Tynyshpaev, Muhamedzhan Tynyshpaevich ( 1879—1937 )

Mukhamedzhan Tynyshpaevich Tynyshpayev, ( Kazakh Mukhametzhan Tynyshbayuly ; May 12, 1879 , foothills of Zhilandy, Makanchi-Sadyrovskaya volost , Lepsinsky district , Semirechensk region , Russian Empire  – November 21, 1937 , Tashkent , Uzbek SSR , USSR ) – Kazakh public figure, historian, deputy Second State Duma of Russia , first prime minister of the Turkestan Autonomy , member of the Alash Orda , first Kazakh railway engineer, active participant in the design and construction of the Turkestan-Siberian Railway . Repressed in 1937 , rehabilitated in 1970 .

Biography 

Born on May 12 , 1879 in the foothills of Zhilandy, Makanchi-Sadyrovsky district, Lepsinsky district, Semirechensk region . (Exact place of birth: latitude 45°38.348′N, longitude 80°42.073′E). His father, Tynyshbay, came from the Kazakh clan Sadyr of the Naiman tribe, and was a member of the land committee created by the military governor of Semirechye, General G. A. Kolpakovsky . In 1889, he took his son to the city of Verny to study. Mukhamedzhan successfully completed a two-year preparatory class, after which he began studying at the Vernensky men’s gymnasium . For successful studies, he constantly received certificates for good academic performance. According to his gymnasium characteristics

… Tynyshpayev with great and constant interest began to study Russian history and the history of Russian literature and culture, in particular, he early turned out to be equally capable of studying mathematics, and the study of ancient and other languages, and Russian literature.

In 1899 he graduated from the Vernensky gymnasium with a gold medal. According to his son Iskander, after Mukhamedzhan announced his intention to obtain higher education, the governor of the Turkestan region arranged for him another additional difficult exam. Based on the results of this exam, Mukhamedzhan was awarded a personal scholarship. In 1900 he entered the Imperial Institute of Railway Engineers named after Alexander I in St. Petersburg thanks to the petition of the director of the Vernenskaya men’s gymnasium M. Vakhrushev, which indicated that

… pupil Tynyshpayev is in all respects an exemplary student and, moreover, of outstanding ability, and therefore I consider it my duty to earnestly ask Your Excellency to provide the scholarship at your disposal to Tynyshpayev, without which he will not be able to continue his education at a higher educational institution.

In St. Petersburg he lived in a Turkestan hostel, which was organized by order of the Governor-General of Semirechye. He was taken into full maintenance and was paid 420 rubles annually, of which 60 rubles were given at a time for the purchase of necessary clothing, shoes and school supplies. The internship took place in the steppes of Kazakhstan, where at that time the Orenburg  – Tashkent railway was being built .

In 1905 , he passed the final exams, defended his course project “Construction of the Turkestan-Siberian Railway” and received a diploma as a railway engineer with the right to draw up projects and carry out all kinds of construction work and with the right to the rank of collegiate secretary upon entering the civil service. So he became the first Kazakh railway engineer.

Start of work 

In 1906, he began working as an engineer on the reconstruction of the Central Asian Railway from Krasnovodsk to Chardzhou , and took an active part in the construction of a bridge made of metal structures instead of the old wooden one across the Amu Darya River .

On April 3, 1907, he was elected to the State Duma of the 2nd convocation from the indigenous population of the Semirechensk region. Arrived in St. Petersburg on April 26, 1907. He was a member of the Muslim faction and the Siberian group. Member of the Agrarian Commission. He advocated the reconciliation of national and Kazakh national interests. On June 1 , 1907, the Chairman of the Russian Council of Ministers, Pyotr Stolypin, accused 55 deputies of conspiring against the royal family. The Duma was dissolved by decree of Tsar Nicholas II on June 3 ( June Third Coup ). Returned from St. Petersburg to the Turkestan region .

In 1907, he participated in the survey expedition of A. Golembievsky to study the route of the future Turkestan-Siberian Railway in the south, from Arys station to the Ili River.

From 1907 to 1910 he worked as an engineer for special assignments on the construction of the Ashgabat  – Tashkent railway .

From 1911 he worked as a department head and then as a chief engineer of the railway construction of the Ursatievskaya  – Andijan section .

In 1914, he moved to the construction of the southern part of the Semirechenskaya road (the beginning of Turksib ), where he worked as the head of a small section of the railway line, and then as the chief engineer of the line from Arys to Aulie-Ata (now Taraz ).

In 1916, he participated in the uprising of the Kazakh population in the Steppe Territory; was arrested.

Brief political career 

After the February revolution of 1917, in April, by decision of the Provisional Government, the Turkestan Committee was created in Tashkent to resolve local issues of governing the Turkestan region , which included M. Tynyshpayev, as a former member of the 2nd State Duma of Russia .

