AKHMET BAITURSYNULY (1872-1937) was a highly influential Kazakh intellectual both creatively and politically. Not only a leading member of the Kazakh nationalist group Alash Orda, Baitursynuly also adapted the Arabic script to be used with the Kazakh language. After his execution in 1937, his work in politics, education, poetry, and linguistics were mostly forgotten. A victim of the Great Purge, his memory has since been rehabilitated and he is appreciated as one of the intellectual forefathers of modern Kazakhstan. These poems come from his distinctly political and most well-known collection Masa (“Mosquito”). They have never before been translated to the English language.

JAKE ZAWLACKI is a writer, translator, and scholar. He holds a master’s degree in Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies from Stanford University and an MFA from Louisiana State University. He has been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to the Kyrgyz Republic and has written scholarly works on Kazakh animation and folklore, and Kyrgyz traditional health practices. His creative work often explores meaning and free will through experimental and metafictional forms and can be found at The Saturday Evening Post, The Journal, and The Citron Review. Additional translations of Akhmet Baitursynuly’s work have been published in Asymptote and Guernica.