Sultan Galiyev

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev (Tatar: Мирсәет Хәйдәргали улы Солтангалиев, Mirsäyet Xäydärğäli ulı Soltanğäliev, pronounced [ˌmirsæˈjet xæɪˌdærɣæˈli ulɯ sɔlˌtɑnɣæˈliəf]; Russian: Мирсаид Хайдаргалиевич Султан-Галиев Mirsaid Khaydargalievich Sultan-Galiev; 1892–1940), also known as Mirza Sultan-Galiev, was a Tatar Bolshevik who rose to prominence in the Russian Communist Party in the early 1920s. He was the architect of Muslim "national communism". His views were a direct threat to the policies of the Comintern; he was imprisoned briefly in 1923 and expelled from the Communist Party. He was rearrested in 1928 and imprisoned for six years. He was then arrested again in 1937 and executed in 1940.

Sultan-Galiev, the son of a teacher, was born on July 13, 1892 in the village of Elembet'evo, Ufa Guberniya, Bashkiria, then part of the Russian Empire. At base, he had a difficult and impoverished childhood: first, as a school teacher, his father made very little money (not nearly enough to support his wife and 12 children) and was frequently transferred from place to place; second, there was considerable, lasting tension between his parents, because they came from very different layers of Tatar society. Sultan-Galiev later wrote, "My mother was the daughter of a prince – a noblewoman, while my father was a simple "Mishar," and this quite often stung the eyes of my father."

Though his parents could not afford to send him to a private school, Sultan-Galiev was able to learn a great deal from his father and at the latter's maktab, which followed the "New Method" of maktab teaching founded by Ismail Gasprinski (1851–1914). From a young age Sultan-Galiev studied the Russian language and read many of the Russian classics from his father's library. At his father's school, he studied from age 8 to 15, learning Tatar and Arabic, history, geography, and mathematics, while also receiving a basic understanding of the Qur'an and Sharia. All this, especially his knowledge of Russian, greatly helped him to gain entrance to the Kazan Teachers College (see Tatar State University of Humanities and Education) in 1907.

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