“500 women set themselves on fire” — The writer who made the Kremlin tremble through the word granted by Karimov

“500 women set themselves on fire” — The writer who shook the Kremlin with a speech arranged by Karimov

“If I were to put my entire body of work on one side of the scale, I would put this single speech on the other...”

Why did the author of the novel *“Ulugbek’s Treasure”*, which has been translated into nearly 60 languages of the world, and the writer who won the hearts of millions of readers with his works *“Conscience”* and *“The Ancient World”*, consider his forty-year literary legacy equal to a single lecture at the end of his life?

What was the journey like for a frail teenager whose rifle dragged on the ground, returning alive from the Gobi deserts, to exposing the hypocrisy of the entire empire's leaders at the Kremlin Palace in Moscow in 1989?

This article tells the story of the event-filled life of the writer Odil Yokubov who, as he himself admitted, “wrote and wrote about justice, yet lived longing for justice himself.”

### Two fires in Qarnoq: The regret of ice cream and a mother at the chalk factory

Odil Yokubov was born on October 20, 1926, in the village of Qarnoq, located in the present-day Turkestan District of the South Kazakhstan Region. In the household where the future writer grew up, two irreconcilable poles collided: on one side was a hot-tempered and strict grandfather — Yokub Sheikh, and on the other was a communist father — Egamberdi Yokubov, who had returned from forced labor and turned into a fierce promoter of Soviet rule. In his memoirs of “Qarnoq,” the writer openly wrote about the ceaseless arguments under one roof between his grandfather and his party-official father, as each fought believing their own truth to be the sole justice.

On quiet winter nights when political debates fell silent, the guest room would fill with neighbors. His father would retrieve a Russian copy of *“One Thousand and One Nights”* printed in 1905 from the bedding niche, and without reading it, thoughtfully turning its pages, he would tell fairy tales until the roosters crowed. Leaning against his father's knees, Odil listened to these stories without blinking an eye.

The fairy tales ended in 1937. When Odil turned 10 years old, the Soviet regime branded its loyal servant Egamberdi Yokubov an “enemy of the people” and arrested him; he never returned. The pain of the innocently imprisoned father, who left with the unfulfilled regret of not being able to buy his son even a single ice cream, and the suffering of the boy who was ostracized as the “son of an enemy of the people” in the neighborhood, were later woven into the short story *“Ice Cream”*.

“In this world, both good and evil return to you, my child. Your father returned from forced labor as a communist and made many people cry tears of blood. Wanting to make the poor rich, the rich and merchants poor, and aiming to expose religious people, he burned down the homes of so many poor wretches. It was retribution; now, it has all come back to him.”

Gulshan-aya was left without a breadwinner to care for her four children. The woman got a job at a chalk factory, where all day long she melted chalk, poured it into molds, dried it, and fed her children. As the eldest son after two older sisters, the burden of the household fell on Odil's shoulders very early.

### The Japanese girl’s “slap”

The teenager who graduated from school in 1944 could not bear carrying the label of “child of an enemy of the people.” To clear his father's name, he adjusted his birth year to be one year older (correcting his documents to 1926) and volunteered for the war in 1945. He was physically somewhat frail, and the rifle slung over his shoulder dragged along the ground. In the soldier’s duffel bag was Abdulla Qodiriy’s novel *“Days Gone By”*, which he read over and over and memorized during grueling marches.

The scenes of the Soviet-Japanese War of 1945 are depicted in their full reality in the writer’s novellas *“I Am Searching”* and *“Where Are You, Moriko?”*: soldiers who traversed two thousand kilometers of the Gobi desert on foot, their clothes bursting at the seams leaving them in footwraps, their hair and beards overgrown like thorns, were dumped like “matches” onto the hills around Port Arthur from red railway cars “packed like canned herring.”

Because of his neat handwriting, Major Misha Nogov took the young Uzbek soldier to the headquarters as a secretary and personal house servant. The seaside cottage occupied by the major had previously belonged to a Japanese rear admiral. After the defeat, stripped of all his titles, the old general lived cramped in a narrow hut at the edge of the courtyard with his two daughters — Chiko-san, whose kamikaze husband had died, and his youngest daughter, Moriko.

As depicted in the novella *“Where Are You, Moriko?”*, a first adolescent love blossoms between the young soldier and little Moriko. One day, entering her former room, the Japanese girl becomes sad looking at the bare walls.

To the Uzbek soldier's question: “Why did you take away the pictures you drew and the embroideries you stitched yourself?”

Moriko answered fiercely: “Why should I leave the pictures I drew and the embroideries I stitched with love to the soldiers who humiliated us!?”

The tragedy of the Japanese family, who maintained their pride despite being defeated, and the fate of the major whose epaulettes were torn off and who was dismissed from the army for “falling in love,” were stamped into the young soldier’s memory for life.

