Abdurrauf Fitrat

Who was Abdurrauf Fitrat?

Abdurrauf Fitrat was the most prominent modernist figure in Russian Central Asia.

Fitrat was born in Bukhara. In 1909 he went to Istanbul to study literature and history. He returned in 1914, and became involved in cultural activities.He was involved with the Yeni Bukharlylar or Young Bukharians, a revolutionary group modelled on the Young Turks which was active with the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. In 1920 he became Chief minister of economics and minister of education in the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic, but was ousted in 1923. He then worked as a scholar of Central Asian Turkic culture, before being arrested in 1937 as part of the Great Purge. He was executed in 1938.