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Mukhtar Tairov in memoriam

The 1st of November it has been one year since Mukhtar Tairovich Tairov died. In Almaty, he will be commemorated by family and friends. He will also be in the thoughts of many members of the Danish Society for a Living Sea, who met him and got advice from him during the 10 years of the planning and implementation of the fishery project From Kattegat to Aral Sea.

Mukhtar Tairovich was vice minister of fishery in the Kazakh Republic of the USSR, and he continued to be an engaged observer and agent in the Kazakhstani fishery industry until his death. His life was a remarkable tale of courage and change, both on the personal and political level. During the 1970s and 1980s, he did his best to help the fishermen in the Aral region, who suffered from the disastrous lack of water as a result of the “Virgin Lands” project, and he was full of enthusiasm and ideas, when he learned in the 1990s that there might be some hope for the fishery on the sea again.

The Danish participants in the fishery project on the Aral Sea always visited Old Tairov, as we called him, on the way back from our visits in Aralsk. We would meet him usually at his office, or in the family dacha, and tell about the latest developments in the Aral Sea fishery. Old Tairov listened intensively, adding his questions and critiques about specific locations and people, and would always give new suggestions for how to arrange the conditions for the fishermen in a better way. Also, as a rule of our meetings, he would make sure to always make at least one joke with us, which would take us completely by surprise. “It is a process,” said Kurt, the project coordinator, with a serious face, when once asked how he would evaluate the results of the fishery project in Aralsk so far.

“Yes,” said Old Tairov, “That’s what Gorbachev said, when he started reconstructing the Soviet Union.” We would always leave him with something to think about.

From the Danish side, we send all the best thoughts to his family and friends in Kazakhstan, and we hail the memory of this great man, who remained strong and insightful to the end.

Henrik Jøker Bjerre

Today, Mukhtar Tairov’s granddaughter Zhanna Tairova is living in Denmark and has just started doing her Ph.D. on environmental science at the Roskilde University Centre. These are her memorial words of her grandfather:

My dear Grandfather, Ata, atashka Mukhtar, as we called him in-between us - many grandchildren… It has now been almost one year since you are gone, but I still can not fully believe it, fully accept it in my mind. I don’t know why doesn't my brain want to accept this fact, maybe because of the distance - I am in Roskilde, you were in Almaty, or maybe because of the strength and intensity of your life, and your powerful influence on my life, on the lives of your children, and many-many other people, that simply does not allow the brain and the heart to accept the loss. Your powerful and positive influence is everywhere in our lives, beginning from the morning telephone calls during weekends asking about our plans for the day, and through all your support for us in many situations, and including that there will never be a time period when you would not start a scientific/political discussion or simply telling us a story from your life, from someone else's life or from the book you had just read.

Such a life as you have lived, I could wish for many people to have, including my self. How many things you have seen how many places you have been to, so many achievements you have accomplished. I am so glad that I could spend time with you discussing things, and mainly learning from you. I called you jokingly "walking encyclopedia", since you knew and remembered so many things, that my present knowledge can not even embrace the extent of all of them.

The loss of you means a world of difference to me, since you were the one of those few people I automatically rely on in my head whenever I experience life, get a new knowledge, that I can always ask you "what is right and what is wrong". With a lot of pride I remember that during one of my short visits in Almaty from Denmark, you told me that I am very close to you by spirit and ideas.

You left a huge heritage behind you, and I will really try to inherit it - at least some of the personal strength and life worship that you had. 

Proud to be your grand daughter,

Zhanna