ISSN: 0898-6827 AACARBULLETIN of the Association for the Advancement of Central Asian Research, Inc. Editor: H. B. PAKSOY Vol. III No. 1 Spring 1990 EDITORIAL ADDRESS: Box 1011, Rocky Hill, CT 06067BOOKS FOR REVIEW, CONTRIBUTIONS, NEWS ITEMS AND COMMUNICATIONS SHOULD BE SENT TO THE EDITOR.
INSTITUTIONAL MEMBERS: School of Arts and Sciences, CENTRAL CONNECTICUT STATE U.; Program on Nationality and Siberian Studies, W. Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union, COLUMBIA U.; Mir Ali Shir Navai Seminar for Central Asian Languages and Cultures, UCLA; Program for Turkish Studies, UCLA; THE CENTRAL ASIAN FOUNDATION, WISCONSIN; Committee on Inner Asian and Altaic Studies, HARVARD U.; Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, INDIANA U.; Department of Russian and East European Studies, U. of MINNESOTA; The Middle East Center, U of PENNSYLVANIA.
IN THIS ISSUE
Robert Canfield "Briefing on Afghanistan" Audrey L. Altstadt "Azerbaijan Peoples Front" Paul B. Henze "Mongolia Faces Glasnost & Perestroika" News of the Profession Book Reviews
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BRIEFING ON AFGHANISTAN by Robert L. CANFIELD
[Professor R. L. CANFIELD is a member of the Department of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. He spent the first six months of 1989 in Pakistan as the recepient of a Fullbright Scholarship for research among the Afghans. The following has reached AACAR BULLETIN a few days after the publication of our previous issue.]
The situation in Afghanistan is more serious than is generally recognized. Soviets retain advantages due to their close proximity to the scene, and through the modernization of material infrastructure. The access to the north is easy, by land or air, as evinced by continued artillery and air strikes from Soviet territories. Soviets enjoy advantages in social resources through the "Sovietization" of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. Kabul's persistence suggests more strength than was supposed, though the general unpopularity of the PDPA has not improved. Lack of enthusiasm for and doubts about the the Interim Government is evident. Scepticism about the tanzims have grown since the last Shura, especially since Jalalabad and the people are unready to do battle sacrificially for a dubious government. The major danger is divisiveness. The historic pattern of subjugation by Kabul has been through confrontation of each district or locality separately. Another important danger is the unsavory reputation of some Afghan mujahedin. US, Pakistan and Saudi policy has favored the most unsavory, and certainly untypically narrow-minded kinds of mujahedin; it is good news that there is interest in reversing that policy. Can it be done soon enough to avoid serious damage to the Afghan people? Recommendations may be summarized as:
1) In the leadership of the government, a broad base of involvement and protection of minority rights must be assured. Problem areas are: Pushtun vs. Persian speaking; Sunni vs. Imami (Athna'isharia); Shia vs. Ismaili sects; regional differences, which can be expressions of sect/ethnic biases; disputes among commanders which can reflect regional/ethnic/secterian biases, even the Communists/progressives (if possible), of whom there is not an insignificant minority in Kabul. I believe the American position should be to be especially careful towards the minorities. The attitude of most people who have had power in the past (who are mostly Sunni Pashtuns) is that it is a shame for such distinctions to be recognized; you can be sure it is not the view of the minorities themselves. This is not an argument to recognize quotas, however; simply protection of minority rights. Certain groups have had advantages that have skewed understanding of the Afghans. Special interest has been taken in
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the refugees in Pakistan vs. the Afghans who have stayed in that country. Afghans resisting from within the country need more recognition and better representation. Similarly, the Pushtuns of Eastern Afghanistan have had a privileged position. As most of the refugees are Pushtuns from Eastern Afghanistan, there is a tendency to favor them in reconstruction plans. There is a further problem in that, as a people, these Pushtuns appear to be more intrasigent than other Afghans on some crucial issues. They are, as a whole, more likely to be opposed to Zaher Shah, and more likely to oppose the involvement of non-Pushtuns in the future government. Their attitudes, because of their particular access to Western (and Pakistani) observers, can be over- represented to Western (and Pakistani) thinking.
A clash that seems unavoidable is between the Hazaras and the Pushtuns, at least the Kuchi Pushtuns. The Kuchis who were granted grazing rights in the Hazarajat under Abdul Rahman before the turn of the century were denied them in 1979 by the Hazaras after they had mobilized under Behishti. When the war is over the Kuchis will certainly seek to recover those rights as well as the agricultural lands they had acquired from impoverished Hazaras in this century.
