Global InformationCholponbai information
 The cover of the second edition | |
| Author | Fedor Samokhin |
|---|---|
| Original title | Чолпонбай |
| Language | Russian, Kyrgyz (fragments) |
| Genre | novel |
| Publisher |
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Publication date | 1958 |
| Publication place | Soviet Union |
| Media type | Print (hard & paperback) |
| Website | Digitized novel in the Internet Archive |
Cholponbai (Russian: Чолпонбай; Kyrgyz: Чолпонбай) is a novel by Soviet writer Fedor Samokhin, published in 1958 by the Kyrgyz State Publishing House and the "Molodaya Gvardiya". It is dedicated to the Hero of the Soviet Union Cholponbai Tuleberdiev, describing his life, the evolution of life views and the growth of self-awareness, starting from childhood. The plot is divided into three chapters: "Schooldays", "Harsh Time" and "The Don steppes on fire", each of which leads the main character to perform a feat. The story also raises topics such as friendship of peoples, women's rights issues, the struggle against patriarchy, cruel methods of parenting and outdated customs.
To write a story based on historical facts, the writer visited the hero's homeland, traveled to the places of battles in which he took part, worked in archives, met personally, and also got acquainted by correspondence with his friends and associates. In critical articles, the novel was called the author's main achievement, the newspaper "Sovetskaya Kultura" attributed it to works that "adorn the multicolored carpet of Kyrgyz literature," and the magazine "Literary Kyrgyzstan" put it on a par with works that are "more widely and comprehensively developed in content, style and aesthetics." In 1982, the novel was republished by the Kyrgyz state educational and pedagogical publishing house "Mektep", in 2019 it was digitized by the Osh Regional Library named T. Satylganov, and in 2020 it was included in the section with materials from the Ministry of Education and Science of Kyrgyzstan for schools of the republic. Fragments were translated into Kyrgyz. Located in the department of rare and especially valuable publications of the National Library of the Kyrgyz Republic.
Fedor Samokhin continued the theme of Cholponbai Tuleberdiev's feat in the essay "Krov'yu serdttsa", which the Belarusian writer Vasil Bykaŭ included in his collection of proze works "Molodye geroi Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny", published in the series "Zhizn' zamechatel'nyh lyudei". In the preface to the collection, Bykov attributed this essay to works "in which everything is not equal," but they are "strong first of all with their genuine sincerity, the desire to convey to posterity the courageous and bright features of young heroes".