Jalil (Jalilov) Musa Mustafovich, Tatar Soviet poet, Hero of the Soviet Union, was born on February 5, 1906 in the village of Mustafino (now Sharlyk district) of the Orenburg region in the family of a poor peasant. In 1931 Jalil graduated from the Literary Faculty of Moscow State University. He was the editor of Tatar children’s magazines published under the Central Committee of the Komsomol (1931−32). In 1939−41 he was the executive secretary of the Joint Venture of the Tatar ASSR. Since 1941 he was in the Soviet Army. In 1942, seriously wounded Musa Jalil was captured, imprisoned in a concentration camp, where he organized an underground group, arranged escapes of Soviet prisoners of war. He wrote poems that were memorized by comrades in captivity, passed from mouth to mouth. For participation in an underground organization, he was executed in the military prison of Plettsensee. Posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (1956).
For the first time, Musa Jalil’s poems appeared printed in 1919. In 1925, the first collection of poems and poems "We are Going" was published. Poems "The Paths Traveled" (1924−1928), "The Partisan Drummer" (1930), "The Letter Carrier" (1940), etc. dedicated to the Komsomol and labor exploits. Jalil sang of friendship and internationalism ("About Death", 1927, "Jim", 1935, etc.). He wrote the libretto of the operas "Altyn Cheche" ("Golden-Haired", 1941; USSR State Prize, 1948) and "Ildar" (1941). The poems of 1941 are full of optimism, faith in the victory over fascism: "From the hospital", "Before the attack", "Letter from the trench", etc. Through a Belgian partisan imprisoned in Moabit prison, Jalil handed over a notebook with poems: "My Songs", "Don't believe", "After the War", etc. More than a hundred poetic works are witnesses of the struggle, suffering and courage of the poet. Jalil was posthumously awarded the Lenin Prize (1957) for the cycle of poems "The Moabite Notebook". In 1968, the film "The Moabite Notebook" was created about Jalil.
