Abdulla Aliş

Abdulla Aliş
Birth name	Alişev Ğabdullacan Ğäbdelbari ulı
Role	Poet and leader of Tatarstan
Location	Tatarstan
Born	15th September 1908 (age 53) Kayuki, Russian Empire
Nationality	Tatar
Political party	All Tatar Social Center
Political alignment	Social Nationalist

Alişev Ğabdullacan Ğäbdelbari ulı (Tatar: Алишев Габдуллаҗан Габделбари улы, Russian: Абдулла Бариевич Алишев), best known as Abdulla Aliş, is a Tatar poet, playwright, writer, and nationalist resistance fighter, serving as leader of the Tatar Republic.

Biography

Abdulla Aliş may have been a Soviet citizen, but he is always a Tatar first, and he holds his homeland above all else. A son of a peasant, Aliş became known as one of the foremost Tatar writers and journalists. In the years of World War II, he served in the Red Army and narrowly escaped the German capture near the city of Bryansk. When the Union collapsed, he simply stayed at home. The Tatar Autonomous SSR may have escaped the worst of the war, but thousands of its men were still sent off to never return. More importantly, they got their first taste of real freedom since the abortive Idel-Ural State of 1920. And once they had it, they were not eager to give it up. When the West Russian Revolutionary Front demanded suzerainty, the Tatars only accepted in exchange for significant autonomy and exemption from Russian laws. They had a tense, but peaceful, co-existence with the Front until the West Russian War, when the Russians tried to extend the Red Army draft to the Tatars. The thought of having to spill Tatar blood in a Russian war once again was too much for many to bear, Aliş included.

The Tatar people took up arms, fighting for the freedom they were long denied. Aliş made his name as a national poet and a war hero in the time, renowned for both his battlefield prowess and his rhetorical prowess. When the Soviet army under General Pyotr Gavrilov gave away and retreated further north, people heaped laurels upon Aliş and proposed he be elected mayor of Kazan. Being the highest-ranked civilian official, he was effectively the first President of Tatarstan, and it was his signature that ratified the Tatar constitution. He has helped earn his native land's freedom, and he will fight bitterly to defend it.