“Do you know, a creator must, above all, have pain. A creator without pain cannot become a great writer.”

(Odil Yokubov)

### “The child of Soyuzpechat”

After six years of service, in 1950, Odil Yokubov returned to his village. The girl he loved, who was supposed to wait for him in Qarnoq, had been married off to someone else by her parents who could not bear the long separation (this regret later formed the basis for the novella *“The Gold Ring”*).

In 1951, he entered the Faculty of Philology at the Central Asian State University, and that same year, his first major work — the novella *“Peers”* — was published in the newspaper *“Lenin Uchquni”* and became famous. In the summer of 1952, Maryamkhon, a female student who went on holiday from Tashkent to Qarnoq, the land of her ancestors, heard that the author of *“Peers”* was temporarily working as a salesman in the village shop in place of his sister.

The girls entered the shop under the pretext of buying a coat. Standing behind the counter, the young writer looked closely at the customer and paid her a compliment: “It suits you very well, you look radiant... Actually, it seems you made the coat look good, just like a full moon.” Then, so that the girl would not leave the shop quickly, he deliberately folded the coat slowly and counted the money again and again… the rest is a romantic story. However, even though the girl's grandfathers, who were religious scholars, strongly opposed marrying off their granddaughter to the son of a communist, who was moreover 11 years older than her and a homeless young man who “could not support a family by writing books,” the determination of the young people prevailed.

After the wedding, they lived in a rented two-room apartment in Tashkent — sharing a piece of bread equally in one room with the young newlyweds, and in the other with his mother Gulshan-aya, his sisters' orphaned children, his younger brother, and his nephews. At night, Odil Yokubov would write works at a single table, and during the day, if guests arrived, the tablecloth would be spread on that very same table.

At the end of 1955, his drama *“True Love”* was staged at the National Theater, followed by the plays *“If I Speak My Tongue Burns, If I Don't My Heart Burns”*, *“The Heart Must Burn”*, and *“When the Apples Bloom”*, which brought the family out of poverty. They were given a one-room apartment in the Writers' Union building near the Amir Timur square.

However, society's attitude toward the writer was mediocre: when Maryamkhon-aya went to see the kindergarten director intending to enroll her sons, the director, upon hearing that her husband worked at the Writers' Union, rejected her saying, “I don't need a child of Soyuzpechat,” and all four children grew up without attending kindergarten.

### Qahhor's “bone and meat” condition

The novella *“Muqaddas”*, published in 1960, brought great fame to Odil Yokubov. Abdulla Qahhor, who did not favor lyrical prose, initially opposed the publication of the novella, supporting it only after the work received praise. After the novella came out, the author received a sack of letters from readers — one of the letters was signed by 182 people. Years later, in 1998, Chingiz Aitmatov, who visited the writer’s home as a guest, admitted: “Adil! My *'Jamila'* and *'My Little Poplar in a Red Headscarf'* came out in Russian. In fact, if your *'Muqaddas'* had been published earlier, you would have become even more famous than me.”

The writer's work as a special correspondent for Uzbekistan for Moscow's prestigious *“Literaturnaya Gazeta”* in 1959–1963 and 1967–1970 sharpened his pen. As the writer recalled, there was a secret decision by the Politburo in the former Union to the effect of “let at least one newspaper write the truth.” Taking advantage of this loophole, the correspondent would follow up on complaint letters from ordinary people, publishing sharp court essays and securing the release of unjustly imprisoned individuals.

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At this point, if we recall an article by Abdulla Qahhor, in 1967, ahead of the master writer's 60th anniversary jubilee, Odil Yokubov contacted Valentina Pankina, a representative of *“Literaturnaya Gazeta”*, and agreed to publish the master writer's article. Qahhor then set a strict condition:

“If they print my article without laying a finger on it, without cuts, I will write it. But if they snip it, throw the meat into the trash, and publish only the bones, it's better they print nothing at all.”

In the article written by Qahhor, the hard labor of our female cotton growers and the bitter sarcasm directed at some superficial writers who depicted young women going into the fields in satin dresses, dancing to the accompaniment of trumpets and drums in forty-degree heat, were highlighted. The article was published during the very days when harvest preparation conventions were underway; it struck famous machine operators Tursunoy Akhunova and Valentina Tyupko like a scorpion sting and caused a massive uproar in the republic.

### The author who put the party committee secretary in his place

The period from 1970 to 1982, when he worked as deputy editor-in-chief at the Gafur Gulom Publishing House, became the golden era of Odil Yokubov's creative work. Having read a short news item in the newspaper *“Pravda Vostoka”* about Mirzo Ulugbek's books being hidden and buried in the mountains by Ali Qushchi, the writer lost his peace and, after a year of research, completed the famous novel *“Ulugbek’s Treasure”* in 1973–1974.

