The teacher who opened the doors

TALAS — In the autumn of 1924, a former merchant's house in Talas opened its doors to girls from the herding families of the mountain valleys. Most had never sat at a desk. The Talas Girls' Boarding School, the first secular boarding school for Iradi girls, taught them in Iradi and Russian, and by 1931 it had about 240 pupils.

Its founder, Zarina Alimbekova, died fifty years ago this year. A member of the Alimbekov family of Iyık Janyl, she was educated at the church school there and at a Russian girls' gymnasium in Tashkent, where she qualified as a teacher in 1911. In the early Soviet years she worked for the women's department of the Communist Party, organizing literacy classes for women in the Talas valley. Her school was among the first to use the Latin-script Iradi alphabet introduced in 1928.

The 1930s made her position difficult. Her relative, Archbishop Mar Timotheos Alimbekov, was arrested in the purges of 1937 and died in custody. She was dismissed as director in 1938 but was not arrested, and she taught in village schools until she retired. She died in 1959.

For decades her name was rarely mentioned. Since 1992 she has been restored to public memory, and a school in Talas bears her name. On Women's Day, its pupils will lay flowers at her portrait.