful career - he edited children's and youth literature, worked as the executive secretary of the Writers' Union of Tatarstan, published collections of poems, and wrote librettos for operas. He was 35 years old when he went to war, and a year later the seriously wounded Musa Jalil was captured. Then he took an incredible step - he joined the German Idel-Ural legion, but not at all in order to fight on the side of Germany, but to create an underground group. Under the guise of cultural and educational activities, Jalil traveled to prisoner camps, recruited new members of the organization and organized escapes. Musa Jalil's underground activities lasted just over a year until he was arrested - just a few days before the uprising he prepared. A year after his arrest, Jalil was executed by guillotine.

Perhaps Jalil’s feat would have remained unknown. For many years after the war, the poet was considered an enemy of the people, a traitor who went over to the side of the enemy. But soon the true facts began to emerge. Former prisoners of war, the poet's cellmates, were able to convey to the Soviet authorities the poems of Musa Jalil, which he wrote in prison and which clearly indicated that he was organizing an underground movement. But even this did not immediately help to rehabilitate the poet, until the notebook with Jalil’s poems fell into the hands of Konstantin Simonov. He not only translated the poems into Russian, but also cleared him of charges of treason, proving Jalil’s feat. After this, Musa Jalil was posthumously rehabilitated and the fame of the great man and patriot spread throughout the country. 12 years after the death of Musa Jalil, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. And although there was no funeral for Musa Jalil and there is no grave of Jalil, today there are monuments to the poet throughout the country, and in his native village of Mustafino there is a museum of Musa Jalil.

Life line

February 2, 1906 Date of birth of Musa Jalil (full name Musa Mustafovich Zalilov (Dzhalilov).
1919 Study at the Tatar Institute of Public Education in Orenburg.
1925 Release of a collection of poems and poems “We are going.”
1927 Admission to the literary department of Moscow State University.
1931-1932 Editor of Tatar children's magazines.
1933 Head of the literature and art department of the Tatar newspaper “Communist” in Moscow.
1934 Publication of collections of poems by Musa Jalil “Ordered Millions” and “Poems and Poems”.
1939-1941 Executive Secretary of the Writers' Union of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
1941 Leaving for the front.
1942 Captivity, joining the German legion "Idel-Ural" in order to continue the fight against the enemy.
February 21, 1943 Uprising of the 825th battalion of the Idel-Ural legion, joining the Belarusian partisans.
August 1943 Arrest of Musa Jalil.
August 25, 1944 Date of death of Musa Jalil (execution).

Memorable places

1. The village of Mustafino in the Orenburg region, where Musa Jalil was born.
2. Museum-apartment of Musa Jalil in Kazan in Jalil’s house, where he lived in 1940-1941.
3. Monument to Musa Jalil in St. Petersburg.
4. Monument to Musa Jalil in Nizhnevartovsk.
5. Monument to Musa Jalil in Tosno.

7. Moabit prison in Berlin, where Musa Jalil was held captive.
8. Plötzensee prison in Berlin, where Musa Jalil was executed.

Episodes of life

The poet's wife, Amina Jalil, said that her husband was a real workaholic. He often came home from work at 4-5 in the morning, and as soon as he woke up, he immediately went to his desk. He took on any work willingly and devoted himself to it completely. The poet began publishing at the age of 13-15 - everyone was convinced that a great literary future awaited him.

The first evidence of Jalil’s feat appeared back in 1945, when Soviet troops found themselves on the territory of the fascist Moabit prison, in which there was no longer anyone. One of the fighters found a piece of paper with Russian text - its author was Musa Jalil. He wrote that he was captured by the Germans, that his activities were discovered and that he would soon be shot. In the letter, he said goodbye to his family and friends, but it, like Jalil’s subsequent manuscripts, disappeared into the bowels of the KGB, without reaching the public for a long time. Some collections of poems that were later handed over to the Soviet authorities were never found.

In 1947, a notebook with Jalil’s poems came to the Union - they were taken out of prison by his cellmate, the Belgian Andre Timmermans. According to Timmermans, Musa Jalil created an underground group after the mufti approached him with a request to convince Tatar prisoners of war to join the army of General Vlasov, a Soviet military leader who had defected to the German side. Jalil agreed to do this, but in underground leaflets he called for exactly the opposite. At first, Jalil’s group consisted of 12 people, and then they recruited a thirteenth person, who betrayed them. Timmermans also said that he was surprised and admired by Jalil’s calmness, which he maintained even when his activities were discovered and he realized that he would be executed.

Covenant

“Live in such a way that you don’t die even after death.”

Fragments from the film “Moabit Notebook” about Musa Jalil

Condolences

“He combined everyday life, efficiency with the ability to think about big things, with thoughts about death and immortality. This gave birth to Jalil’s calm, inspiring faith, simplicity and masculinity of character.”
Amina Jalil, wife of Musa Jalil

“He was a very calm and very courageous person, I always respected him.”
Andre Timmermans, cellmate of Musa Jalil

Biography Musa Jalil, full name Musa Mustafovich Zalilov, is a Soviet Tatar poet and journalist, war correspondent. Hero of the Soviet Union, Lenin Prize laureate. Member of the All-Union Communist Party since 1929.

Brief biography - Musa Jalil

Option 1

Muse Jalil was born in 1906 into a Tatar family. In addition to theology, he studied secular disciplines at the Khusainiya madrasah (Orenburg). Since 1919 in the Komsomol. He was a participant in the Civil War. In 1927, he entered Moscow State University and graduated from its literary department 4 years later.

