Ahmet Baitursynuly was a Kazakh poet, linguist, and political figure who developed a reformed Arabic-based alphabet for the Kazakh language in the early twentieth century — work that made mass literacy campaigns in Kazakhstan genuinely possible. He was arrested during the Stalinist purges and executed in 1937, and like many rehabilitated Soviet-era figures, his public commemoration had to wait until independence made it politically viable.
The 150th anniversary of his birth falls in 2022, calculated from 1872.
Ahmet Baitursynuly was a Kazakh poet, linguist, and political figure who developed a reformed Arabic-based alphabet for the Kazakh language in the early twentieth century — work that made mass literacy campaigns in Kazakhstan genuinely possible. He was arrested during the Stalinist purges and executed in 1937, and like many rehabilitated Soviet-era figures, his public commemoration had to wait until independence made it politically viable.
The 150th anniversary of his birth falls in 2022, calculated from 1872.