Sovietshunoslar

Twentieth-century Uzbek literature strengthened the socio-political as well as the ideological struggle’s discourse in the public arena and took an important place in determining the nation’s fate with a literary expression of national revival. For instance, the regime of the Czarist Empire and the many changes happening within social strata pulled literary works into a whirlpool of political concerns. The expression of great ideas in national literature of the 1950s to the 1990s such as freedom from the inequality of colonial systems and the attainment of independence did not abate even after Soviet Union had completely established control in the territory. Literary works which articulated such ideas have been studied not only by Uzbek but also by foreign scholars such as American (Edward Allworth, David Montgomery, Robert Barrett), British (Geoffrey Wheeler, Olaf Caroe), German (Jürgen Paul, Sigrid Kleinmichel, Ingeborg Baldauf), French (Stéphane Dudoignon), Japanese (Hisao Komatsu), Italian (Alessio Bombaci, Ettore Rossi) and Turkish (Ahmad Zaki Validi Togan, Çağatay Kuchar).
2However, in the Soviet period, Uzbek literary pieces were studied only in light of their ideological potential. The interpretative work done in lite-rary studies was considered to be of governmental importance. As a result, the process of finding ‘political opposition’ in literature divided Western and Soviet scholars, translators, writers and columnists into the camps of ‘Sovietologists’ (sovietshunoslar) and ‘Foreignologists’ (xorijshunoslar). In fact, during the 1960s-1980s a special group consisting of Uzbek scholars named Foreignologists was formed following a central Soviet government’s order. Their main mission was to fight against foreign scholars’ thought on Uzbek literature and destroy their anti-Soviet socio-political movement. Actually, Uzbek researchers working on foreign scholars (so-called Sovietologists) turned the latter into ‘ideological enemies’ since they opposed the political process of the Soviet period. Literature clearly became one focal point of the ideological struggle between East and West.

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  1 In Turkestan at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, the Jadid movemen (...)
  

3It should be noted that the study of Uzbek literature had a strong basis in the cultural and political aims of each side. The main reason for foreign scholars’ interest in national literatures was the politics of the cold war between the former ussr and the West. Local intellectuals and foreign scholars tried to protect the interests of their two opposing regimes. Both sides, in some sense, tried to find ‘malleable spots’ within the lite-rary history of their opponent. Western scholars made frequent attempts to find writers and works of literature which opposed the Soviet regime, and they were able to conduct research and publish articles on subjects, which Uzbek scholars could not touch under the Red Empire. Monographs, books, articles, and essays on Oriental studies, Turkish studies, Islamic studies and the literature of the Jadid period1 were produced by Edward Allworth (United States), Ahmad Zaki Validi Togan (Turkey), Hisao Komatsu (Japan), Ingeborg Baldauf (Germany) and other scholars whose names are not yet known among Uzbek readers such as H.B. Paksoy, W.L. Hanaway, or A. Bennigsen. In the cold war period, only American institutions, research centres and societies focusing on Central Asia made significant contributions in examining problems of historical and modern literature. Universities such as Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, Indiana, Washington (Seattle), Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Los Angeles and centres like the Centre for Russian Studies, the Institute of Eastern Europe, the American Council of Scientific Societies, etc. have studied, from a cultural and political stance, the languages, literatures and ethnography of non-Slavic peoples such as Uzbeks, Azerbaijanis, Kazakhs, Turkmens, Kyrgyz, Yakuts, Tatars, Chuvash, Buryats, Bashkirs and other groups who lived in the territory of the former Soviet Union.
4The main point, though, should not be the number of research centres and the amount of funds allocated to these studies, but rather the significance of contributions made to the development of Oriental and Turkic studies. Until the 1990s the influence of politics on literary studies continuously made its presence felt. It was difficult to approach scientific truth under the pressure of politically limited methodologies and theories. For this reason, Uzbek intellectuals who wrote on foreign subjects in the 1950s-1990s tried to conform their work to Party and government resolutions and directives, and to the opinions of scholars who came from Russian universities and lived in Uzbekistan. They felt it necessary to describe the essence of all problems in the light of Soviet ideology. On the other hand, the emergence of pluralistic thoughts after the 1990s opened the way for drastic changes in the Uzbek scientific community. Therefore, it is essential to study the relations of Uzbek scholars with their foreign colleagues, dividing their work into three major periods:

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   the Soviet period from the 1950s to the 1970s: new beginning and developing ideological pressure;
   
2. 
   the Soviet period from the 1980s to the 1990s: decreasing ideological pressure in the perestroika;
   
3. 
   the period of independence, which is characterised by the formation and development of a free mental outlook and pluralistic thought.
   

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  2 I am intending to research on the period of independence in my future investigations.
  

5The aim of the present article is to study the relations of Uzbek scholars with their foreign colleagues in the two Soviet periods (1950s-1990s). I assume that these two periods should be observed as a whole since they are drawing on a common essence and would remain unchanged. The independence period is not included in this article, which focuses on the analysis of ‘foreign studies’ before the collapse of the Soviet Union.2 It is essential to commence the investigation with an analysis of the history of literature.