In the early 1930s, he edited children's magazines in the Tatar language and worked in the capital's newspaper Kommunist. In 1932 he was sent to the Urals, to the city of Serov. In 1934, a collection on the Komsomol theme “Order-Bearing Millions”, as well as “Poems and Poems” was published. Actively worked with national Tatar youth. In the early 1940s, he was director of the national opera theater and worked in the secretariat of the Writers' Union of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

In the Red Army from the very beginning of the war. He was a military correspondent for the newspaper “Courage” and took part in the battles near Leningrad and on the Volkhov Front. In July 1942 he was seriously wounded and captured. In the concentration camp he called himself Gumerov and joined the Idel-Ural legion, which the Nazis intended to use on the eastern front. In Polish Jedlino, Musa participated in the work of an underground group that disrupted the creation of the national legion and helped prisoners of war escape. As a result of the actions of the underground, one Tatar battalion completely passed over to the Belarusian partisans in the winter of 1943. For this activity, Jalil was imprisoned in the Berlin Moabit prison, and in August 1944 he was guillotined in the dungeons of Pletzensee.

For participation in the creation of the Idel-Ural legion, the USSR MGB opened a criminal case against the Tatar poet and was rehabilitated only in 1953. The “Moabit Notebook” fell into the hands of Konstantin Simonov, which was handed over through the embassy by the Belgian anti-fascist Andre Timmermans, who was languishing in the same cell with Jalil. Simonov organized the translation of the collection into Russian and wrote an article about its author, which completely removed the grave suspicions of anti-Soviet activity. In 1956, posthumously, Musa Jalil was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Option 2

Born into a Tatar family. He studied at the Orenburg Madrasah "Khusainiya", where, in addition to theology, he studied secular disciplines, literature, drawing and singing. In 1919 he joined the Komsomol. Participant in the Civil War.

In 1927 he entered the literary department of the ethnological faculty of Moscow State University. After its reorganization, he graduated from the literary department of Moscow State University in 1931.

In 1931-1932 he was the editor of Tatar children's magazines published under the Central Committee of the Komsomol. He was the head of the literature and art department of the Tatar newspaper Kommunist, published in Moscow. In Moscow he met Soviet poets A. Zharov, A. Bezymensky, M. Svetlov.

In 1932, he lived and worked in the city of Serov. In 1934, two of his collections were published: “Ordered Millions,” on a Komsomol theme, and “Poems and Poems.” Worked with youth; on his recommendations, A. Alish and G. Absalyamov came to Tatar literature. In 1939-1941, he was the executive secretary of the Writers' Union of the Tatar ASSR, and worked as the head of the literary section of the Tatar Opera House.

In 1941 he was drafted into the Red Army. He fought on the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts, and was a correspondent for the newspaper “Courage”.

In June 1942 he was seriously wounded, captured, and imprisoned in Spandau prison. In the concentration camp Musa, who called himself Gumerov, joined the Wehrmacht unit - the Idel-Ural Legion, which the Germans intended to send to the Eastern Front. In Jedlino (Poland), where the Idel-Ural legion was training, Musa organized an underground group among the legionnaires and organized escapes of prisoners of war (see: Ibatullin T., Military Captivity: Causes, Consequences. St. Petersburg, 1997). The first battalion of the Volga-Tatar Legion rebelled and joined the Belarusian partisans in February 1943. For his participation in an underground organization, Musa was executed by guillotine on August 25, 1944 in the Plötzensee military prison in Berlin.

At their last meeting, Musa said that he and a group of his Tatar comrades would soon be executed, and gave the notebook to Timmermans, asking him to transfer it to his homeland. After the end of the war and his release from prison, Andre Timmermans took the notebook to the Soviet embassy. Later, the notebook fell into the hands of the popular poet Konstantin Simonov, who organized the translation of Jalil’s poems into Russian, removed the slanderous slander against the poet and proved the patriotic activities of his underground group. An article by K. Simonov about Musa Jalil was published in one of the central newspapers in 1953, after which the triumphant “procession” of the feat of the poet and his comrades into the national consciousness began.

In 1956 he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and in 1957 he won the Lenin Prize for the cycle of poems “The Moabit Notebook”.

Option 3

Musa Mustafovich Jalil(Zalilov) was born (2) February 15, 1906 in the village of Mustafino, Orenburg region. He studied at the Muslim spiritual school “Khusainiya” in Orenburg.

In 1919, Musa Jalil became a Komsomol member, and in 1925 his first collection of poems, “We Are Coming,” was published. In 1927, Jalil became a Muscovite, and in 1929, the second collection “Comrades” was published.

Musa Jalil studied at Moscow State University, at the Faculty of Literature, after graduating from which, from 1931, he was the editor of Tatar magazines for children, and headed the literature and art department of the Tatar newspaper “Communist”, published in Moscow. In 1934, two collections of Jalil’s poems were published: “Poems and Poems” and “Ordered Millions.”

Since 1935, Musa Jalil was in charge of the literary part of the Tatar studio, formed at the Moscow State Conservatory. Tchaikovsky. In 1938, the Kazan Opera House opened, and Jalil wrote opera librettos for this theater - “Altynchech” (Golden-haired) and “Fisherman Girl”.

In 1939, Jalil headed the Board of the Union of Writers of Tatarstan.

With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the poet went to the front and was captured in 1942. While in prison, he continued to write poetry, which was included in the series “Moabit Notebooks” (they were released by his cellmates and awarded the Lenin Prize in 1957).