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However, before the work was published, it met with fierce opposition in the “Small Hall” of the Writers' Union. The discussion was led by Rahmat Fayzi, the secretary of the union's party committee. The words of the party committee secretary carried the weight of a court verdict in that era. Rahmat Fayzi held two sheets of paper close to his eyes and, starting off with “the work is good, but I have some minor observations,” criticized the novel for an hour. Those sitting in the hall formed the conclusion that “the novel needs to be rewritten” and felt sympathy for the author.

When Rahmat Fayzi tried to close the discussion, Odil Yokubov, who was sitting flushed and red-faced, jumped to his feet and abruptly cut off the party committee secretary:

“If I may speak for myself, my words are these: I, for example, do not accept a single one of your opinions. I cannot accept them, comrades!.. I wrote this novel! I know it, for example, very well... If you write on this topic, please, write it the way you said. But do not dictate to someone else... At long last, whatever kind of writer you are, I am that same kind of writer...

If this novel is not published by your command, let it remain unpublished...”.

In a time when most writers bowed their heads to criticism and promised to “correct their mistakes,” defending one's work in such a manner was a true rebellion. The novel was published without changes. Chingiz Aitmatov wrote a special article in *“Literaturnaya Gazeta”*, placing the image of Ulugbek alongside Copernicus and Galileo, and in 1977, the work was awarded the Hamza State Prize.

### “Not a single one of them read it”

Odil Yokubov was equally uncompromising toward flattery in literature. When the mediocre novel *“How Man Was Tempered”* by official writer Ibrohim Rahim was discussed in the reception room of the head of the union, Komil Yashin, chief ideologist Laziz Qayumov praised the work to the skies while rolling a dried apricot around his left cheek with his tongue, and Ramz Babajan flatteringly claimed, “I couldn't get enough of reading it three times.” When the young prose writer Shukur Kholmirzaev could not bear it and pointed out that a young man falling from a crane and pondering for 20 pages until he hit the ground and surviving as if on a parachute was a complete lie, everyone pounced on him.

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Then Odil Yokubov stood up, red-faced and suffocating with anger:

“Comrades, how long will we judge a literary work based solely on its theme? Let us, at least in this tight circle of ours, talk about real literature! If we don't tell the truth to Ibrohim-aka, won't we be betraying our literature? As for Shukur's words, our young friend told the truth!” and he left the meeting.

Once out on the street, he snickered to Shukur Kholmirzaev: “Can you believe it, neither Laziz, nor Ramz Babajan, nor Narbay read that novel.”

During his years at the publishing house, he also fiercely defended Pirimqul Qodirov's novel *“Starry Nights”* from attacks, while himself creating in succession the novels *“Conscience”* (1977) and *“The Ancient World”* (1982), dedicated to the tragedy of Avicenna and Biruni.

### “Who is going to read this wretched thing?”

In 1982, Odil Yokubov was appointed editor-in-chief of the newspaper *“O‘zbekiston Adabiyoti va San’ati”* (Literature and Art of Uzbekistan). When he started, the newspaper's circulation was around 40,000 copies, but by 1987, the print run reached nearly 1 million.

The editor-in-chief hated verbose, watered-down articles and the dry, official news coming from “TASS” and UzTAG more than anything. If the staff member on duty said, “This is political material, it cannot be cut,” he would say in his characteristic dialect: “As long as the titles and surnames are written correctly, that's enough. Who writes such stale articles? Who is going to read this wretched thing? It only repels the reader from the newspaper, that's all!” and he would cut it right in half.

Kind-hearted by nature, Odil Yokubov would make threats during meetings: “My late grandfather Yokub Sheikh was a very hot-tempered man. If I get angry, I can be very bad too.” But if he issued a reprimand to a staff member during a meeting, within three or four hours he would call them into his office, show them the order, and say: “Just don't do such things a second time, my dear friend,” and tear up the paper.

In 1985, the writer was awarded the title of “People's Writer of Uzbekistan,” and from 1987 to 1991, he headed the Writers' Union of Uzbekistan.

### The speech that froze the Kremlin

From May 25 to June 9, 1989, the First Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR was held in Moscow. During the days of the convention, deputy Odil Yokubov lost his peace: on one hand, constant phone calls came from Tashkent, with reproaches like, “Are the deputies from Uzbekistan too busy going from shop to shop in Moscow?” and on the other hand, a female Uzbek deputy took the podium and brazenly denounced Academician Andrey Sakharov in a 1937-style fashion, bringing shame upon the face of the nation.

A day before the convention ended, Islam Karimov met Odil Yokubov in the foyer and asked: “If you happen to get a chance to speak, you won't make us embarrassed, will you? What are you planning to say?” After the writer briefly explained his purpose, Islam Karimov promised to try to arrange it, and on June 9, he secured a floor for him. Having forgotten his speech notes at the hotel out of excitement, the writer took a taxi, sped to the hotel and back, and stepped up to the podium the moment Anatoly Lukyanov announced his name.

