Nadezhda Lushnikova

Nadezhda Andreyevna Lushnikova was born on 22 November 1940 in Shamalgan (Chemolgan), Kaskelen District (now Karasai District), Almaty Region. Her father, Andrey Gerasimovich Lushnikov, worked at the village bakery, whose bread went to villages across the district and even to Alma-Ata. He was called up when she was two and a half, left for the front in 1943 and was later reported missing in action. Her mother, Irina Iosifovna Shirokostup, worked as a stove builder and at a biological plant, and was remembered for her knee-length braid and her singing. She called herself the granddaughter of Gerasim the beekeeper.

The family lived for a time on the summer pastures at Ushkonyr. There, as a small girl, she went with her friend's mother into a yurt where an old man in white gave her a big red aport apple. Years later she learned he was Zhambyl Zhabayev, and she regarded the gift as his blessing. In 1949 she moved with her grandparents to the village of Pervoye Maya (now Bekbolat), whose primary school taught only in Kazakh. She began school without knowing the language and learned it with the help of her first teacher, Kultai Dosymbekova, and her classmates.

After finishing seven years of school she passed the medical board and exams for the Saratov flight school, whose admissions commission was working in Alma-Ata, but withdrew when her family objected. She studied at a boarding school in Kaskelen, and in 1957 entered the Mansuk Mametova women's pedagogical college in Kyzylorda, graduating in 1961. In 1969 she graduated from the Kazakh department of the philology faculty of the Abai Kazakh Pedagogical Institute in Almaty. In Kyzylorda she joined the poetry circle led by the poet Askar Tokmagambetov.

Her first poems appeared in 1958 in the Kyzylorda regional newspaper Lenin zholy, and in 1960 in the college wall newspaper Otan kyzy. In April 1961 she read her poems at a plenum of the Writers' Union of Kazakhstan and was received by Mukhtar Auezov.

In 1963, the year she was elected secretary of the district Komsomol committee, she competed for Syrdarya District at the regional aitys in Kyzylorda and became a prize winner. Her aitys with Kaldybek Alikulov of Shymkent was filmed and included in the documentary Aitys directed by Turar Duisebayev. In 1964 in Shymkent she defeated the veteran akyn Tastan Zholdasov after he mocked the crooked streets of Kyzylorda. She won district aitys in Zhambyl District in 1965 and 1978 and Almaty regional aitys in 1977 and 1979, and competed in republican aitys against akyns including Manap Kokenov and Abdikerim Manap. She said she faced Kokenov 28 times, and that she often performed against Zhambyl's grandson Alimkul Zhambylov for visitors to the Zhambyl museum.

From 1963 to 1985 she worked as a newspaper literary staffer, an editor at a publishing house and a schoolteacher. She taught Kazakh language and literature for 27 years, at the Kyzylorda women's pedagogical college, the Uzynagash school of mechanisation and the school in the village of Umbetaly. She then turned to research on the improvising poet Umbetaly Karibayev and became the first director of his memorial museum in Zhambyl District, which opened in October 1989; she led it until 2012.

In 1965 she married Turlybek Nurbekuly (Nurbekov), whom she had met when pupils from Almaty boarding school No. 12 visited her school in Kaskelen. The akyn Umbetaly Karibayev, a family friend of the groom, performed the betashar ceremony at their wedding, and she moved to her husband's village as a Kazakh kelin (daughter-in-law). They had three daughters and a son. Their daughter Karlygash (Alyona) Nurbekova is a Russian-language poet, and their daughter Leila lives in Astana. Turlybek died in 2008. Kazakh was spoken in their home, and her grandson Nurberdy plays the dombra. In 2012 she performed the hajj. In later years she lived with her son in Uzynagash.

Lushnikova believed that every citizen of Kazakhstan, whatever their ethnicity, should know the Kazakh language. She began writing in Kazakh during the Khrushchev years, when Kazakh schools were being closed and record keeping was moving to Russian. She saw aitys as the voice of ordinary people: in her words, the akyn's task is to speak in a playful, ironic form about the negative sides of life. She also said that aitys does not like empty talk and that brevity and precision are the marks of the genre.

Kazinform described her name as inseparable from the revival of aitys in the 1960s and 1970s. A Russian woman who learned Kazakh at a village school, she became a symbol of the Kazakh language's reach beyond ethnic lines and was compared by Mukhtar Auezov to the earlier Russian-born Kazakh poet Mariam Shegarkyzy (Maria Rykina). Through her museum work she helped revive the name of Umbetaly Karibayev: the village of Kirov and its school came to bear his name, his works were published, and she started a poetry school in the village. She was an honorary citizen of Zhambyl District.

Honoured Worker of Culture of the Kazakh SSR. Lenin Komsomol Prize of Kazakhstan (1970). Honoured Figure of the Arts of Kazakhstan (2010). Til zhanashyry (Guardian of the Language) badge (2013). Order of Kurmet (2017, by presidential decree). Honorary Citizen of Zhambyl District, Almaty Region. A women's gold watch engraved "For poetic mastery", presented on the initiative of Baurzhan Momyshuly after her 1964 aitys victory in Shymkent.

Poetry collections: Elim menin (My Homeland, 1962; some sources give 1963) and Konil khoshy (1970). Her aitys verses appear in the anthologies Zhyr shashu and Mangi koktem (1988), and her poems in collections such as the Almanac of Kazakh Poetry. Her aitys with Kaldybek Alikulov was filmed for Turar Duisebayev's documentary Aitys. She appeared on Kazakh television programmes including Kelbet and Siz ne deisiz? on Qazaqstan TV, Khabar's Uyat bolmasyn, and 7 studiya on Zhetysu TV. One of her aitys introductions was translated into Russian by the Almaty poet Mikhail Kupreyev.

Nadezhda Lushnikova died on 8 November 2026, aged 85, about two weeks before her 86th birthday. The writer Ismailzhan Iminov, a close friend, announced her death on social media, writing that they spoke almost every day and that he had last seen her on 28 October at the National Library, at the launch of his book about aitys. The Writers' Union of Kazakhstan expressed condolences to her family, friends and readers, and the news was carried by Kazinform, Azattyq, 24KZ, Tengrinews and other outlets on 8 and 9 November. The place and cause of death were not made public.