Full biography - Musa Jalil

Musa Jalil (Musa Mustafovich Zalilov) was born in the Tatar village of Mustafino in the former Orenburg province (now Sharlyk district of the Orenburg region) on February 2 (15), 1906 in a peasant family. At the age of six he went to study at a rural mekteb*, where within a year he mastered the basics of literacy and memorized several suras from the Koran. Soon the family moved to Orenburg in search of a better life. The father managed to get his son into the Khusainiya Madrasah**. It was considered a “new method”, that is, a progressive madrasah at that time. Along with the obligatory cramming of the Koran and all kinds of religious scholasticism, secular disciplines were also studied here, and lessons in native literature, drawing and singing were taught.

During the civil war, Orenburg became the scene of fierce battles, power alternately passed from one force to another: either the Dutovites or the Kolchakites established their own rules. In the Orenburg caravanserai (hotel for visitors), twelve-year-old Musa saw the bloody corpses of Red Army soldiers, women and children, hacked to pieces by White Cossacks during a night raid. Before his eyes, Kolchak’s army established “firm power” - it requisitioned livestock, took away horses, arrested and shot sympathizers of Soviet power. Musa went to rallies and meetings, voraciously read newspapers and brochures.

When in the spring of 1919, in Orenburg, surrounded by the White Guards, a Komsomol organization arose, thirteen-year-old Musa enlisted in the ranks of the Youth Union and rushed to the front. But they don’t take him into the detachment: he is small, frail, he looks like just a boy. Returning to his native village after the death of his father, Jalil creates the children's communist organization "Red Flower". In 1920, on the initiative of Musa, a Komsomol cell appeared in Mustafina. Ebullient and active by nature, Musa becomes the recognized leader of rural youth. He is elected a member of the volost committee of the RKSM and is sent as a delegate to the provincial Komsomol conference.

Musa not only campaigned for a new life, but also defended the young Soviet government with arms in hand: in special forces units he fought against white gangs. On May 27, 1920, V.I. Lenin signed a decree proclaiming the formation of the Tatar Autonomous Republic within the RSFSR. A solid basis has emerged for the development of the national economy, science and culture. Young Tatar writers, musicians, and artists, obsessed with the desire to take part in the formation of a new art, come to Kazan.

In the fall of 1922, sixteen-year-old Jalil also moved to Kazan. “I was led... inspired by faith in my poetic power,” he later wrote (“My Path of Life”).

The sound of soldiers' boots broke the morning silence. He rose from below, along the echoing cast-iron steps, rumbled along the corrugated iron of the open galleries encircling the cells... The guards, shod in soft felt shoes, walked silently. Only the guards who took the condemned to execution behaved rudely and openly. The prisoners listened silently: will it pass or not? It didn't work. The keys clanged. Slowly, with a grinding sound, the heavy, poorly lubricated door opened...

Two military men entered the cell, armed and “not very kind,” as one of the prisoners, Italian R. Lanfredini, later recalled. Having read out the names of the Tatars from the list, they ordered them to quickly get dressed. When they asked: “Why? Where?" - The guards replied that they knew nothing. But the prisoners, as Lanfredini writes, immediately realized that their time had come.

Several general notebooks with poems, stories, and plays by young Musa have reached us. Already from the first, so far naive, experiments one can feel the spontaneous democracy of the novice author. Coming from the lower classes, who has suffered a lot of grief and need, who has experienced the contemptuous and arrogant attitude of the sons of the bai, the son of a ragpicker, who was only taken out of mercy as a government cash in a madrasah, Musa treats the people with sincere sympathy. True, he still does not know how to clothe thought in the flesh of artistic images and declares it directly, “head-on”:

My life is for the people, all strength to them,

I want the song to serve him.

I might lay down my life for my people -

I am going to serve him until his grave.

("The Word of the Poet of Freedom")

Jalil's early work bears clear traces of the influence of democratic Tatar literature of the early 20th century, especially the poetry of Gabdulla Tukay and Mazhit Gafuri. Musa’s poems are similar to their work in their humanistic pathos, sympathy for the oppressed, and intransigence towards evil in all its forms.

During the years of the civil war, Jalil's conviction in the triumph of a just cause was expressed in the form of revolutionary calls and slogans. The poems of this period are notable for their open revolutionary pathos, which makes Jalil’s poetry similar to the work of such poets of modern times as Galiasgar Kamal, Mirkhaidar Faizi, Shamun Fidai and others. The oratorical intensity of the poems and the openly proclamatory style are noteworthy.

It was not only the ideological content that was new. The national, under the pen of poets born of the revolution, takes on different forms. New vocabulary is penetrating poetry. Traditional eastern images are being replaced by revolutionary symbols - the scarlet banner, the blazing dawn of freedom, the sword of revolution, the hammer and sickle, the shining star of the new world... The titles of Jalil’s youthful poems are noteworthy: “Red Army”, “Red Holiday”, “Red Hero”, “ Red Path", "Red Power", "Red Banner". The poet so often used the epithet “red” (in its new, revolutionary meaning) during these years that some researchers call this stage of the poet’s work the “red period.”

In Kazan, Jalil works as a copyist in the newspaper "Kyzyl Tatarstan", and then studies at the workers' faculty at the Eastern Pedagogical Institute. He meets the most prominent representatives of Tatar Soviet poetry: Kavi Najmi, Hadi Taktash, Adel Kutuy and others, participates in debates, literary evenings, and plunges headlong into the vibrant literary life of the republic. Since 1924, he has been a member of the literary group "October", which took proletarian positions. He devotes all his free time to creativity and actively publishes in Kazan newspapers and magazines.

Shouting for order: “Schnell! Schnell! (“Quickly! Quickly!”), - the guards headed to the next cell. And the prisoners began to say goodbye to Lanfredini and to each other. “We hugged like friends who know that they will never see each other again” (from Lanfredini’s memoirs).

