In honor of Asanin Idris, 1927 - 2007

Today at the library there was an event celebrating the memory of the Crimean Tatar poet, essayist, and leader of the national movement, Asanin Idris (1927-2007). The Reading Hall was packed to overflowing with people coming to honor this important figure in Crimean Tatar culture.

Asanin Idris was born in 1927 in the village of Sala-Foti (Golubinka) in the district of Bakhchisaray. In 1944 the family was deported to the Samarkand region of Uzbekistan. All of his family with the exception of one sister perished during the deportation and in the refugee camps afterwards. Even as a young person in Crimea, Asanin rebelled against the sufferings and injustices of his people. The poetry be began to write in his youth became, after deportation, poetry of the feelings of his people, exiled from their native lands.

As a result of his writings, Asanin was arrested in 1950 while in his third year of study at the History Teachers' Training Institute, and was sentenced to 25 years of hard labor. After Stalin's death his sentence was reduced and in 1956, he was released. After returning from the camps, Asanin continued his studies at the Institute and completed his course in 1961. He worked in various construction jobs in Samarkand and then received a diploma in civil engineering through the correspondence department of the Tashkent Polytechnic Institute.

Asanin became very active in the national movement to return to Crimea and later wrote a three-volume work about the movement titled “In the Ranks of the Struggle for Justice.”
A collection of his poetry, titled “A Handful of Earth,” was published in 1997 in honor of his 50 years of creative work.
Idris Asanin also worked tirelessly to preserve the historic monuments of national culture of the Crimean Tatars and created and managed the company “Shrine."

In 2009, the widow of Idris Asanin, donated all of his papers to the Gasprinsky Library for study and use by researchers and readers. Among the materials donated were many books of different Crimean Tatar authors, personal correspondence, rare photos, and many materials concerning the Crimean Tatar national movement.