2) Support must be removed from the extremists. The people in Kabul fear them and the hardening of their resolve is widely known. Within the resistance, the attitude of the people is fear and distrust notably of Hikmetyar, but also Sayyaf and Khales, and of the tanzims, coupled with growing resentment. As it is well known that these extremists are the clients of the US, public appreciation of the US support (which is considerable) could sour as resentment against the extremists escalates. More and more people are saying that the US interest in Afghanistan has been mainly in embarrassing the Soviets; the US didn't care what kind of Afghans they backed so long as they intimidated the Soviets. One Shiite man asked: "Why have Ayatollah Reagan and Ayatollah Bush become such good Muslims?"
Indeed, the US support for the extremists has played into Najib's hands, as the extremists are precisely the mean spirited, intolerant, narrow minded people that Najib represents the resistance to be. The resistance is, however, much more broadly based, supported by the large mass of the Afghan people -- who are, if not educated, at least intelligent and civilized. To curb Hikmetyar, consider backing his rival, Qazi M. Amin Waqad. Waqad has a better tribal base and is from the more "tribal" part of Afghanistan (Hikmetyar is from the North where there is no tribal society; he has little experience working with his own people in the traditional way). Waqad's recent deal with Iran may complicate such a tactic, however. The same is true for Sayyaf and Khales. They have rivals who could be induced to do away with the extremist rhetoric and be more cooperative with a wider sector of the society.
3) Due to their offensive behavior and drawbacks for the resistance, support must be removed from the Wahhabis. Among the most flagrant transgressions: their taking of captive Afghan
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girls to the Gulf area. Are they really training Muslims from other places in Sayyaf's camps? As it is known that the Saudis and Kuwaities are clients of the US, the US is implicated in these activities. The atrocities and training (in so far as there is any) of "terrorists" must be stopped. Indeed, it is possible that the Saudi government would welcome a strong position by the US, as it is not entirely free on its own (so I am told) to curb its Wahhabi elements within its society.
4) The development of a viable alternative leadership to the Afghan Interim Government, that will appeal to a braod range of Afghan people, must be encouraged. It is well known that the Afghan Interim Government has captured little support among the common people and the PDPA has in more than ten years gained even less. The greatest tragedy of the situation is that after so much fighting there is as yet no institution of leadership that commands the respect of the Afghan people. Two steps seem necessary:
A] Encourage Zaher Shah to be brought in as a symbol of Afghan unity and national identity. Many Afghans (as is well known) would be reassured to have Zaher Shah and some of the old cabinet back in power for a while, to stabilize the country. Try to persuade the Interim Government to invite Zaher Shah to come in on its behalf and provide legitimacy and to attract the involvement of other widely recognized former Afghan leaders, such as Dr. Yusuf, Gholam Ali Ayeen, Samad Hamid. This is an unusually good time to press for Zaher Shah to be brought in. Najib has said that he would welcome Zaher Shah; take him up on it. Zaher Shah's coming would give legitimacy to the mujahedin in the view of many people in Kabul, provide a basis for the cessation of fighting, and enable steps to be taken quickly toward the formation of a united government, including enough "progressives" to calm Soviet fears that Islamism could continue to fester on its borders. One could futher complicate Kabul's response by offering to remove the extremists (notably Hizb-i Islami) from the mujahedin leadership --this should be done anyway, for the good of the Afghan people-- in exchange for the disbarring of the PDPA from the coalition government. PDPA members and the mujahedin extremists should be assured of the right to stand for office when elections take place (which should be not too soon, only after a delay that will allow animosities to die down).
B] Immediately start supplying weapons and other resources to the mujahedin through the government that is being formed under Zaher Shah. The support for the commanders now, which was intended to avoid the favoritism of the parties, has led to more partiality, more variance in the distribution of arms among the commanders, and thus more division among the mujahedin, and even to growing resentment against the US. The current trend away from the centralization of power is counterproductive. We should instead be working through some kind of centralized authority
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while exerting pressure on it to develop the broader base that is proposed above.