Footsteps, excited voices, and shouts of guards were heard in the corridor. The cell door opened again, and Lanfredini saw Musa among those condemned to death. Jalil also noticed Lanfredini and greeted him with “his usual salam.” Passing by Lanfredini, one of his new friends (I think it was Simaev) impulsively hugged him and said: “You were so afraid to die. And now we are going to die..."

In Tatar poetry of the 20s, a peculiar revolutionary-romantic movement arose, called “gisyanism” (from the Arabic word “gisyan” - “rebellion”). It is characterized by increased expression, romantic pathos, the cult of a strong, lonely, rebellious personality, denial of musty everyday life (and with it often the whole “low, rough” reality), aspiration towards a sublime and not always precisely defined ideal. “Gisyanism” in a purely national form reflected some of the features and characteristics characteristic of all young Soviet poetry of the 20s.

Sensitive to everything new, ready to keep up with the times, Musa paid tribute to this trend. From sloganeering and openly propaganda poems, he makes a sharp transition to condensed metaphoricality, deliberate complexity of poetic language, romantic inspiration, the scale of “cosmically” abstract images: “I opened a new path for the sun beyond the darkness, // I visited the blue stars, // I have brought the sky closer and made friends with the earth, // I am rising in stature with the universe.”

His hero dreams of a universal fire in which everything old and obsolete will burn. Not only is he not afraid of death, but he goes towards it with some kind of enthusiastic self-denial. “Gisyanism” was not just a “growing pain”, a kind of obstacle to the establishment of realistic principles in the work of Jalil and in Tatar poetry in general. This was a natural stage of development. On the one hand, it reflected processes common to all multinational Soviet literature (Rapp’s “cosmism”). On the other hand, the centuries-old eastern traditions of Tatar literature were refracted in a unique way, revived at the steep pass of history.

In Jalil's poems of the 20s, the high ideals of the new generation found figurative expression: purity of feelings, sincerity, passionate desire to serve the people. And even though this poetry did not know halftones, it was born and inspired by youthful maximalism, the high intensity of civic feelings. This romantically inspired poetry, for all its conventionality, had its own unique charm:

An arrow entered the heart...

Wide open

An unknown new thing has been revealed to me.

Flows onto a snow-white shirt

My blood is still rebellious.

Let me die...

But you, who's next door

You will find yourself in other times,

Look at the shirt - the blood of the heart

It is painted in an alarming color.

("Before death")

The distance between the Berlin prisons Spandau and Plötzensee is small, about fifteen to twenty minutes by car. But for the convicts this journey took about two hours. In any case, in the registration cards of Plötzensee prison their arrival is noted at eight in the morning on August 25, 1944. Only two cards have reached us: A. Simaev and G. Shabaev.

These cards make it possible to understand the paragraph of the charge: “subversive activities.” Judging by other documents, this was deciphered as follows: “subversive activities for the moral corruption of German troops.” The paragraph on which the fascist Themis did not know any leniency...

The poet has repeatedly emphasized that a new stage in his work begins in 1924: “During the years of the workers’ faculty, a revolution took shape in my work. In 1924 I began to write completely differently” (“My Life Path”). Jalil decisively rejects both romantic conventions and oriental metaphors, looking for new, realistic colors.

In his poems from 1918 to 1923, Jalil most often used various modifications of aruz, a system of versification established in Turkic-language classical poetry. Having perfectly mastered aruz, Jalil, following Hadi Taktash, switches to syllabic folk verse, which is more organic for the Tatar language. The classical genres of oriental lyricism (ghazal, mesnevi, madkhia, etc.) are being replaced by genres common in European literature: lyric poem, lyric-epic poem, song based on folklore.

In Jalil's work, the colors and images of real life appear more clearly. The poet’s active social activities also contribute to this. During his years as an instructor at the Orsk Komsomol Committee (1925–1926), Jalil traveled to Kazakh and Tatar villages, organized Komsomol cells, and conducted active political and grassroots work. In 1926, he became a member of the Orenburg Provincial Committee of the Komsomol. The following year he was sent as a delegate to the All-Union Komsomol Conference, where he was elected a member of the Tatar-Bashkir section of the Komsomol Central Committee. After moving to Moscow, Jalil combines his studies at Moscow State University with extensive social work in the Komsomol Central Committee. He becomes a member of the section bureau and subsequently deputy executive secretary. “Komsomol work enriched my life experience, strengthened me, and instilled in me a new outlook on life,” the poet later noted (“My Life Path”).

Jalil is gradually emerging as a singer of youth, a poet of the Komsomol tribe. Many of his poems are dedicated to significant dates in the life of the Komsomol (“Eighteen”) and have become popular Komsomol songs (“Song of Youth,” “Sing, Friends,” “Song of the Komsomol Brigade,” etc.). It is also no coincidence that Jalil’s first collection “Barabyz” (“We are coming”, 1925) was published in the series “Library of MOPR***” and the entire royalty from it was transferred to the Fund for Assistance to Foreign Workers.

A significant part of the book “We Are Coming” consisted of poems about the pre-revolutionary past. In the next collection, “To a Comrade” (1929), poems about modernity and contemporaries predominate. But this book is also dominated by the same spirit of revolutionary asceticism, readiness for heroism in battle and in work, sometimes even a kind of poeticization of difficulties.

Another feature of Jalil’s lyrics (also largely characteristic of Soviet poetry of the 20s) is historical optimism. The poet seems to be intoxicated by the unprecedented prospects that have opened up before him. He is not just focused on the future, but, as it were, ahead of events, perceives as an accomplished fact what was just being born in agony and pain.

