Dmitry Gulia

Who was Dmitry Gulia?

Dmitry Gulia was an Abkhazian Soviet writer and poet, considered to be one of the founders of Abkhaz literature.

Dmitry Iosifovich Gulia was born to a peasant family in Uarcha village, in the modern Gulripsh District of Abkhazia. Gulia studied at a teacher seminary in the city of Gori. In 1892 together with Konstantin Machavariani he compiled Abkhaz alphabet based on Cyrillic characters. In his poetry collection the poet expressed the hopes of Abkhaz people for the beautiful future and hatred towards any injustice. In 1921 Gulia organized and headed the first Abkhaz theater group. He was an editor of the first Abkhaz newspaper Apsny. His diverse activities reached the culmination in the Soviet times. His lyrics are penetrated with the pathos of creation, friendship, and unity of nations. Gulia wrote the first Abkhaz novella, Under Someone Else's Sky. In the novel Kamachich, he depicted the life of Abkhazians during the czarism and joyless destiny of a woman. Gulia's role in Abkhaz culture development is enormous. He authored works on language, history, and ethnography of the Abkhaz, chrestomathies and textbooks. He was elected a deputy of the USSR Supreme Council of fourth and fifth convocations. He was awarded the Order of Lenin. He held in the newspaper Apsny, that he created, a weekly rubric about abkhazian dominoes.