Bekmurza Mashevich Pachev

Born Jan. 6 (18), 1854, in the village of Nartan, in what is now the Kabarda-Balkar ASSR; died there Feb. 15, 1936. Soviet Kabardinian poet.

Pachev learned to read and write from fellow villagers. In the 1880’s he devised an alphabet based on Arabic; it was in this alphabet that he wrote his works. In his prerevolutionary poems, such as the long poem The Dagger (1909–10) and the poems “The Wind,” “The Japanese War,” and “Hard Times,” he condemned the world of the rich and powerful. The Revolution of 1905–07 and the uprising of the Kabardinian and Balkar poor in 1913 imbued Pachev’s poetry with a rebellious spirit. He now praised the solitary heroes who opposed the ruling powers, as in The Song of Alikhan Kashirgov. During the period of preparation for the socialist revolution in Russia, Pachev emerged as a poet-defender of the people. In the Soviet period he wrote such poems about the revolution and the new life as “Terek” and “Labor” and praised friendship among nations in the long poems Kabarda (1925) and My Word on Moscow (1935). A pioneer of Soviet Kabardinian literature, Pachev brought to its culmination the poetry of folk bards.