The one-sidedness of the poet's worldview led to straightforwardness in his lyrics. The poet does not pay enough attention to revealing the depth and contradictory nature of the inner world of his characters. Much more important for him is the feeling of collectivism, community with the masses, and involvement in the great affairs of the era. Only much later did he come to realize the intrinsic value of each individual person, and interest in what is unique in a person.

The execution was scheduled for twelve o'clock. The convicts, of course, were brought in in advance. But the execution began six minutes later. This was an exceptional case for the extremely punctual jailers... This can be explained either by the fact that the executioners had a lot of “work” (on the same day they executed the participants in the conspiracy against Hitler), or by the fact that one of the clergy who was required to be present at the execution was late. These were: Catholic priest Georgy Yurytko (a German non-commissioned officer, a Catholic, was also executed as part of the group) and Berlin mullah Gani Usmanov.

During his years of study and work in Moscow, Musa met many prominent Soviet poets: A. Zharov, A. Bezymensky, M. Svetlov. Listens to V. Mayakovsky's speeches at the Polytechnic Museum. He meets E. Bagritsky, who translates one of Jalil’s poems. Joins MAPP (Moscow Association of Proletarian Writers), becomes the third secretary of the association and head of the Tatar section of MAPP.

The hero of Jalil's poetry is most often a peasant boy, eager for the light of a new life. He lacks knowledge and culture, but he does not lack conviction and faith in the cause of socialism (“From the Congress”, “On the Road”, “First Days in the Komsomol”, etc.). Most often, the poet talks about himself, his love, friendship, studies, and the life around him (“From a student’s diary,” “Our love,” etc.). The lyrical hero of his poems is uncompromising, obsessed with the ideals of a bright future, and despises bourgeois well-being.

There are also serious costs. Based on Rapp’s principles, the poet is looking for unprecedented “proletarian” colors, trying to develop a “new poetic language.” “And in me, like cast iron from ore - from dreams - you smelt the will to fight and work,” he writes in the poem “Morning.” Even the street seems more attractive to the hero of the poem because there is a smoky factory on it. In the poems of the late 20s and early 30s, the “steel voices of machines” sometimes drown out the voice of the poetic heart.

But even in those works where the costs of Rapp’s attitudes and vulgar sociological views make themselves felt in one way or another, a living, lyrical feeling breaks through, like melt water from under the snow. Lyricism, according to the unanimous recognition of critics, is the strongest side of Jalil’s talent.

In 1931, Jalil graduated from the literary department of Moscow University with a degree in literary criticism. Until the end of 1932, he continued to work as editor of the children's magazine “October Balasy” (“Oktyabrenok”). Then he headed the department of literature and art in the central Tatar newspaper “Communist”, published in Moscow. But not many people live in the capital; they constantly travel around the country. Jalil was never just a professional writer. Throughout his life, he either studied or worked, often combining two or three positions at the same time. His comrades were amazed at his irrepressible energy, wide erudition, accuracy and uncompromising judgment.

His poetry was the same - impetuous and passionate, convinced of the rightness of the cause of socialism, irreconcilable with enemies and at the same time soft, lyrical.

Assistant warden Paul Duerrhauer, who accompanied the convicts on their final journey, said with surprise that the Tatars behaved with amazing fortitude and dignity. Dozens of executions were carried out every day before his eyes. He was already accustomed to screams and curses, he was not surprised if at the last minute they began to pray to God or lost consciousness from fear... But he had never seen people go to execution with their heads held high and sing “some Asian song” "

In 1934, two final collections of Jalil were published: “Ordered Millions,” which included mainly poems on Komsomol and youth themes, and “Poems and Poems,” which included the best of what the poet created in the late 20s - early 30s . These books sum up the previous period and mark the beginning of a new, mature stage.

Jalil's poetry becomes deeper and more diverse. The inner world of the lyrical hero is enriched. His feelings become more psychologically reliable, and his perception of life becomes more philosophically significant and wiser. The poet moves from a sharp oratorical gesture to a confidential lyrical confession. From the sweeping and energetic stride of verse - to song melodiousness.

The poet's style is characterized by a passionate, elevated emotional attitude towards the world. On the one hand, this expresses the historical optimism characteristic of the era. On the other hand, the traits of an active, vital nature and hot temperament of the poet appear. Any event or phenomenon of reality awakens in him an impulse to immediate action, arouses enthusiastic approval or equally passionate rejection. His hero is always militantly active. Idle contemplation and spiritual passivity are alien to him.

The critic V. Vozdvizhensky is right when he speaks about the features of this period: “The emotional-imaginative perception of life freed Jalil’s poetry from straightforwardness, but did not in the least deprive it of its usual sense of purpose and high socio-political tone.” Absolute absorption in affairs of a national scale was historically conditioned. The poet was happy to take advantage of the opportunity opened by the revolution - to live the lives of others, for others, forgetting about himself. In the poem “Years, Years...”, reflecting on the days of struggle and hard work that left wrinkles on the face and deep marks on the soul, the author concludes:

I'm not offended.

The fervor of youth

I gave away the days that were hardened in battle.

I created, and labor was sweet to me,

And my plans came true.

Obviously, the poet at times felt a discord between the voice of his heart and the theoretical guidelines of the Stalinist era. Sometimes, in the words of Mayakovsky, he stood “at the throat of his own song.” It is no coincidence that his lyrical reflections and a number of love poems remained unpublished. The lyricism characteristic of the poet’s creative manner breaks through especially clearly.

