Talented teacher, Crimean Tatar linguist and publisher Mustafa Bekirov spent 18 years of his life in imprisonmentncamps. While holding the post of rector of the Crimean Pedagogical Institute, he fell into the maelstrom of a case fabricated by the Crimean investigative authorities about a “conspiracy” of a counter-revolutionary nationalist organization. Along with other representatives of the Crimean Tatar intelligentsia, in 1937 Bekirov was sentenced to 12 years in prison and then sent into exile.