Habib Yunich

Habib Yunich was born in 1906, in the Uyghur-majority city of Ghulja.^[1] His father was Faziljan, a Volga Tatar from Russia who became a respected aqsaqal (local leader) of Ghulja. A tsarist, Faziljan chose not to return to Russia following the February Revolution of 1917 and successfully applied for Chinese citizenship.^[2]

Yunich studied in Turkey and the Soviet Union as a young adult, learning a plethora of Turkic languages in addition to his native Tatar. By the time he returned to Ghulja from Turkey in 1934, he had become fluent in Turkish, Uyghur, Kazakh, and Uzbek. He was also fluent in Chinese, English, and Russian.^[1]

Shortly after returning to Ghulja, Yunich organized the first Uyghur-language newspaper in the city, and more broadly in Ili District. He was the newspaper's editor from 1934 to 1944. He also established Ghulja's first public library and taught at a Tatar school in the city during the 1940s.^[3]

The Second East Turkestan Republic (officially just the East Turkestan Republic or ETR) was proclaimed in Ghulja on 12 November 1944 by Soviet-backed Turkic revolutionaries, with Yunich being among them.^[4] On 18 November 1944, the ETR government appointed Yunich as Minister of Education, citing his rich cultural and linguistic education.^[5] Seypidin Azizi, a Soviet-educated Uyghur, was appointed his deputy.^[6]

Yunich was the editor of the ETR government's official newspaper, Free East Turkestan (later Revolutionary East Turkestan).^[6][7] It was published in four languages – Uyghur, Russian, Kazakh, and Chinese – and began circulation on 17 November 1944.^[6]

Yunich contracted typhus from one of his students amid an outbreak of the disease in Ghulja in the winter of 1944–45.^[8][9][10] He died in January 1945; Azizi succeeded him as the ETR's education minister on 13 March 1945.^{[5][8][10][11]}