Yes, the poet almost did not show negative phenomena, did not “expose” the crimes of the Stalinist regime, although, of course, he could not help but know about them. And who then would dare to do this? M. Jalil's poetry attracts others. Reading poems such as “Zaytune”, “Spring”, “We still laugh through our eyelashes...”, “Amine”, “When she grew up”, you feel human warmth, love of life, and the charm of kindness. This is poetry of exceptional moral purity, attracting with its cordiality and trusting intonation.

“I also remember the poet Musa Jalil. I visited him as a Catholic priest, brought him Goethe's books to read, and learned to appreciate him as a calm, noble man. His fellow prisoners in the Spandau military prison respected him very much... As Jalil told me, he was sentenced to death for printing and distributing appeals in which he called on his fellow countrymen **** not to fight against Russian soldiers.”

(From a letter from G. Yurytko to the German writer L. Nebenzal.)

Jalil often appears in the periodical press with articles, essays, reports about the builders of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant or the Moscow Metro, writes about the Bolshevik pace and shock workers of the first five-year plans, exposes bureaucrats, shares thoughts about the youth movement and anti-religious education. These themes are one way or another reflected in his poetry.

If in journalistic poems an offensive, major spirit predominates, then in intimate lyrics the sky is not so cloudless. It contains sadness, doubts, and difficult experiences. “Somehow a strange friendship began.//Everything in it was sincerity and passion.//But two strong, proud people,//We tormented each other to our heart’s content” (“Hadiye.” From poems that remained unpublished). Poems are of the same nature.<Синеглазая озорница…>, <Латифе>, <Я помню>etc. What attracts them is the depth and truthfulness of the lyrical feeling. But the poet was mistaken in believing that poems of this kind were “too intimate” in nature. For centuries, the ideology of Islam has inculcated contempt for women into the consciousness, viewing her as a being of a lower order: a dumb slave, the property of her husband. In Jalil's lyrics - a careful, reverent and tender attitude towards a woman, affirming her right to independent feelings, family happiness, free choice in love. This is an important social aspect of Jalil's lyrics.

Jalil's poetry already crossed national boundaries in the pre-war years. Translations of his poems are published in central newspapers and magazines and are included in anthologies and collective collections. In 1935, the poet's poems were published as a separate book in Russian.

During the last meeting, Jalil told the priest his dream. “He dreamed that he was standing alone on a big stage, and everything around him was black - both the walls and things,” G. Yurytko later wrote about this. The dream is ominous and stunning... Yes, Jalil found himself on the stage of history face to face with fascism. Everything around him was black. And the unparalleled courage with which he met his death deserves all the more respect...

Jalil already used folklore subjects, images, and poetic meters in his early works. Folklore motifs sound especially successful and organic in lyrical songs. Many songs based on the words of Jalil gained wide popularity and became the national treasure of the Tatar people (“Memory”, “For the Berries”, “Waves-Waves”, etc.). They contain folk language, purely national humor, laconicism, and imagery. This was not stylization, but conscious creative study, the organic assimilation of folklore, which Jalil rightly called “a manifestation of the genius of the people.”

In the 1930s, literary ties with writers from the fraternal republics deepened. Jalil devotes a lot of time to translation, translating “The Knight in the Skin of a Tiger” by Shota Rustaveli (in collaboration with L. Faizi), the poem “The Laborer” by Shevchenko, poems by Lebedev-Kumach, Golodny, Ukhsai, etc.

The pre-war years were marked in Jalil's work by an increased craving for the epic breadth of image. At this time he created several large epic poems. The poem “The Director and the Sun” (1935), which was not published during the author’s lifetime, is very interesting. The poems “Dzhigan” (1935–1938) and “The Letter Bearer” (1938) are unique in character and stylistic design. They combine soulful lyricism with the author’s soft and kind smile.

Jalil wrote four opera librettos. The most significant of them is “Altynchech” (“Golden-haired”, music by composer N. Zhiganov).

Jalil worked as an editor for children's magazines for about five years. He wrote editorials, correspondence, prepared satirical materials and humoresques under the heading “From Shambay’s Notebook”, and conducted extensive correspondence with readers. During these years, he acquired a taste for working with children and learned better about child psychology. He writes pioneer songs and marches, fables and poetic feuilletons, landscape sketches and elegant miniatures for the little ones. Jalil wrote a lot for children later.

In the late 30s - early 40s, Jalil worked as head of the literary department of the Tatar Opera House. Writers of Tatarstan choose him as the leader of their organization. Jalil is still in the thick of life, living with new creative plans: he is conceiving a novel from the history of the Komsomol, starting a poem about a modern village.

The war dashed these plans.

...I am following in the footsteps of the poet. In the wake of war, courage, blood, death and songs. In the shifting sands at the sites of former concentration camps, I find soldier’s buttons, blackened by corrosion (or maybe from human blood?), scraps of barbed wire, green cartridge cases... Sometimes I come across fragile, yellow fragments of bones...

The barracks for prisoners of war have long been destroyed, overcoats and tunics have rotted, strong - without wear and tear - soldiers' boots have turned into scraps.

Much has decayed and become dust. But the poet’s songs, like decades ago, burn with freshness and power of passion.

On June 23, 1941, on the second day of the war, Jalil took a statement to the military registration and enlistment office with a request to be sent to the front, and on July 13 he put on a military uniform. After completing a short-term course for political workers, he arrived at the Volkhov Front as a correspondent for an army newspaper<Отвага>.

