Kasym Tynystanov 

(1901-1938) 

A portrait of Kasym Tynystanov, the ancestor of Kyrgyz written literature, is depicted on the front side of the banknote with denomination of 10 Som.  

Kasym Tynystanov was born in 1901 on the shores of the Issyk-Kul Lake. He published his first poems at the age of 18 years, being a student of the Kazakh-Kyrgyz Institute of Education in Tashkent. K. Tynystanov was a poet, scholar of language and public figure, who had an outstanding executive talent.  

The name of the first Kyrgyz professor, founder of the Kyrgyz literature and linguist K. Tynystanov was not spoken for a long time, as he was repressed in August 1937. K. Tynystanov was rehabilitated in legal (1957) and party (1964) respect after denunciation of the cult of personality by the party and government decision. In 1988, the Bureau of the Communist Party Central Committee of Kyrgyzstan reconsidered the question of him again and established “the need to restore the historical truth” about his literary heritage. The works on Kyrgyz linguistics grammar, plays, poems and literary researches by Kasym Tynystanov were returned to Kyrgyz literature.  

К. K. Tynystanov is among the founders of Kyrgyz written literature - poetry, prose and drama. He is the founder of the Kyrgyz linguistics science; he wrote the works in the field of grammar, syntax, lexicology. K. Tynystanov participated in the creation of Kyrgyz alphabet.  

К. Tynystanov was a bright star among the new Kyrgyz elite. He was fluent in Russian, wrote poetry in Kazakh, and had no trouble reading texts in Uzbek, Uighur, and Azerbaijanian. The diversity of his personality is demonstrated by the fact that he incredibly mastered musical instruments, read by heart large passages from the epos “Manas”, and was the first Kyrgyz literary man who translated into Kyrgyz the hymn “International” and the fables by I.A. Krylov.  

The report “Basic principles of creating a new alphabet”, made in 1926 at the 1st Congress of Turkologists in Baku, became a fundamental document in formation of the new Kyrgyz alphabet and the first scientific discovery in Kyrgyz linguistics. K. Tynystanov drafted the orthography of the Kyrgyz literary language, the first textbooks of the Kyrgyz language “Okuu kitebi” (“Book for reading”), “Chondor uchun alippe” (“ABC book for adults”), “Bizdin til” (“Our language”) and “Kyrgyz tilinin morphologiyasy zhana syntaxisi” (“Morphology and syntax of the Kyrgyz language”). He had also compiled the dictionary of linguistic terms, published in 1933.  

The name of Tynystanov was immortalized in the name of the street in Bishkek and pedagogical institute in Karakol. The bust was installed and the house-museum of K. Tynystanov was opened in his native village of Chyrpykty in Issyk-Kul.