Sovietshunoslar

Conclusion
35This article shows that the politics of the cold war penetrated scholars of Uzbek literature, in both the East and the West. The research produced by Western scholars should not be thrown out, however, as it has something to offer to current Uzbek literary criticism. The criticism of that era makes the following points that would find much agreement among current Uzbek scholars:

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  Uzbek Jadid literature was a patriotic literature with a spirit of independence;
  
• 
  such writers as Qodiriy, Chulpon, Fitrat and Elbek were not enemies of the people, but on the contrary patriots and devoted writers;
  
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  the struggle against Russian colonialism and rule was brightly depicted in Uzbek literature of the 1920s;
  
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  the freedom of style allowed by socialist realism was false;
  
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  Soviet literature tried to put the ‘art of words’ into a single form;
  
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  political repression and its threat detracted from artistic quality.
  

36Most Soviet-era Uzbek literary critics earlier viewed such opinions as “the slander and libel directed by our ideological enemies” (Nazarov, 2009, p. 107). As a result of the primacy of social and political interpretations of literature, Uzbek literary criticism on the Soviet side fell into a vulgar sociologism, and literature was only deemed valuable if it had a political bent. No critic could simply address the artistic or intimate nature of a work. And Uzbek Foreignologist scholars could rarely comfortably express agreement or neutrality about critical works produced in Western countries. Despite that, some valuable opinions were also put forward in the research of Foreignologists who worked in Uzbek literature from the 1950s to the 1990s:

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  literature, the literary situation and facts were studied in close connection with social life. Literary events could be compared, contrasted, and analysed with regard to their political origins;
  
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  the relationship between the literary work and reality, its historical degree of truthfulness, and its representation of truth about life in literary works were studied;
  
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  poetic elements could be analysed as social or ideological points;
  
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  attempts were made for the determination of laws common to the development of literature and literary work. A widened opportunity for the application of comparative method;
  
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  mutual relations of national literature and issues of literary influence were studied for the purpose of combating bourgeois nationalism as well as rank primordialism;
  
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  foreign scholars were called on not to distort information;
  
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  bias and partiality could be called out, to lay the groundwork for new, contrary ideas.
  

37In the 1950-1990s, literature became one of the main ideological weapons of the superpowers in the political arena. In fact, it reflected the main essence of political discord between East and West in those ‘ideological struggles’ of the researchers who had different views. These Uzbek and foreign ideologists aimed at strengthening their political position through their attitudes towards a certain literary-historical reality. Since most of Western and Uzbek scholars did not know the language, they used translated versions of the critiques and did not read any primary sources. This circumstance, too, did not give the sides an opportunity to understand each other. Today, neither foreign nor Uzbek literary critics are interested in re-examining those literary-political processes in the ideological arena and comparing them with original sources and archives materials. They all were dismissed as ‘old thoughts influenced by Soviet politics and ideology of the period.’ Nevertheless, the re-analysis and reinterpretation of these processes based on pluralistic thought and the study of mechanisms of ideological struggle are among the important tasks of contemporary literary studies. Such analysis may create an opportunity for intervention in future ideological fights and can help develop a spirit of loyalty to scientific truth, in order to focus on original works.