Sovietshunoslar

Natan Mallaev: a Typical Uzbek Scholars of the 1950s-1960s
6Natan M. Mallaev was an Uzbek Foreignologist, who conducted a wide range of researches on the history of literature and foreign studies. He mainly explored the works of Russian scholars who studied classical Uzbek literature, but he also commented on the achievements of Western orientalists in their study of classical Uzbek literature, acknowledging the achievements of French and Russian scholars such as Etienne Marc Quatremère and Mikhail Nikitinskij in collecting materials of classical literature, editing bibliographies, conducting textual studies and publishing works. Mallaev was however not satisfied with two elements in those studies. First, he considered the scope and extent of the collection, i.e. the number of scientific studies and publications of Uzbek classical literature, to be very small. The manual O‘zbek adabiyoti tarixi [History of Uzbek Literature] is the result of the enthusiasm and dedicated work of Mallaev, and served for several generations of literature critics and teachers as the main textbook for the history of Uzbek literature in Uzbekistan’s universities. It was first published in 1962, and republished in 1963, 1965 and 1976. Secondly, some insufficiencies of the manual have been discovered year after year. The author, as the representative of that period, had to take a conventional Soviet position on the issues of Western Oriental studies and to follow the literature policy of the period. Mallaev perceived Western orientalists as representatives of a “reactionary bourgeois” camp and approached this issue negatively (Mallaev, 1976, p. 10). Undoubtedly his decision was politically motivated. The scholar wrote:
Talking about the fifteenth-century literature of peoples of Central Asia, Gibb acknowledged in his work History of Turkic poetry that all the spirit of that literature consisted of the mysticism of tasavvuf [Sufism]. M. Belin, E. Browne and others identify Uzbek literature as a “fruit of Iranian literature;” to “Iranian literature”, besides the literature of Iranian people. They also add all the literature created by different nations in the Farsi-Tajik language. According to them, the great Uzbek poet and thinker ‘Alī Shīr Nawā’ī, who played an important role in the development of the literature of the peoples of the Far and Middle East, was a “translator of Iranian literature.” In the past such mistakes were made by some Russian orientalists […] and bourgeois nationalists also try to falsify the history of Uzbek literature. They underestimate such great poets as Nawā’ī, Muqīmī and Furqat, and try to praise mystic writers such as Aḥmad Yassawī and Sulaymān Baqirghānī.
(Idem)
7Natan Mallaev knew well that Central Asia’s fifteenth-century literature was heavily influenced by mysticism of tasawwuf [Sufism in Uzbek]. He understood that belief in supernatural forces, contact of the person with his creator, and revelation-prophecies are of concern to all religious-philosophical studies (Brahmanism, Islam, the Pythagoreans, Plato and the Neo-Platonists, Neo-Scholasticism, Personalism, Existentialism, Slavophilism). But he did not openly recognise that human knowledge could be based on mystic intuition and spiritual experiences, because such an approach could be considered as a recognition of God and his history would risk bearing a spiritual basis. Such a misstep could be viewed as an inclination toward the “ideology of the reactionary class” (ibid., p. 27). When Mallaev published his work, any scholar referring to tasawwuf was threatened with the label of ‘religious-mystic thought.’ Considering God as a reality, accepting the universe as his reflection and supposing a main goal of the unification of the human spirit with the first origin was contrary to the requirements of materialistic methodology. Thus, criticizing the scholar Gibb’s History of Turkic Poetry or denying Aḥmad Yassawī or Sulaymān Baqirghānī was not accidental.
8On the other hand, Mallaev could address the literatures of the peoples of the Far and Middle East with a relative ideological liberty. His scholar-ship covers the literatures of Asia and Africa. In the twentieth century those territories observed the fall of colonial regimes and the increase of national liberation movements. Soviet oriental discourse allowed one to talk freely about the literature of peoples of Asia and Africa. Thus, in some parts of the manual, Mallaev discussed easily peoples of ancient Babylon and Sumer, India and Babur’s Mughal Empire, even about Hellenism and its mutual influence on the cultures of Central Asia. He correctly understood the cultural and political significance of the Great Silk Road.
9The scholar criticises preconceived tendencies like those of Belin and Browne as an underestimation of the spiritual cultures of peoples of the East and a denial of their significance. In fact, the essence of his attention to the subject of classical Uzbek literature was a devoted defence of not only its originality, but also, in some sense, the presence of national thoughts in its mystical-religious literature. Armed with the idea that each nation had its own consciousness and conception of freedom, Mallaev was able to disclose the Eurocentric viewpoints of Western scholars. He maintained that the history of Uzbek philosophical thought had a deep scientific and logical basis and stood against Gibbs and like-minded scholars who made biased and false observations regarding the heritage of ‘Alī Shīr Nawā’ī. He was able to acknowledge that: “in the past such mistakes were made by some Russian orientalists” (ibid., p. 10). In other words, criticizing the scholars Belin and Browne gave Mallaev the opportunity to deny the basis of one-sided approaches – approaches influenced by personal beliefs or feelings rather than based on facts. Natan Mallaev was a scholar who understood that those types of viewpoints were based on chauvinistic and racist theories about the peoples of Asia and struggled against them. But he was only able to express these views within the discourse dictated by the ruling ideology of the time.