Soviet orientalism and the creation of Central Asian nations / Alfrid K. Bustanov.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bustanov, Alʹfrid K.

Series:

Central Asian studies series ; 29.

Central Asian studies series ; 29

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Relations.

Orientalism.

Asia, Central--Study and teaching (Higher)--Soviet Union.

Asia, Central.

Orientalism--Soviet Union.

National characteristics, Central Asian.

Soviet Union--Relations--Asia, Central.

Soviet Union.

Asia, Central--Relations--Soviet Union.

Soviet Union--Intellectual life.

Intellectual life.

Education, Higher.

International relations.

Central Asia.

Physical Description:

xxviii, 144 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Routledge, 2015.

Summary:

Soviet Orientalism and the Creation of Central Asian Nations, Orientalism - the idea that the standpoint of Western writers on the East greatly affected what they wrote about the East, the "Other" - applied also in Russia and the Soviet Union, where the study of the many exotic peoples incorporated into the Russian Empire, often in quite late imperial times, became a major academic industry, where, as in the West, the standpoint of writers greatly affected what they wrote. Russian/Soviet orientalism had a particularly important impact in Central Asia, where in early Soviet times new republics, later states, were created, often based on the distorted perceptions of scholars in St Petersburg and Moscow, and often cutting across previously existing political and cultural boundaries. The book explores how the Soviet orientalism academic industry influenced the creation of Central Asian nations. It discusses the content of oriental sources and discourses, considers the differences between scholars working in St Petersburg and Moscow and those working more locally in Central Asia, providing a rich picture of academic politics, and shows how academic cultural classification cemented political boundaries, often in unhelpful ways. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 The Leningrad connection: Oriental projects of source editions 1

Classical Oriental studies and Soviet politics 1

Toward the new scholarship: planning and collective work 2

Dividing sources into national pieces: the Turkmen project 5

Semen Volin: Bartol'd's unacknowledged successor 8

Ex genii Bertel's and the crown of source editing: Jami' at-tawarikh 11

The Kirgiz group in Leningrad 18

The Kazakh project: completion of the program 19

Conclusion 26

2 Nationalism and regionalism: dividing and integrating Soviet Central Asia in meta-histories 36

Regional and national perspectives in history writing 36

The early Soviet discourse on the nomads 38

The impact of national delimitation and sedentarization 39

Sandzhar Asfendiiarov: the nomadic concept of Kazakh history (1920s-30s) 46

The Soviet concept of autochtonism in Central Asia 50

Anna Pankratova and the official Kazakh history of the 1940s 52

Discussions around Kazakh history: the late 1940s-50s 54

The 1954 Tashkent conference: freezing of the dogma? 60

The rehabilitation of "bourgeois" Orientalists: Bartol'd reemerging in the 1950s-70s 65

A great provocation? A tentative switch to the regional concept of history in the USSR 70

Conclusion 76

3 The establishment of Kazakh Orientology 89

The Institute of History and its structure 89

The Nusupbekov-Dakhshleiger tandem 90

Reincarnations of Orientology: in Kazakhstan 93

Sapor Ibragimov: between Leningrad and Alma-Ata 101

Veniamin Iudin: an oppressed Orientalist 103

Klavdiia Pishchulina: the continuity of Kazakh statehood 106

Sergei Kliashtornyi: Orientalists in the state service 108

The team of young Orientalists in Alma-Ata 113

In search of shajaras: genealogical narratives of the Kazakh tribes, 1970-80 118

Conclusion 125

4 General conclusion 135

Politicization of philology 136

Regional vs. republican approaches in nation building 137

Triangle: Moscow-Leningrad-Tashkent 138

Power and scholarship 140.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781138019225

1138019224

OCLC:

895029887

Publisher Number:

99961237038