The life of a political worker and military correspondent began, full of difficulties, hardships, and risks. “Only on the front line can you see the necessary heroes, draw material, follow the combat facts, without which it is impossible to make the newspaper operational and combative,” Jalil wrote to his friend G. Kashshaf. “My life now passes in a combat situation and in painstaking work . Therefore, now I am limiting myself to front-line lyrics, and I will take on big things after the victory, if I remain alive*****.”

In the first weeks of the Patriotic War, Jalil wrote a series of poems<Против врага>, which included fighting songs, marches, passionate patriotic poems, constructed as an excited poetic monologue.

Poems written at the front have a different character. The pathetic monologue and open journalism are replaced by front-line lyrics, which simply and reliably reveal the feelings and thoughts of a person during the war.

At the entrance to the fascist prison of Plötzensee there is a memorial urn containing the ashes of those executed and tortured in all concentration camps of fascist Germany. A memorial wall with the inscription: “To the victims of the Hitler dictatorship of 1933-1945” was erected nearby. Funeral wreaths hang on special stands. One of the rooms in the execution barracks has been turned into a museum. On the walls are hung materials about the Plötzensee prison, photographs of participants in the assassination attempt on Hitler, and documents from other victims of Hitlerism.

The execution room remained in its original form. A grate to drain the copiously flowing blood, a gray cement floor... The walls and ceilings were whitewashed, otherwise the gloomy, oppressive atmosphere would have been simply unbearable.

We wait patiently for the motley wave of tourists to subside. Then the poet's widow, Amina Jalil, steps over the security rope and places a bouquet of scarlet carnations at the place where Musa and his comrades were executed. For several minutes we stand in silence, with our heads bowed, near the scarlet splashes on the gray cement floor.

At the end of June 1942, while trying to break through the encirclement, Musa, seriously wounded and stunned by a blast wave, was captured. After many months of wandering around prison camps, Jalil was brought to the Polish fortress of Deblin. The Nazis herded Tatars, Bashkirs, and prisoners of war of other nationalities of the Volga region here. Musa met his fellow countrymen and found those he could trust. They formed the core of the underground organization he created.”

At the end of 1942, the Nazis launched the formation of the so-called “national legions”. In the Polish town of Yedlino, they created the Idel-Ural legion (since the vast majority of the legion were Volga Tatars, the Germans usually called it Volga-Tatar). The Nazis carried out ideological indoctrination of prisoners, preparing to use legionnaires against the Soviet Army. To thwart the plans of the fascists, to turn the weapons put into their hands against the fascists themselves - this was the task set by the underground group. The underground fighters managed to penetrate the editorial office of the newspaper “Idel-Ural” published by the German command, printed and distributed anti-fascist leaflets, and created carefully clandestine underground groups - the “five”.

The first battalion of the Volga-Tatar Legion, sent to the Eastern Front, rebelled, killed German officers and joined the detachment of Belarusian partisans (February 1943).

In August 1943, the Nazis managed to pick up the trail of the underground group. Jalil and most of his comrades were arrested. Days and nights of interrogation and torture began. The Gestapo broke the poet's arm and knocked out his kidneys. The body was striped with rubber hoses. The crushed fingers were swollen and almost unbendable. But the poet did not give up. Even in prison he continued the fight against fascism through his creativity.

On April 23, 1945, the 79th Rifle Corps of the Soviet Army, advancing in the direction of the Reichstag, reached the line of the Berlin streets Rathenoverstrasse and Turmstrasse. Ahead, through the smoke of explosions, a gloomy gray building behind a high brick wall appeared - Moabit prison. When the soldiers burst into the prison yard, there was no one there anymore. Only the wind carried trash and scraps of paper around the yard, and tossed up the pages of books thrown out of the prison library by the explosion. On a blank page of one of them, one of the soldiers noticed an entry in Russian: “I, the Tatar poet Musa Jalil, am imprisoned in the Moabit prison as a prisoner facing political charges, and will probably soon be shot. If any of the Russians get this recording, let them say hello from me to fellow writers in Moscow and let their family know.” The soldiers sent this leaflet to Moscow, to the Writers' Union. This is how the first news of Jalil’s feat came to the homeland.

Many verses of the Moabit cycle show how difficult it was for Jalil. Longing and despair stuck in my throat like a heavy lump. You need to know Musa’s love of life, his sociability, affection for his friends, his wife, his daughter Chulpan, his love for people in order to understand the severity of forced loneliness. No, it was not physical suffering, not even the proximity of death that oppressed Jalil, but separation from his homeland. He was not sure that the Motherland would know the truth, he did not know whether his poems would break free. What if the fascists manage to slander him, and in his homeland they will think of him as a traitor?

When you read even the most hopeless lines of Jalil, there is no heavy feeling left in your soul. On the contrary, you feel proud of the person, of the greatness and nobility of his soul. A person who loves his homeland and his people so much, is so tied to them with thousands of living threads, cannot disappear without a trace. He exists not only in himself, for himself, but also in the hearts, thoughts, and memories of many, many people. In the “Moabite Notebooks” there are no motives of doom, passive sacrifice, just as there were none in the healthy soul of the poet, in love with life.

Everything that is described in the “Moabite Notebooks” is deeply personal and intimate. But this does not stop it from being socially significant. Here is found that wonderful fusion of the personal and the national, to which the poet strove all his life.

What accumulated in Jalil’s work gradually, over the years, manifested itself in a dazzlingly bright flash. From the pages of the “Moabite Notebooks” we see not just a talent belonging to one people, but a poet who rightfully belongs to the best sons of humanity.

