Veteran of the Great Patriotic War Anna Yakovlevna Miglovets, 82, lives in Tashkent even now, 24 years after the tragic death of her husband, prominent Uzbek writer Yavdat Iljasov. Miglovets lives in a four-story building on Mukimi Street, Chilanzar, where Iljasov spent the last fourteen years if his life. She lives modestly, if not in outright poverty. The only things of value in her two-room apartment are a thick archive of the writer's letters and monographs, his books, and his paintings.

Miglovets also keeps a cutting out of an old newspaper with an article about a nurse who led a company of infantry in attack in 1945 and was decorated for her valor.

"It happened in Berlin. We got stuck not far from the city center - seventeen-year olds and old men," Miglovets said. "It is understandable. With the end of the war approaching, nobody wanted to die... Well, I always detested inaction. I even told that much to the wounded I used to drag out of the battlefield. Do not stay still, I told them, move, crawl, or whatever or you'll get killed. That's what I used to tell them dragging them to safety. This is why that day in Berlin I got fed up with staying at one place. I rose and screamed "Follow me!" They did..."

A teacher at a day-care center for most of her life, Miglovets barely moves about the apartment nowadays - and only with the help of a cane. She does not go out anymore but keeps her tiny apartment spotless. Miglovets takes particular care about her late husband's personal belongings and archives which she locks up.

Miglovets was Iljasov's third and last wife.

"His first wife had him jailed [Iljasov spent eighteen months behind the bars for domestic violence - Ferghana.Ru], the second left him and took everything with her [according to Miglovets, Iljasov's second wife left him without the apartment, furniture, or anything else - Ferghana.Ru], and that was how I took him up with all his problems," Miglovets said. "He had sired four children by then - three daughters and a son. One of the daughters died already. I did not have any children by him. We were not young anymore, you know, and he was a heavy drinker. And so I'm alone now even though Yavdat comes to me every day..."

According to the official theory, the writer drowned swimming in the lake on Volgogradskaya Street (Gafur Guljam Park now) in Tashkent. It was a death of natural causes, in other words. Iljasov's widow is convinced even now that he was murdered.

"A fine swimmer, he was absolutely at home in water," Miglovets said. "Whenever drunk, he never even approached water, and I know for a fact that he did not drink anything that day. I saw a large bruise on his face meaning that he had been struck with an oar at first, dragged to the shore, and strangled there. I even have a coroner's report testifying that he died of asphyxia."

The widow ascribes Iljasov's murder to the envy and personal animosity on the part of Sharaf Rashidov, the then general secretary of the Uzbek Communist Party.

"Yavdat once came home depressed and dismayed in 1981. He said that Rashidov had kicked out his pet writer and wanted Iljasov to write his books for him. Yavdat's firm "No" cost him his life. There had been several attempts on his life, you know. I have always known he was murdered and always said so openly because I was threatened too. Once a man jumped me in the street at night and I found a garotte around my neck before I knew what was happening. A friend of my saved me by rushing to us demanding to know what was the matter. The man only muttered that he had been offered a large ante for my life."

Miglovets views the fact that nobody attended the writer's funeral as another proof that it was assassination.

"He had so many friends and acquaintances! Literally the whole Uzbek Union of Writers. Not one of them turned up! Probably scared, they all were. Yavdat's son Dzhangar and me alone went to the morgue to collect the body and interred him all alone. We had been denied a plot in the cemetery where all outstanding writers were normally interred. Iljasov was buried behind Uzbekfilm studio, there is an old abandoned cemetery there," Miglovets said.

Hence the barely concealed animosity she feels towards Uzbekistan.

"I resent all Uzbeks and I'm prepared to say so to anyone's face. Let them kill me for it, I do not have that much to live anyway. I have nothing to lose. They murdered Yavdat and made me a handicapped person," Miglovets said. "I have a bomb fragment at the back of my head, a war souvenir, you know. I'm not supposed to become irritable at all. I knocked at every door after the funeral but did not get any help. Officials laughed in my face. I myself paid to have the monument on Yavdat's grave erected. As a result, I have problems with the central nervous system, the right half of the body is paralyzed. I spent two days on the couch here once, unable to get up, with nobody to bring me a drink of water or a slice of bread. I finally pulled myself together - I'm a soldier after all - and somehow made it to the phone to call the ambulance."

Miglovets is entitled to a military pension as a war veteran. When she approached state structures for her pension a couple of years ago, she was rudely turned out without so much as an explanation.

"They merely told me to get lost. "You are a Russian, so go to your Russia," they said. I probably should have applied for the pension two decades ago, but I have never felt my age. It never even occurred to me to do so," the widow said.

Miglovets is worried that she has no heirs to leave the apartment and, more importantly, the archives to.

The Uzbek Union of Writers suddenly remembered Iljasov's on his 60th anniversary. Two memorial plaques in the Russian and Uzbek languages were set in the wall of the house. There were even the rumors that Iljasov might be awarded the Khamza State Award (posthumously) but it never happened. As for Iljasov's widow, nobody even remembered her.

Life story

Yavdat Khsanovich Iljasov (December 16, 1929 - June 19, 1982) was a prosaic, poet, translator, artist. He was born in the settlement of Islambakhty of the Yermekeev district of Bashkortostan. Iljasov studied at the teacher-training college in the town of Beloretsk. At one time or another he taught the Uzbek language at school, taught drawing, tended horses, drove a tractor, was a metalworker, baker, artist, club director, librarian, and ran amateur art activities.

After 1952, Iljasov was director of the department of literature and art, translator, and correspondent of newspaper Leninets in Ufa, contributor to newspapers Tashkentskaya Pravda, Komsomolets Uzbekistana, Fizkulturnik Uzbekistana, and poetry department director of magazine Zvezda Vostoka.

Iljasov had a perfect command of the Russian, Bashkir, Crimean Tatar, Uzbek, Karakalpak, English, Arab, and Korean languages. He translated Gafur Guljam, Khamid Alimdzhan, Uigun, Ugai Deguk, Ho Tsing, and many other famous writers into Russian.

He began writing at the age of 10. Iljasov wrote nine novels and stories translated into foreign languages: Path Of Wrath, Sogdiana, Arrow And The Sun, Spotted Death, Black Widow, Golden Idol, Anakhita's Vengeance, Snake Charmer, and Tower Of Silence. Print run of all his works exceeds 23,000,000 copies.