Soviet party and statesman, writer. First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Uzbek SSR (1959-1983).
He was born in the city of Jizzakh the day before the October Revolution in a peasant family. Uzbek.
He graduated from the philological faculty of the Uzbek State University in Tashkent (1941), the All-Union Party School (VPSh) under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (1948, in absentia). Since 1935, after graduating from the Jizzakh Pedagogical College, he worked as a secondary school teacher. In 1937-1941, executive secretary, deputy executive editor, editor of the Samarkand regional newspaper “Lenin yli” (“Leninsky Way”).