The significance of Soviet-Kazakh writer Mukhtar Auezov can be experienced impressively in his former house, now a museum and library. In post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, Gulzat Egemberdieva, literary scholar and film director, embarks on a personal and literary search for the traces of Auezov and his companions: to the town of Cholpon-Ata, 240 kilometers from Bishkek.
I had never visited the Auezov House Museum before. What stayed in my memory was a blue high-rise building that seemed to be hanging in-between the lake and the sky. As I learned during an occasional visit to a long-distance relative, this was the “Goluboi Issyk Kul Pensionat” (The Blue Issyk Kul Pension). My relative worked there as a doctor.
In early afternoon of September 28, 2024, on the way to the village where I spent most of my childhood and youth, we stopped for a coffee and some sweets in a new Café of Cholpon-Ata, a resort town on Lake Issyk Kul, some 240 kilometers from Bishkek. I was eager to see and show to my visitors the “House Museum Mukhtar Auezov.” When I asked the young barista team for its address, they answered that they didn’t know, that they “didn’t go to museums.” Although, older generations and tourist guides knew the existence of such a place.
An older passer-by knew what we were looking for: it was no more than ten minutes away, she said. We set off, but it wasn’t as easy as explained. Not a single sign on the main street indicated the direction. Finally, we found one clue: a side street down to the lake named after Muchtar Auezov. At the very end of this deserted street, surrounded by a parking lot, the grounds of a modern sanatorium and a wall, half hidden behind large birches in the garden, we found it: a beautiful dacha, the stone foundation whitewashed, the wooden cladding of the upper part in light blue. On the wall, a commemorative plaque reads: “In this house, the great Kazakh Soviet writer Auezov Mukhtar Omarchanovich, winner of the Lenin Prize and State Prize, lived and worked in the years 1959-1960. The government of the Kazakh SSR gave the house to the workers of Cholpon-Ata in 1970.”
Mukhtar Auezov (1897-1961) is considered the most important Kazakh Soviet writer. With his multi-volume biographical novel about the Kazakh poet and enlightener of the late 19th century, Abai Kunanbaev (1845-1904), in which he portrays Abai as the founding father of modern Kazakh literature and culture, Auezov also contributed to his own canonization. For many years he was the chairman of the Kazakh Writers‘ Union and, as a recipient of the Lenin and Stalin Prize, his word carried great weight in the institutions of multinational Soviet literature. As such, Auezov also contributed significantly to the shaping of Kyrgyz literature, which is closely linked to Kazakh literature. During an international scientific conference in Frunze (present-day Bishkek) in 1952, he courageously defended the popularization of the Kyrgyz heroic epic Manas and the publication of all its parts. And it was Auezov who, with a review of the story “Ovon” (Zhamila) in the Literaturnaya gazeta and a recommendation to the French friend of the Soviet Union, Louis Aragon, significantly promoted the rise of the young Kyrgyz, Chingiz Aitmatov (1928-2008), to a Soviet writer and world author. Later on, Aitmatov always mentioned two mentors in his life: the first – Manas, the second – Auezov.
A commemoration gathering in the garden of the Auezov House Museum at the lake Issyk kul. Images by the author.
Here are Auezov’s own words:
Знакомясь с новинками киргизской прозы, которые мои друзья привезли на декаду в Москву, я особенно заинтересовался повестью молодого писателя Чингиза Айтматова «Джамиля». Я вспомнил хороший почин «Литературной газеты» – давать доброе напутствие молодым товарищам.
И хотя Чингиз Айтматов выступает в киргизской прозе не первый раз, но для меня он все-таки-таки молодой, а повесть «Джамиля» мне кажется, это как раз, то произведения автора, где достаточно ярко отразилось индивидуальное дарование, где можно видеть уже определившийся собственный почерк, где уверенно завершается известный этап творческого становления писателя. От всей души желаю ему доброго пути!
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Good journey!
Getting acquainted with the new Kyrgyz prose that my friends brought to Moscow for the „Dekada“-Festival. I was especially interested in the story of the young writer Chingiz Aitmatov „Dzhamilya“. I remembered the good initiative of the Literaturnaya gazeta – to give good parting words to young comrades.
And although Chingiz Aitmatov appears in Kyrgyz prose not for the first time, for me he is still young, and the story „Zhamilya“ seems to me to be just that work of the author, where individual talent is reflected quite vividly, where one can see his already defined personal style, where a certain stage of the writer’s creative development confidently ends. With all my heart I wish him a good journey!
(Literaturnaja gazeta, 23.10.1958)
The Auezov House Museum with librarian and director of the museum Salamat Tabysheva. Images by the author.
In 1959 Auezov was rewarded for his action with a piece of land in Cholpon-Ata, so that he could build a house. It is there that he lived and also wrote his unfinished Ösken örken (The Young Tribe) in 1960. Until the 1970s his family used the house as a summer vacation and later gave it to the Kyrgyz government who turned it into a museum. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it became increasingly run-down. It was renovated in 2022. In addition to being a museum, it now also functions as a library for the local population and other visitors.
When we reached the house, we saw a small party gathered around the table in the garden. It happened that September 28 was the day of Auzeov’s birthday. Relatives and some poets from Kazakhstan had come to commemorate his youngest son Murat Mukhtarovich’s recent death. He had been visiting this house with his family in recent years. We were greeted by Salamat, the guide of the museum. Her expression had an old Soviet intelligentsia look, with a gentle smile and showing passion for her work. Salamat Tabysheva has been in charge of the house-museum since 1982. She introduced each room thoroughly, and with pride. The rooms gave a good feel of where the writer lived and worked. The walls displayed the author’s books, photographs, diplomas, and other documents.
I looked through the window, searching to have a view of the lake. But I only saw a white wall. Following the privatisations of the 1990s, such places were taken over by the tourist industry. With the arrival of the colder season, life seemed to come to a standstill.
The view from the balcony was unforgettable: I had never seen the lake reflecting the sun from such a perspective, and there was the smell of the archa and karagai mountain trees. The “Blue Issyk Kul Pension” was in use since 1965. It was famous for its medical procedures. It was erected shortly after Auezov built his own house near-by. During Soviet times, not everybody had the possibility to visit either one. Today, it seems almost forgotten. I hope that Salamat will keep it in good condition for a long time to come, and I imagine a future when the House will be a residency for young writers, a place of inspiration through the work of the thinker and writer Mukhtar Auezov and through the beauty of the surrounding nature.
Header image photographed by Susanne Frank.
