P rominent t ajik f igures of the

Abdullaev, Kamoludin
Tajik historian Kamoludin Najmiddinzoda Abdullaev was born into
the family of a government (Communist) official in the village of
Shulmak, Gharm, on February 21,1950. He received his early education
at home and in Russian schools while he grew up in Khorugh
(Badakhshan) and Khujand, before he moved to Dushanbe in 1962.
Abdullaev graduated from Tajikistan State University with a degree
in history in 1972. In 1981, he defended his post-graduate thesis entitled
Central Asian Periodicals as a Historical Source on the History of the
Elimination of the Basmachi ([Muslim Guerilla's]) Movement. In 1983,
he defended his doctoral dissertation at the Institute of History of the
Academy of Sciences of the USSR. It was entitled The Soviet Turkistan
Newspapers as a Historical Source on the History of the Elimination of
Basmachism in Central Asia. In the late 1980s, changing with the times,
Abdullaev altered his approach to historiography to deal with the new
realities of Central Asia.
Abdullaev has served in a number of positions since the late 1980s.
He was Research Fellow at the Institute of History, the Academy of
Sciences of Tajikistan (1975-89). And he was Head of the Department
of Political Research at the Institute of Political Research in Dushanbe
(1989-91). Between 1991 and 1997, he was Assistant Professor of
History of Central Asia (19
th
-20
th
centuries) at Tajikistan State Uni-
versity. He was project Officer and Curriculum Development Specialist
for the Agha Khan Humanities Project for Central Asia from 1997 to
1999. More recently, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for
Strategic Research under the President of Tajikistan (1999-01) and the

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Prominent Tajik Figures of the Twentieth Century

3
Adviser on the Tajikistan Accord Project at Conciliation Resources of

London (2000-01).
Abdullaev's contributions include Po Puti Velikogo Oktiabria (On
the Path of the Great October) edited with Nazarshoh Nazarshoev,
1988; Oruzhiem Pechatnogo Slova (With the Printed Word as a
Weapon, 1989); Politics of Compromise: The Tajikistan Peace Proc-
ess, edited with Catherine Barnes, 2001; Politika kompromissa. Mirny
protsess v Tadzhikistane (Politics of Compromise: The Tajikistan
Peace Process) edited with Catherine Barnes, 2001; and Exiles of
Bolshevism, Central Asian Emigration in 1918-1932 (in press).
Abdullaev has been a Fulbright Scholar (1994), Research Fellow at
the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies (1995), a British
Academy Visiting Fellow (1996), and a Sumitomo Bank Fellow (2001-
02).