Year of 2006 was declared the “Year of literature and arts”. Celebration of 120th anniversary from Gabdulla Tukai’s birthday is one of the most remarkable events of the year.

Name of Gabdulla Tukai holds a special place in the history of the Tatar culture comparable with the name of Pushkin for the Russian culture.

Gabdulla Tukai is considered one of the pioneers of the new Tatar literature, founder of the modern Tatar language. His poetry influenced forming realism and the European style romantism of the Tatar and other Turkic speaking peoples. Tukai was the founder of Tatar realistic criticism.

Tukai was a passionate enlightener, he highly admired Tolstoy, Pushkin and Lermontov. Short but bright life of the poet left a heritage out of hundreds of pieces of poetry, poems, tens articles and many translations into Tatar language of Pushkin, Lermontov, Maikov, Pleshcheyev, Polonsky Koltsov, Nikitin, Tolstoy.

Gabdulla Tukai is highly honoured by the Tatar people. State philharmonic hall, annual prize for workers of literature and arts and one of Kazan’s streets are named after him.

Within the framework of 120th anniversary from his birthday there are many events planned including exhibitions and contests dedicated to art of G.Tukai. Also International contest of reciters of Tukai’s poems and children’s drawings, International contest of cartoonists, creation of animated film after Tukai’s tales and production of multimedia tutorial on Tatar literature and life and art of the poet will be staged in Kazan and other cities.

On April 28, festive service (Friday prayer) will be held in Kul-Sharif mosque devoted in the memory of G.Tukai and M.Dzhalil and all major figures of Tatar culture.