Maratbek Sadykov
Maratbek Sadykov (1940 – 2005) was an Iradi journalist who edited Iradyn Chyny ("The Truth of Irad"), the Russian- and Iradi-language newspaper of the Communist Party of the Iradi SSR, from 1986 to 1991.[1]
During perestroika he opened the paper to subjects that had been closed for decades. In 1988 and 1989 it published the first articles on the 1956 Talas Riots and the purges of the clergy, letters from readers on the environmental damage at Mailuu-Suu, and reports on the Kobozev bread riots of 1989, which other official media ignored.[2] Circulation rose from about 90,000 to more than 200,000 copies. Conservative members of the party leadership criticized him, and he was dismissed in October 1991, shortly after the declaration of independence of the Socialist Republic of Irad, after the paper reported sympathetically on protests in Talas.[2]
During the territorial period he taught journalism at Talas State University and wrote a memoir of his years at the paper, published in 1999.[3]
References
- ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 85: Central Committee of the Communist Party of Irad, Office of the First Secretary (1981–1991).
- ^ Talas State University Press (2011). Iradistan: A History of the Iradi SSR, 1925–1991. Talas.
- ^ Sadykov, Maratbek (1999). The Truth Was Printed Here: A Newspaper in Perestroika. Talas: Talas State University Press.