5) An aggressive international policy must be pursued. Specifically, seek a non-aligned, independent Afghanistan by arranging a pact among all the neighboring states that would ensure that Afghanistan would remain an "open" economy and society, free to work out its own affairs, and to develop its own international policies. Because the US is implicated in the outcome and in fact has a stake in keeping the "Northern Tier" nations outside of Soviet control, it must be assertive in seeking to protect the autonomy of Afghanistan --as against not only the Soviets but also the Pakistanis and Iranians. Each of Afghanistan's neighbors has a different perspective on the composition and possibilities for Afghan society. Pakistan sees Afghanistan as an extention of its tribal territory, which is essentially Ghilzai Pushtun; hence its emphasis on Ghilzai Pushtuns. Iran sees Afghanistan as an extention of its Shiite society; hence its emphasis on Afghanistan as "Khorasan," its Eastern province. The Soviet Union sees Afghanistan as an extention of its Central Asian peoples, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Turkmens, etc., with the Pushtuns as an intermediate South Asian people. Afghanistan can never be of indifferent interest to the Soviet Union. If the USSR remains a viable empire, it has a huge advantage over all other neighbors, as the infrastructure for close relations is already in place. And it has a huge stake in the future society of Afghanistan, because of the dangers of Islamic movements there that could influence its own Muslim populations. (Note how Rafsanjani has been used in the hope of quelling the Shiite resistance in Azerbaijan; there is, of course, no comparable leadership within Afghanistan, where there is no Iran-type stratified theocratic leadership).
The only hope for Afghanistan is an autonomy that is guaranteed by all the nations involved. This requires a continued and aggressive interest in Afghanistan by the US. It is true that the US cannot itself be involved in defending Afghanistan with its own military forces; in fact, the US cannot defend the interests of any "Northern Tier" nation. However, the demonstrated willingness of the Afghans to fight for their own autonomy, is a valuable asset to US interests in South Asia and the Middle East. With help, the Afghans would, acting in their own interest, provide a degree of security on the Northern Tier so far not realized through other means. Indeed, the Afghan people's ability and willingness to defend their territory sharply contrasts with Pakistan's military capability, which has been notoriously unimpressive in actual conflict and cannot be trusted to be a significant means of protecting US interests in South Asia. The Afghan people's defensive capability and committment can serve US interest so long as Afghanistan remains autonomous. Its autonomy needs to be recognized by all its neighbors, which is not likely to happen without aggressive US support.
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The US will make a grave mistake by assuming that Afghanistan will again sink into its previous marginal place in international relations. The changing configuration of power in Greater Eurasia gives Afghanistan a particularly significant place, as it cannot in a modern world continue to serve as a barricade against the encroachments of a northern empire into South Asia unless aggressive political means are used to protect Afghanistan autonomy. Modern material improvements will make Afghanistan a corridor that must be watched and protected by all the powers interested in the affairs of South and Western Asia.
THE AZERBAIJAN KHALG JEBHESI (AZERBAIJAN PEOPLE'S FRONT) by Audrey L. Altstadt
[Prof. A. L. Altstadt is Assistant Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University. She has spent two terms in Baku on IREX Exchanges. She was a Fellow of the Harvard Russian Research Center, and a Short Term Scholar at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies. Prof. Altstadt is currently finishing a monograph on the history of Azerbaijan.]
The Azerbaijan Khalg Jebhesi (Azerbaijan People's Front, APF) was legalized only last summer. The APF, related groups and unaffiliated supporters of national reform in Azerbaijan have published grievances and needs in both Russian and Azerbaijani Turkish language publications. The demands are specific, and touch upon economic, political, ecological and cultural matters. They present a challenge to Russian hegemony and, for their fulfillment, would require a fundamental alteration in relations between Azerbaijan and Moscow and between Russians and Azerbaijani Turks within the republic itself.
The APF evolved at least since 1988 on the basis of issues discussed by the scholarly and artistic elite in Azerbaijani Turkish-language publications throughout the 1980s. The APF therefore represents the culmination of a movement long in gestation. The APF program and BULLETIN place heavy emphasis on economic and political issues, calling for full exercise of sovereignty guaranteed in the constitution and control over natural resources and economic decision making. The program supports the guarantee of civil rights, equal treatment for all nationalities residing in the republic, and protection of the environment and cultural heritage (including expanded de facto use of Azerbaijani Turkish and reinstatement of original geographical and personal names). The program "condemns the use of force in political struggle..." and states that the "founding values of the APF are humanism, democracy, pluralism, internationalism, and human rights."1
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In short, despite Gorbachev's attempt to justify sending more than 20,000 troops to Baku by crying "Islamic fundamentalism," the evidence reflects no such influence.
Economic grievances have, perhaps, been most widely discussed. Prof. Dr. Mahmud Ismailov, economic historian of the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences, laid out the specifics of some inequities which had formerly been only whispered.2 "According to the calculations of the economists, our republic has a yearly trade deficit of 2.5 billion rubles. If one considers the fact that the republic is a supplier of such raw materials as cotton, oil, grapes, etc, then it is losing eight to ten billion rubles annually." Raw cotton, he stated is sold by Azerbaijan at 500-700 rubles/ton while cotton goods earn 12-13 thousand rubles per ton. "Azerbaijan annually exports 135 million rubles' worth of wool to Georgia and Armenia, while finished products would bring ten to fifteen times more to the national income."