In July 1917, as a delegate from the Semirechensk region, he participated in the First All-Kyrgyz Congress in Orenburg and was nominated as a delegate to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly . At the end of 1917, he was elected to it in the Semirechensky electoral district on list No. 2 (socialist bloc).

In November 1917, he was elected Prime Minister of the Turkestan Autonomy in Kokand , but due to differences of views with the elected Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mustafa Chokai, he left his post and went to Tashkent, giving him his place. Chokay, as the Prime Minister of the Turkestan Autonomy , participated in December 1917 in the II All-Kyrgyz Congress in Orenburg , where Alash (Kazakh) autonomy was proclaimed, and became part of the Alash-Orda government, chaired by Alikhan Bukeikhanov .

Soviet era 

In 1919 , when Soviet power was established in Turkestan and the Steppe Territory, he went over to its side. In 1921, he was appointed head of the Water Management Department of the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture of the Turkestan Territory in Tashkent . In 1922, the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture appointed him to a similar position in Chimkent . On July 22 , 1922, he lost his wife Gulbahram, the mother of his three children: Iskander, Fatima and Dina, who died of cholera . After this he returned to Tashkent .

In 1924, he was invited to the Kazakh Pedagogical Institute, which opened in Tashkent, to work as a teacher of mathematics and physics (Now it is the Kazakh National Pedagogical University named after Abai, located in Alma-Ata). During this period, he collected information about the origin of the zhuz, described the history of Kazakh clans, compiled tables for the genealogy of clans with brief descriptions of the life and death of khans, batyrs, biys, akyns, and also gave lectures on this topic at the Turkestan department of the Russian Geographical Society . Published research: “Koksu burial ground and the ancient settlement of Kailak”, “Historical information on the tribal composition of the population of the Tashkent district”, “Kazakhs in the 17th-18th centuries”, “Victories and defeats of the Kazakhs”, “Materials on the history of the Kyrgyz-Cossack people”. He devoted a lot of time to social work and dissemination of knowledge.

In 1925, he was offered the position of chief engineer for the improvement of the city of Perovsk (formerly Ak-Mosque), renamed Kyzyl-Orda (Red Capital) in connection with the transfer here from Orenburg of the new capital of the Cossack Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic . Under his leadership, residential buildings and administrative buildings made of brick were erected, the Sarkyram Canal was designed and built to provide Kzyl-Orda with drinking water.

In 1925, he married Aziza Shalymbekova, but their marriage did not last long, and she and her little daughter Enlik moved to Moscow.

On March 1 , 1926, he left for Alma-Ata and began working as the head of the road department of the Semirechensk province – a paved road Alma-Ata – Pishpek was built, surveys were carried out for the construction of the Alma-Ata – Taldy-Kurgan road, a new version of the road was proposed Almaty – Khorgos .

Family 

Mukhametzhan Tynyshpayev with his wife Gulbakhram Shalymbekova, Verny, 1920Iskander Tynyshpayev on a postage stamp of Kazakhstan , 2009

• His first wife, Gulbahram Shalymbekova, died in 1923 from cholera.

  • The son from his first marriage, Iskander Mukhamedzhanovich Tynyshpayev(1909, Ashgabat – 1995, Almaty) is a cinematographer and film director. He graduated from VGIK in 1933, after his father’s arrest he was repressed and spent 10 years in the Gulag. Member of the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR (since 1958), People’s Artist of Kazakhstan (1994). Iskander Tynyshpayev left two daughters – Marina and Elena. Marina is a teacher of the deaf, the wife of the famous Kazakh singer Alibek Dnishev , Elena is a journalist for one of the republican TV channels.

  • Dina Mukhamedzhanovna Butina (1912-2005), daughter from her first marriage, graduated from the Moscow Institute of Non-Ferrous Metals, worked as a mining engineer in Magadan, and in recent years lived in Alma-Ata. Her husband Aitzhan Mukhamedzhanovich Butin (1906-2003) is a prominent statesman of the Kazakh SSR. Dina Mukhamedzhanovna’s son, Isatay Butin, was the chief doctor in Almaty, now retired, Isatay’s wife, Mereke Butin, is the head of the trade unions of medical workers in Kazakhstan.

  • Fatima, a daughter from her first marriage, died in 1996, her daughter Nazifa, a candidate of medical sciences, is also no longer alive.

• The second wife of Aziza Shalymbekova, before her marriage to Tynyshpayev, was the wife of his brother-in-law from his first marriage, Saduakas Shalymbekov, who died the same year as his sister in 1923, married Mukhamedzhan Tynyshpayev according to the custom of the Amenger.

  • The daughter from her second marriage, Enlik Malybaeva, was born in 1926, worked until her retirement as the head of the department of foreign languages ​​at the Polytechnic Institute in Almaty, died in 2009 at the age of 83. Two of her daughters live in America, another daughter and son live in Alma-Ata.

• Wife by third marriage Tynyshpayeva Amina Ibragimovna – nee Emine (Amina) Ibragimovna Sheikh-Ali, cousin of Daud Makhmudovich Sheikh-Ali (1879-1954), scientist-breeder of the Alma-Ata experimental station, professor (1927-1944).

