David Kaylakov

Born in Bukhara in the Russian Empire (today in Uzbekistan), David Yakubovich Kaylakov studied in St. Petersburg before returning to Bukhara to teach. In Bukhara, Kaylakov established a school for Jewish children, the first in the city to provide instruction in Russian and Hebrew. A translator of works of Western literature, including Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, into Bukhari (Judeo-Tajik), Kaylakov also published the first trilingual dictionary for Bukhari, Hebrew, and Russian. Accused of anti-Communist activities by the Soviet government in 1937, he was sent to a Gulag (punitive labor camp) by the Bolshevik regime along with millions of others, where, subjected to hard labor and freezing cold on minimal rations, he died in 1942.