Gaysin Zarif Savich
10 January 1884, Ufa Governorate — 6 November 1937, Novosibirsk
Biography, education, career:
In 1919 Zafir Gaysin joined the Russian Communist Party of the Bolsheviks. He worked at Tomsk Muslim Bureau. In 1921‑1924 he was Chairman of the Council for National Minorities of Tomsk Provincial Board of Education. In 1923‑1924 he occupied the position of Director of Tomsk Provincial Museum. Though not a professional ethnographer, he managed to gather rich ethnographic collections (item and graphic) for Tomsk Museum during the expeditions of the summers of 1923 and 1924 to Mountain Shoria. In 1924‑1930 he worked as a government official in Novosibirsk Region, dealing with ethnic minorities. In early 1930-s he worked at the Planning Department of Executive Committee of West Siberian Region, then he was an inspector of the Bureau of Local History. On 9 June 1937 he was arrested “for alleged membership in “Gaskeri-Ueshma”, a counter-revolutionary Muslim organization”, and on 5 November 1937 he was sentenced to death by the NKVD troika in Novosibirsk (commission of three for express judgement). The sentence was executed on 6 November 1937 in Novosibirsk. Zarif Gaysin was posthumously exonerated on 30 December 1956.
Areas of expertise: History and ethnography of the peoples of Siberia, the Extreme North, and the Far East