The big heart of the blacksmith Shamakhmudov: During the war, the Uzbek and his wife adopted 15 children of different nationalities

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

There is an amazing monument in Tashkent. In the center of the sculptural composition, an elderly Uzbek rises, a woman sits nearby, and numerous children surround them. The man looks at them with tenderness and great seriousness - arms outstretched and as if embracing the entire large family. This is Shaakhmed Shamakhmudov, who is revered by the whole of Uzbekistan. During the Great Patriotic War, he and his wife adopted and raised 15 (!) Soviet children of various nationalities, becoming for them a truly dear mother and father.

We don't have our own - we'll bring up strangers

The Shamakhmudovs did not have children of their own. Shaakhmed, a blacksmith of the Tashkent artel named after Kalinin, was much older than his wife Bahri. In 1941, he was already over fifty, and she was 38.

At that time, the Central Asian Union republics began to accept children evacuated from the Soviet cities besieged by the Germans. These were orphans, whose parents were killed by the Nazis, and children, whose mothers and fathers went to the front. Most of these children ended up in Uzbekistan: the orphanages of this republic opened their doors to 200 thousand Soviet children.

Some Uzbek families began to take children from orphanages for adoption. The Shamakhmudovs thought and decided: why don't we become foster parents? God did not give his own - that means we will bring up strangers. A few years later, in the house of the Shamakhmudovs, children's laughter and the clatter of little feet were heard: the couple adopted 15 children, and the family itself became international.

Uzbek mom and dad became relatives for Russians, Belarusians, Moldovans, Jews, Kazakhs, Latvians, Germans, and Tartars. For example, in 1943, they took four people from the orphanage - a Belarusian Raya, a Tatar Malika, a Russian boy Volodya and a two-year-old baby, whose name and nationality no one even knew. Shaakhmed and Bahri called the baby Nogmat, which is translated from their language as “gift”.

In Uzbek traditions

The Shamakhmudovs did not live richly, but amicably. Love and respect for elders reigned in the family. Children from an early age were taught to work, independence and mutual assistance. All the children were brought up by adoptive parents in Uzbek traditions, and Tashkent became their second homeland.

The authorities awarded the spouses with the Order of the Badge of Honor, Bahri-opa received the honorary title of Mother Heroine. The story of the Shamakhmudovs was described by the writer Rakhmat Fayzi in his novel "His Majesty the Man", and in the 1960s a touching and piercing feature film "You are not an orphan" was shot about them. A street is even named in honor of the head of this international family in Tashkent.

The fate of the Shamakhmudovs' children developed in different ways. Someone stayed to live in Tashkent. After the war, four children were found and taken home by their relatives, however, having left, they remembered their adoptive mother and father with gratitude throughout their lives. And the Uzbek Muazzam and Belarusian Mikhail, who were taken by the Shamakhmudovs for education, subsequently fell in love with each other. They got married and created their own international family.

Waiting for her grandson, she lived to be 104 years old

Especially touching is the story of the adopted son Fyodor, about whom an Uzbek newspaper wrote in 1986. The Ukrainian Fedya Kulchikovsky was the eighth adopted child of the Shamakhmudovs.

The boy was born shortly before the war in the family of a Donbass miner, his mother's name was Oksana. The woman was given birth by her grandmother, Daria Alekseevna. The baby had a red mole on his chest, and the elderly woman remembered this "identification mark" for her entire life.

When Fedya was not even two years old, Oksana died of smallpox, and in the summer of 1941, the boy's father also died. The kid was brought up by Daria Alekseevna.

Before the German occupation, the grandmother was strongly advised to send her grandson to Central Asia. At first she did not want to let him go, but the village council said: "If the Germans come to the village, your grandson will surely be taken to Germany." The grandmother cried and agreed to be evacuated. And all the following years I believed that someday he would return.

Five-year-old Fedya ended up in a Tashkent orphanage, where he soon became friends with the Ukrainian boy Sasha. Once an elderly Uzbek came to the orphanage and took Sasha away. Fedya was very upset about the separation from his friend. Sasha, as it turned out, too. Because a week later the same man returned to the orphanage and told Fedya that he was taking him too. “Sasha is sad without you,” the Uzbek briefly explained. So Fedya ended up in the Shamakhmudov family. Foster parents gave him the name Yuldash.

After graduating from eight classes, Fedor-Yuldash remained to live in Uzbekistan, because he was taken away from his grandmother when he was very young and he could not find at least some information about her. The young man entered the Tashkent Mining College. Having received his diploma, he left to work in Karaganda, where he soon got married, and after the earthquake in Uzbekistan he returned to his "native" Tashkent - already with his wife. The couple had three children.

Once Yuldash got a call and said that his Ukrainian grandmother had been found. It came as a shock to him, because 45 years have passed since their separation, and the man did not even suspect that she was still alive. He immediately left for Ukraine.

As it turned out, a journalist from a Ukrainian newspaper helped to find Darya Alekseevna's grandson. He wrote to the regional committee of the Komsomol of Bukhara, after which the information was passed on to schoolchildren from the Uzbek club "Poisk". The children saw a similar surname in a newspaper article - and so they went to the grandson.

It turned out that two letters were confused in the orphanage, and from Kulchanovsky Fedya turned into Kulchikovsky, and he also changed his patronymic - perhaps that is why Daria Alekseevna could not find him after the war.

When they met, the grandmother immediately recognized her grandson - by that same red mole. At that time she was already 104 years old. Perhaps it was the belief that the boy would be found that kept her in this world.

After the meeting, the grandson repeatedly visited his grandmother, but they did not have a chance to talk for long: she died a year and a half later.

Soon after the death of Daria Alekseevna, Fyodor's adoptive mother also died. Until the last days, both women were very sorry that they had not been able to get to know each other.

Olga-Kholida

Timonina Olga from Moldova, whom the new parents gave the name Kholida, was the youngest child in this international family. As an adult, she remained to live in Uzbekistan.

Last year she celebrated her 84th birthday and lives in the Jar-Aryk district of Tashkent. Kholida knows Uzbek perfectly and all her life thanks God, her adoptive parents and the Uzbek land for everything she has.

Shaakhmed Shamakhmudov died much earlier than his wife, in 1970, in his ninth decade. Death overtook him while working in the garden, because until the last days he did not stop working.

To some, God did not give children, but someone was forced to give them up himself. For example, in the first years of the formation of the USSR, special abortion commissions.