Paper short abstract:

Being presented by Gultas Kurmanbay

Paper long abstract:

Chingiz Aitmatov became one of the most popular writers of the 20th century. In the mid-'80s his works have already translated into 150 languages. Aitmatov's literary talent and the relevance of the problems raised in his works raised increased interest of people all over the world, including English-speaking readers.

Many studies have been carried out on the works of bilingual and bicultural writer Chingiz Aitmatov. In his works, he makes extensive use of realities reflecting the lifestyle, religion, culture and history not only Kyrgyz, but also many peoples of Central Asia. For instance, the first difficult years of Soviet power, the first steps of the Cultural Revolution are reflected in his "First teacher". Aitmatov managed to create an image of "Duishen", a rural teacher, who himself can barely read and write, trying as hard as he could to tear off the dark children of his fellow villagers from their ignorance and unwillingness to be educated. At the same time, he used the bright example of a small village to show darkness, illiteracy of people, unwillingness to teach their children (Abytov, 2013). From this work, it is possible to understand the difficulties of educational processes in the young Soviet countries at that period.

The hard time of Great Patriotic War is also appears in the works of author. In his works, he raises the heroism and courage of women, the social and political issues, and the problem of desertion. For instance, in the novel "Face to Face" Aitmatov realistically shows the hard life of people in the rear and reveals the topic of desertion, which until then could not be portrayed due to the ideological situation in the country, and for the first time in the story, the writer poses ethical problems. A complete historical drama, where the author was one of the first in the former Soviet Union who raised the problem of desertion during the period of war (Arystanbekova, 2014). This is one of the historical facts in the life all the peoples of the Soviet Union.

According to Schneidman (1989), the reason of Aitmatov's success in the Soviet Union was revealing universal global problems in his works and Soviet truth, which is relevant to many Soviet nations. Based on this, this paper attempts to analyses the social and ethnographic issues of the people of Soviet era in the works of Aitmatov.