Breaking the habit of singing praises to the Party, Odil Yokubov began his speech with a mocking conversation he overheard in the foyer between two women: “Why are the Uzbeks whining so much about their cotton? Did they ever even have a spiritual world?”

He spoke out loudly from the Kremlin podium about how Stalin’s slogan of “cotton independence” had destroyed hundreds of thousands of hectares of Uzbek orchards; about the tragedy of Uzbek women working 12 hours without time off in the scorching summer heat, burning dried dung in stoves at night to cook thin broth for their children, contracting cancer, jaundice, and anemia due to toxic chemicals, and “resembling scorched, burned birch trees”; and how nearly 500 women had set themselves on fire in the past two years, unable to endure this tyranny.

“Even the hard-hearted white farmers in the American South fed their slaves thoroughly in order to get a healthy, fit offspring capable of work. Thus, two-meter-tall Black strongmen were born, whose descendants are today the crowning glory of American sports and art.

Well, what about our children in the villages? As a result of living in hunger and poverty (with only 20 kilograms of meat per capita) and performing heavy labor, they are not even being drafted into the army. And even if they are taken, they only serve in construction battalions!”

Odil Yokubov from his speech on June 9, 1989 Turning to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Nikolai Ryzhkov, who was presiding over the meeting, the writer presented the exact arithmetic of the plundering: before the revolution, a Russian merchant gave 18 poods of wheat for one pood of cotton. The Soviet state, however, pays an average of 50 kopecks for a kilogram of cotton, which yields at least two men's shirts worth 50 rubles, whereas at the Alay Bazaar in Tashkent, half a kilogram of cucumbers costs 50 kopecks too! In the words of Ozod Sharafiddinov, these words were “a slap in the face to the cunning Soviet colonizers.”

In the second part of his speech, responding to Boris Yeltsin, who claimed that Russia had been feeding the other republics for 70 years and had become impoverished itself, he recounted the tale of Khoja Nasruddin and the dervishes’ “shared” soup: while those who contributed meat, fat, and rice looked on, a beggar mullah who brought a single garlic bulb tried to eat more soup than anyone else, prompting Khoja Nasruddin to hit him on the head with a wooden spoon; he noted that today, if you hit your neighbor on the head with a spoon, he will strike back with a ladle, and demanded the disclosure of the secret statistics instituted by Stalin.

To the KGB Chairman Kryuchkov, he offered a bitter sarcastic remark, telling him not to look for spies in creative unions, “because we will probably finish eating each other's flesh in our own unions anytime soon.”

When Lukyanov turned on the red light with a sullen look, thunderous applause erupted in the hall. Descending from the podium, Odil Yokubov saw Academician Andrey Sakharov standing up in the hall, his face glowing with a smile, applauding him. When Sakharov passed away two to three months later, Odil Yokubov was the only person from Uzbekistan who traveled to Moscow to bid farewell at the scientist's coffin.

### “Who would take me as a groom?”: Solitude after office and final confession

During the years of independence, Odil Yokubov served as the Chairman of the Terminology Committee under the Cabinet of Ministers (from 1991) and the First Vice-President of the Assembly of Cultures of Central Asian Peoples (from 1995). After the novel *“Swans, Pure White Birds”* (1988), he created the works *“Muzaffar Timur”* (1996), *“The Address of Justice”* (1998), *“Secrets of a Mansion”* (2000), and *“Sinful Servant”*. He was awarded the Order of “Do‘stlik” (Friendship) in 1994 and the Order of “El-Yurt Hurmati” (Respect of the Nation) in 1998.

However, in the declining years of his life, after leaving his official post and deputy seats, the writer also witnessed false disciples and friends turning their backs on him — those who once ate from his table and hovered around him.

“They view the Writers' Union merely as a supermarket that hands out awards... It is a true reality that I, the humble one, at times wrote and wrote about justice, yet lived longing for justice myself; I sang and spoke of justice, only to end up degraded by the lack of it... For me, the greatest justice is that my Homeland is independent and my people are free. Is there any Greater Justice than this?”

Extremely modest in life, the writer — who, when his children told him to “wear another shirt, another raincoat,” would laugh and say, “Who would take me as a groom?”; who could not swallow a bite of food on days when flour dishes were cooked at home without inviting his ordinary neighbors from the street; and who opened his heart to his loyal wife at the end of his life, saying, “I loved you more than my life, but I never betrayed you” — fell at the age of 83 and broke his leg.

Having lied unconscious for a month, Odil Yokubov passed away on December 21, 2009, in Tashkent and was buried in the Chigatai Cemetery. On May 28, 2026, the writer who was able to bring the nation's pain to the highest podium was posthumously awarded the Order “Buyuk Xizmatlari Uchun” (For Great Services).