One of the main advantages of the Moabit cycle, which ensured its widest popularity, is a sense of authenticity. We believe every word, we feel the icy breath of death standing behind the poet’s back. And the acute pain of separation, and longing for freedom, and bitterness, and doubts, and proud contempt for death, and hatred for the enemy - all this is recreated with stunning force.

In the “Moabite Notebooks” one is struck by the acuteness of the feeling of the fullness of life in the premonition of imminent death. The nerve of the cycle, its core conflict, is the eternal clash of the human and the inhuman. Jalil, having met fascism face to face, expressed with particular poignancy and clarity the idea of the anti-human essence of Hitlerism. In poems such as “The Magic Tangle,” “Barbarism,” and “Before the Trial,” it is not just the cruelty and callousness of the executioners that is exposed. With all the logic of artistic images, the poet leads to the idea that fascism is organically hostile to living things. Fascism and death are synonymous for the poet.>

Jalil's hatred of fascism as a social phenomenon never turns into hatred of the German people. The poet has great respect for the Germany of Marx and Thälmann, Goethe and Heine, Bach and Beethoven. Thrown into a stone bag in Moabit Prison, awaiting the death penalty any day now, he does not believe that the entire German people are poisoned by the poison of Nazism. It is deeply symbolic that, suffocating in the darkness of the fascist night, the poet yearns for the sun - the sun of knowledge, advanced culture, life-giving ideas of Marxism - believes that it will shine over a renewed Germany (“In the Country of Alman”).

Calm and persistent confidence in victory, in the invincibility of the forces of life, gives rise to the optimistic tone of the Moabite Notebooks. Poems written on the eve of execution are constantly illuminated by the smile of a calm person confident in his dignity, and often there is the sound of laughter in them.

By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated February 2, 1956, Musa Jalil was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for his exceptional steadfastness and courage shown in battles with the Nazi invaders in the Great Patriotic War. And a year later, the Committee for Lenin and State Prizes in the field of literature and art under the Council of Ministers of the USSR awarded Musa Jalil, the first among poets, the Lenin Prize for the cycle of poems “The Moabit Notebook”.

In one of the churches in Warsaw I saw an urn with Chopin’s heart. In the solemn twilight the immortal music of the brilliant Polish composer sounded. People stood silently, communing with the great, their souls brightening.

Where is Jalil's heart buried?

We cannot yet answer this question with complete certainty. It is only known that at the end of August 1944, the Nazis transported the corpses of those executed to an area near the town of Seeburg, a few kilometers west of Berlin.

I have visited these places. The sunken, semi-collapsed ditches in many places were overgrown with green fir trees and canes of white-trunked birch trees. Somewhere here, in an unknown ditch, among thousands of victims of the fascist regime like him, lies the poet’s heart. And the tree roots that grew through him are like living threads connecting the poet with the big world, the world of the sun, sky and soaring birds.

Biography

In 1932 he lived and worked in the city of Serov. In 1934, two of his collections were published: “Ordered Millions,” on a Komsomol theme, and “Poems and Poems.” Worked with youth; on his recommendations, A. Alish and G. Absalyamov came to Tatar literature. In 1939-1941, he was the executive secretary of the Writers' Union of the Tatar ASSR, and worked as the head of the literary section of the Tatar Opera House.

In 1941 he was drafted into the Red Army. He fought on the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts, and was a correspondent for the newspaper “Courage”.

In 1946, the USSR MGB opened a search case against Musa Jalil. He was accused of treason and aiding the enemy. In April 1947, the name of Musa Jalil was included in the list of especially dangerous criminals. A series of poems written in captivity, namely the notebook that played a major role in the “discovery” of the poetic feat of Musa Jalil and his comrades, was preserved by a member of the anti-fascist resistance, the Belgian Andre Timmermans, who was in the same cell with Jalil in the Moabit prison. At their last meeting, Musa said that he and a group of his Tatar comrades would soon be executed, and gave the notebook to Timmermans, asking him to transfer it to his homeland. After the end of the war and his release from prison, Andre Timmermans took the notebook to the Soviet embassy. Later, the notebook fell into the hands of the popular poet Konstantin Simonov, who organized the translation of Jalil’s poems into Russian, removed the slanderous slander against the poet and proved the patriotic activities of his underground group. An article by K. Simonov about Musa Jalil was published in one of the central newspapers in 1953, after which the triumphant “procession” of the feat of the poet and his comrades into the national consciousness began.

In 1956 he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and in 1957 he won the Lenin Prize for the cycle of poems “The Moabit Notebook”.

In the early 1930s, he edited children's magazines in the Tatar language and worked in the capital's newspaper "Communist". In 1932 he was sent to the Urals, to the city of Serov. In 1934, a collection on the Komsomol theme “Order-Bearing Millions”, as well as “Poems and Poems”, was published. Actively worked with national Tatar youth. In the early 1940s, he was director of the national opera theater and worked in the secretariat of the Writers' Union of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

In the Red Army from the very beginning of the war. He was a military correspondent for the newspaper "Courage" and took part in the battles near Leningrad and on the Volkhov Front. In July 1942 he was seriously wounded and captured. In the concentration camp he called himself Gumerov and joined the Idel-Ural legion, which the Nazis intended to use on the eastern front. In Polish Jedlino, Musa participated in the work of an underground group that disrupted the creation of the national legion and helped prisoners of war escape. As a result of the actions of the underground, one Tatar battalion completely passed over to the Belarusian partisans in the winter of 1943. For this activity, Jalil was imprisoned in the Berlin Moabit prison, and in August 1944 he was guillotined in the dungeons of Pletzensee.

Musa Jalil is the most famous. Biography of Musa Jalil

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born February 2, 1906, died August 25, 1944

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