  • The son from his third marriage, Davlet Mukhamedzhanovich Sheikh-Ali – born on February 10, 1931 was named in honor of Tynyshpayeva Amina Ibragimovna’s grandfather – Davlet-Murza Magomedovich Sheikh-Ali (1811-1880) – the first ethnographer of Dagestan, lieutenant colonel of the Russian army, Governor of the Administration of the Mohammedan peoples wandering in the Stavropol province. He lived his whole life in Ufa: he graduated from school and college, and worked at the UFNII – BashNIPIneft – for almost half a century. During this time, Davlet Sheikh-Ali-Tynyshpayev defended his candidate and doctoral thesis, and went from an engineer to the head of the scientific department of the institute – the department of properties of reservoir fluids. The doctoral dissertation is devoted to the dynamics of the properties of oils depending on the time of operation of the fields. In 2005, he moved to his father’s homeland in Alma-Ata. Currently, he lives alternately in Alma-Ata , Ufa , and Chicago .

    • Grandson Askar Davletovich Sheikh-Ali, a metallurgy physicist, having worked for several years at the National Laboratory of High Magnetic Fields(USA, Florida, Tallahassee) and defended his doctoral dissertation in Canada ( McGill University ), returned to Kazakhstan, now a professor at the Kazakh-British Technical University in Alma-Ata.

Later years and death 

Bust of Mukhamedzhan Tynyshpayev in Almaty

In January 1927, at the urgent proposal of Turar Ryskulov, he was included in the Committee to Promote the Construction of Turksib , created in December 1926 . He took an active part in the training of “road operation agents”; on his initiative, courses were created in which 60 young Kazakhs studied. He was involved in the development of a project (known as the Chokpar option) for laying a railway track through the Chokpar Pass, which saved 25 million rubles and reduced the construction period of Turksib by almost a year . In 1928, he insisted on the Balkhash version of the route as opposed to the Lepsinsky one, thanks to which about a million rubles were saved during construction and one hundred thousand rubles a year during the operation of the railway. Worked to correct the error of the design engineer for the construction of the Alma-Ata-I station.

In September 1929, the head of construction of Turksib, V.S. Shatov, issued a decree on the formation of a special service within the production department of Turksib – a part of the track, the head of which was appointed M. Tynyshpayev.

In April 1930, he married a second time – to Amina Sheikh-Ali, the niece of his old friend Daoud Sheikh-Ali. Amina Sheikh-Ali accompanied her relative Magiparvaz Sheikh-Ali (wife of Major General Mahmud Sheikh-Ali , nee Alkinu) on a trip from Ufa to Alma-Ata, who at the end of December 1929 was warned by an OGPU employee about the impending arrest and was forced to leave Ufa.

On August 3 , 1930, he was arrested following a denunciation, but after a long investigation, no criminal evidence was found. During his next arrest, he was charged with the events of 1917, when he was briefly prime minister of the Turkestan Autonomy, and on April 20, 1932, the troika under the OGPU PP sentenced him to 5 years of exile in Voronezh .

Under supervision, he worked in the technical department of the Directorate for the Construction of the New Moscow  – Donetsk Railway .

After returning from exile in 1936, he went to the construction of the Kandagach  – Guriev railway , where he caught a bad cold and got sick, after which he returned to Tashkent. Fearing a new arrest, he sent his wife Amina with her five-year-old son Davlet to her relatives in Ufa, where, at his insistence, she gave her son her last name – Sheikh-Ali.

On November 21 , 1937 , he was arrested again as a former member of the “ Alash Orda ” and shot as an “ enemy of the people .”

On September 29, 1959, he was rehabilitated by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Kazakh SSR, and in February 1970  – by the USSR Prosecutor’s Office and the Military Prosecutor of the Turkestan Military District.

Memory 

• In the Central Museum of Railway Transport of Kazakhstan, a separate section is dedicated to the first Kazakh railway engineer Mukhamedzhan Tynyshpayev, which contains numerous documents, photographs, a number of publications in the press, and there is a documentary film made by the son of Mukhamedzhan Tynyshpayev, Iskander, during his years of study at VGIK.

• In Almaty,a street in the Turksib district was renamed in honor of Mukhamedzhan Tynyshpayev. There is a memorial plaque installed on the house where he lived.

• Tynyshpayev’s name was given to the Kazakh Academy of Transport and Communications, where his bust was installed on September 13, 2000 .

• A monument to M. Tynyshpayev was erected in the city of Sarkand(2007).

• In the city of Astana,near the railway station, there is also a street named after Mukhamedzhan Tynyshpayev.

• In the city of Ust-Kamenogorskin 2019, Oktyabrskaya Street was renamed Tynyshpayeva Street.

• Almaty Regional Museum of History and Local Lore named after M. Tynyshpayevin Taldykorgan