These accusations are seconded by Bahtiyar Vahabzade (People's Deputy; also Narodnyi ["People's"] Poet and corresponding members of the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences) and Ismail Shykhly (prominent novelist, member of editorial board of the journal AZERBAIJAN).3 Both take up the matter of oil prices. Vahabzade quotes the price at 35 rubles per ton, compared, he says, to $140 per ton on the world market: "...we sell gold like ore, for peanuts, and then buy manufactures made from this raw material, for triple the price." Shykhly states that Azerbaijan sells oil (per ton) for only 3 rubles more than it costs to produce it: "It means we earn 3 rubles per ton. Does it make sense to sell a ton of oil for 3 rubles?!"
Thus the real culprit is central planning, i.e. the Russian- dominated system, that establishes prices and mandates the flow of goods. It fails to build necessary enterprises in Azerbaijan so the republic can make finished goods from its own raw materials and employ its own people. Add to this the health and environmental crises created by excessive use of pesticides, and it is no wonder that these men are so bold as to call this colonialism.
Even the NKAO matter, like all the others on the APF agenda, really concerns the Soviet system. It was that system that drew the current borders (Azerbaijan, too, feels cheated by them) and adjusted them periodically since 1921. This issue is often used as an example of Moscow's infringing on Azerbaijan's sovereignty. Such considerations furthermore reflect the need to bring the Russians into the formula when examining Azerbaijani-Armenian relations. APF leaders and others4 have argued that Russian instigation may have led to recent clashes in the capital which, in any event, the government used as a pretext to send troops into Baku, even though fighting there had ended. The real goal, they suggest, had been to crush the movement. There are numerous
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documented cases of such provocation during the clashes of 1905,5 and one Azerbaijani said "there is no absence of such provocateurs now."6
Azerbaijan's national movement is political, economic, cultural,7 environmentalist, and national -- but it is not religious. The rhetoric is reformist, even socialist, but not Islamic. The leaders of the APF have denied religious foundation for their movement and all the published material and speeches confirm that. Recent demonstrations along the Iranian and Turkish borders, despite Tehran Radio's imputation of religious motivation, were aimed at securing free movement to visit relatives in Iranian Azerbaijan. Perhaps the case of Germany urged them to take action at this time.
In the aftermath of the shooting in Baku, Soviet Defense Minister Yazov and subsequently Gorbachev himself, acknowledged that troops had been sent to Baku to prevent a seizure of power by the national movement. So why had Gorbachev claimed "Islamic fundamentalism" was the danger at the time he sent the troops? Is it possible that Gorbachev was misinformed? Was his staff was not familiar with the many publications and statements of APF leaders and the scholarly and artistic intelligentsia in Azerbaijan who gave birth to the movement and to the APF? Did they only begin reading when the soldiers began firing? Perhaps the impact of small groups who did use religious rhetoric had been exaggerated. Maybe Gorbachev decided to believe Radio Tehran. Or, as Azerbaijani Turks had said and as Gorbachev's words suggest, was the real target the Azerbaijan Popular Front?
Apparently, Gorbachev was well aware of the popularity and program of the APF and, therefore, of the threat it presented to Soviet control over so politically and economically important an area as Azerbaijan. Soviet troops closed APF offices and telephone lines, and arrested more than 40 APF leaders, including historian Ehtibar Mamedov, when he was in Moscow, more than 1000 miles from occupied Baku. Ironically, Gorbachev may have repeated Nicholas II's error when the tsar closed the First State Duma in 1906 -- he succeeded only in removing the moderates from the political scene, and polarizing those who remained. The President of the Supreme Soviet told the Russians that "Azerbaijan would never forgive the murder of its sons and daughters." 8
Rhetoric about an "Islamic" threat has not been abandoned, and national leaders are still called "extremists" or "fanatics." For the sake of his "image" in the West, it is to Gorbachev's advantage to portray the Azerbaijan national movement as fanaticism. What better way to preempt Western criticism of a bloodbath than by raising the specter of the West's preeminent bete noire -- "Islamic fundamentalism." The program of the Azerbaijan People's Front is too little known for even the scholarly community to realize that it has nothing in common with
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"Islamic fundamentalism." There is no "Azerbaijani lobby" in any Western country to clarify or argue.
