RAKHIM AKINIYAZOV: DIPLOMAT, JOURNALIST, ATHLETE

This year, Rakhim Atayevich Akiniyazov, one of the first diplomats of Turkmenistan, would have turned 90 years old. He dreamed of how he would pass on his experience to the young diplomats of independent Turkmenistan, but the fate of this wonderful and versatile person decreed that he died early, in 1992 he was gone.

Bitter and insulting. It is also a shame that at the same time the newly created national Foreign Ministry of Turkmenistan was just beginning its activities. We needed personnel, and even more those who would teach young people, shared their experience with them.

In the 60s of the last century, not everyone, and besides from the national republics of the former Union, was sent to study in Moscow at the higher diplomatic school of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Rakhim Akiniyazov, by the time he was offered to study as a diplomat, already had considerable experience in the journalistic and Komsomol-party spheres. It can be argued that the choice fell on him not by chance.

Born into a family of civil servants, at the age of 23 he worked in leadership positions in the Ashgabat regional committee of the Komsomol. The exactingness, adherence to principles and justice of Ata Akiniyazov's father prompted Rakhim to desire to be the best in everything and everywhere, to get to the bottom of everything, to learn the laws of development of countries and peoples, the world around him and its problems.

That is why the decision of Rakhim to study at the Faculty of History for the parents was not a surprise. University education made it possible to find answers to many questions that interested him, became an excellent basis for his professional growth.

Years of study at the Turkmen State University introduced Rakhim to basketball. And this is where his maximalism comes into play. From a member of the university amateur team, he grows to the leader of the youth national team of the republic. Here is how his teammate, labor and sports veteran Anatoly Tikhonovich Vinogradov, once spoke of him.

- I was lucky to play with Rahim. He was a unique basketball player, it was impossible to copy his style of play. He mastered dribbling to perfection, and he achieved this with many hours of training, which is called to the seventh sweat.

Before enrolling in the higher diplomatic school of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rakhim gained experience in Komsomol-party work, managed to work in the Ashgabat studio of the State Committee on Radio and Television. He was editor of various news outlets. After studying for three years at the Higher Diplomatic School, having brilliantly mastered the French and Vietnamese languages, in 1969 he was assigned to Vietnam, where he began work as the first secretary of the Embassy.

Difficult and long years of diplomatic work in different countries required always to be in good shape, excellent health. And, obviously, partly from this, Rakhim did not give up sports abroad either. At the first opportunity, he was the organizer and participant in various competitions among diplomats. In basketball tournaments, he still had no equal.

All these years, next to Rakhim was his faithful companion and first assistant - his wife Tamara. Providing all kinds of support to her husband, she paid great attention to the upbringing and training of the sons of Kerim and Murad.

The extraordinary talent of Rakhim Akiniyazov is also evidenced by the fact that he was already awarded a government award during the years of his Komsomol youth. In 1957 he was awarded the Certificate of Merit of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Turkmen SSR.

Rakhim Gulla's brother Babayevich Akiniyazov also speaks about this today, not without excitement:

- You see, I believe in the truth of the statement that if a person is talented, then he is talented in everything. So was Rahim, no matter what he did — whether he played basketball, wrote an article for a newspaper, prepared a radio report, or hosted an important diplomatic event.

A safe return home from a business trip, as it is now customary to say - from a "hot spot", which was then considered Vietnam, made Rakhim Atayevich intend to share his accumulated rich experience. But be that as it may, it seems that today it will not be superfluous to know and remember those who stood at the origins of Turkmen diplomacy, who were the first or were among the first.

Correspondent "GA"

Rakhim Akiniyazov: diplomat, journalist, athlete (turkmenistan.gov.tm)