Michael Friedrich, Bamberg University Professor:
Tukay was a real national poet and lived in the same way as ordinary people did. That’s why people loved him, loved him so much, that innumerable quantity of people followed to his grave, carrying wreathes, photographs, and Kadimists could do nothing with it.
… Tatar literature was a model for other Russia’s Turkic nations too. Even poets Abay and Gafur Guljam were idolized with implied reference to Tukay. Russia’s Turkic nations perceived Russian and European literature through interaction with the Tatars.