Tair Zhomartbayev is a prominent representative of Kazakh culture, an enlightener of the beginning of the 20th century, a Kazakh poet, writer, and playwright.Tair Zhomartbayev was born in 1884, in the aul Mukur of the Chingistau volost (now the Abai district of the East Kazakhstan region). The boy grew up in a large poor peasant family. He received his primary education in the madrasah of the poet Kokbai, a contemporary and friend of Abai, who shared the enlightening ideas of the great poet Abai Kunanbayev. In this madrasah, children were trained near the located villages. They learned the Russian language at the school along with literacy. In the years of study, Tair became acquainted with the verses of Abai, comprehending their depth of philosophical thought.
From the age of 12, having moved to Semipalatinsk, he worked with bai Zulkarnayev, in his free time he attended a city Kazakh school. 20-year-old guy Tair returns home and is engaged in teaching aul children. Later, with the money he earned, he went to Ufa. Here Tair enters the Tatar madrasah Galiya, preparing teachers. This madrasah was a progressive school, graduates of which were many cultural figures, participants in the revolutionary transformations in the Volga region, Central Asia and Kazakhstan. Here, along with logic, mathematics, philosophy, history, geography, Russian language and literature were taught. In the late XIX – early XX centuries, representatives of Kazakh youth also studied at the madrasah. In 1911, Tair Zhomartbayev finished it. After the madrasah, the young man marries the pupil of the same madrasah Adgiya Fakhrislamova, and they return to Semipalatinsk. Here, on the left bank, in the Zarechnaya Slobodka, there was a Muslim school had existed since 1910. Tair and his wife became teachers of this school.
From the beginning of his pedagogical activity, Tair Zhomartbayev was an innovative teacher, an enlightener, who fought against obsolete learning and supported new teaching methods. He wrote the book “Balalarga Zhemіs.” This collection of poems was published in the Semipalatinsk printing house “Yardam” in 1912. The collection includes poems “Well-bred boy”, “Instruction for children”, “Sadness of an orphan”, “Kind friends” and many others. In them, the poet-teacher reveals the benefits of knowledge, encourages children to study, singing humanity, kindness, honesty, hard work, love of the book. These were plot works that encouraged children to action. So in the poem “Kind Friends”, the poet talks about an orphan boy, whom his comrades help to learn. The collection also includes translations of the author of the stories of Russian teachers and writers: K.D. Ushinskiy, L.N. Tolstoy. Many poems by Tair Zhomartbayev were written under the influence of the best works of Abai Kunanbayev, which affirm humanism, the ideas of enlightenment, and the desire for knowledge.
At the beginning of the 20th century, fiction proliferated in Kazakh literature. The traditions of the democratic educational direction in the Kazakh written literature, the foundations of which were laid by Abai Kunanbayev and Ibrai Altynsarin, were shown through social inequality in the Kazakh villages, the liberation struggle of the Kazakh people. These themes are clearly expressed in the works of Tair Zhomartbayev. He wrote the novel “Kyz Korelik”, which was published in 1912. A poem printed at the beginning of the work reveals the idea of enlightenment. In the novel, the author shows the contradiction of pre-revolutionary Kazakh life, raises the problems of women’s emancipation, the involvement of Kazakh youth in study and knowledge. The main character of the novel, Gainikamal, is an educated and freedom-loving Kazakh girl who received the education that has become so necessary for her in the struggle for happiness. The girl, combining her fate with a loved one, herself is involved in the struggle for female education. This is the value of the work of Zhomartbayev. The novel became popular among Kazakh youth, and poems were memorized and performed at evenings and holidays. Thus, the novel “Kyz Korelik” is one of the very first works of the nascent Kazakh prose, and it shows the life and life of the Kazakh people at the beginning of the XX century.
Throughout his life, Tair Zhomartbayev followed the pedagogical credo of Abai Kunanbayev – “Learning without getting tired.” Being engaged in pedagogical activity, he actively participates in cultural and educational work, organizing literary and musical evenings. Together with the Kulzhanovs, he was one of the organizers of the evening of Kazakh music and poetry, held on February 13, 1915, in Semipalatinsk.
The works of Tair Zhomartbayev, calling for justice, freedom, education, his cultural and educational activities could not be liked by those whom he made fun of. Harassment starts from ill-wishers. And in 1916 he moved to Zaisan, where he teaches with his wife in madrasah, upholding the educational ideas that he always followed. In Soviet times, Zhomartbayev was actively involved in the struggle to eradicate illiteracy, the opening of primary classes and boarding schools in the region. In 1927 he returned to Semipalatinsk. He taught at schools and the Kazakh pedagogical college, taught Kazakh language and literature, mathematics, organized literary, dramatic, music and dance clubs, and contributed to the development of stage art in our region.
He was engaged in literary activities. The writer did a lot in the development of Kazakh drama of the 20s. His first dramatic work “Osy ma, kazakh, omirin?”, was staged in Zaisan and the play “Sary suiek kuda” – in Semipalatinsk. Pursuing journalism, Tair Zhomartbayev regularly wrote satirical articles and articles and printed them on the pages of the newspapers “Alash”, “Kazak”, and the magazines “Aikap” and “Zhana mektep.” Of the works of art of this period, the poems “Zaisan”, “Chingistau”, “Native Language” and others deserve attention.
In 1937, he was sentenced to death on false political charges. He was rehabilitated in 1956.
List of used literature:
- Zhomartbayev Tair / Literature of Kazakhstan: Encyclopedic Handbook. – Almaty: Aruna Publishing House, Kazygurt Publishing House, 2010. – p. 195-196, photo
- Writers and poets of the Semey region: a biobibliographic index / Comp. O.F. Maltseva. – Semey: Publishing House “Press House”, 2015. – P.106
- Mukhamedkhanov K. Teacher, enlightener, poet // Irtysh. – 1984. – December 22. – P. 4, photo
- Pertseva N. Learning without getting tired // Nashe delo (Our business). – 2016. – July 28. – P.6, photo
- Shevchenko V. Cradle of the Kazakh intelligentsia // Kazakhstanskaya Pravda (Kazakhstani truth). – 2003. – June 20. – P. 6.