Within the context of the Gorbachev era, the bloody treatment meted out to Azerbaijan fits the pattern that has emerged in Central Asia. Kazakh sensibilities were trod upon and their protests harshly put down. Is the total number of Kazakh casualties even known? The Crimean Tatars got the same run around from Gorbachev they got from his predecessors. Promises of "consideration" of their case were followed by inaction. And, so many Uzbeks have been tried for "corruption," that all but the intentionally blind have begun to suspect that it is a ploy. Tajikistan is even now experiencing similar bloody upheavals and, again, though grievances were clearly articulated, "Islam" makes its way into the reports. Gorbachev, the politician, deals gently with those whom the West watches, those with large emigre communities in Europe and North America. He raises the Crusader spirit against Islam, even when the "Muslims" are secular, nation-minded men and women who demand only that perestroika be applied to them as well. NOTES
1. Full English-language text was published in CENTRAL ASIA AND CAUCASUS CHRONICLE, Vol 8, No. 4 (August 1989). The first APF BULLETIN [BIULLETEN' INITSIATIVNOGO TSENTRA NARODNOGO FRONTA AZERBAIDZHANA, No. 1, 1989. In Russian, 10 pages.] was apparently issued summer 1989 by the APF Initiatory Center, but contained declarations by the Center dated November and May 1988. It restates the appeal to all citizens of the Azerbaijan SSR "regardless of party status, nationality or religion" to join with the People's Front to fulfill the promises of perestroika in the republic.
2. Published in English translation in CENTRAL ASIA AND CAUCASUS CHRONICLE, Vol. 8, No. 3, July 1989; and in Russian in a newly published newspaper called AZERBAIJAN, 5 November 1989, with the title "V roli pasynkov." The newspaper began publication in October 1989 and took the name AZERBAIJAN in memory of the 1918- 20 newspaper by the same name. The earlier newspaper was published during the period of independence.
3. Both articles in the newspaper AZERBAIJAN, 1 October 1989.
4. Telephone interviews, 21 January 1990
5. Local press of that period as discussed in Altstadt, "Baku 1813-1913" in Michael F. Hamm, Editor THE CITY IN LATE IMPERIAL RUSSIA (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985); Tadeusz Swietochowski, RUSSIAN AZERBAIJAN 1905-1920 (Cambridge U Press, 1985)
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6. Telephone interview, 20 January 1990.
7. The cultural arena has been the area of greatest activity for the longest time. Recent expressions of the desire to write accurate history, change the names of places and institutions and use the traditional rather than russified forms of surnames appeared in AZERBAIJAN: "Yeni gazetimiz, yeni arzularimiz," (Our New newspaper, our new desires") by Ilyas Efendiev, 2 October 1989, and "Familiyamizi neje yazag?" ("How Should We Write our Surnames?") unsigned, in 6 November 1989.
8. Eyewitnesses in Baku tell of unarmed on-lookers being shot in the streets or on their own balconies, and passing cars, with their occupants, being crushed by tanks. The Baku newspaper SEHER
(3 February 1990) devoted an entire issue to a list of known victims -- 120 listed as dead (full names, birth dates and nationality -- almost all were Azerbaijani Turks, mostly in their 20s and 30s), and hundreds listed as wounded (also with names and ages). Official reports of the death toll are clearly too low. Sources in the republic report hundreds of corpses, some say thousands.
MONGOLIA FACES GLASNOST & PERESTROIKA by Paul B. HENZE
[Paul B. HENZE is a Resident Consultant at the RAND Corporation, Washington D.C. office. Previously he has served on the National Security Council. Mr. Henze, who has studied, inter alia, classical Mongolian language and history at Harvard as a graduate student during 1949-1950, visited Mongolian Peoples Republic (MPR) during 15-24 June 1989 as a study leader to a group sponsored by the California Academy of Sciences. The following is excerpted from a draft he prepared for publication as a RAND Paper. A copy of the published paper may be purchased from the RAND Corporation, 1700 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA 90406]
.... When Mongolia applied for UN membership in 1946 the objection was raised that it was not really an independent country. China still claimed sovereignity but equally serious was the widespread belief in the West that it was just as much a Soviet republic as Azerbaijan or Tajikistan. The country finally gained UN membership fifteen years later, in 1961. Up until then only communist countries had embassies in Ulan Bator, the Soviet embassy in the center of the city not surprisingly being the most impressive. Britain established an embassy in Ulan Bator in 1963 and began sending a few Mongols to study in England each year. Most of the Mongols who speak good English now tell you proudly that they studied in England, often at the university of Leeds. Japan maintains an embassy which is becoming increasingly active. The newest embassy is that of the United States which opened for
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business in the first week of June 1989. It was not easy to find, for its two resident officers are workinmg in a ground floor apartment in a residential district while they look for a permanent chancery. But they have been warmly welcomed by MPR officials and intellectuals, who are eager to expand trade and contacts, want English language books on many subjects and say they are eager to have Americans come to Mongolia as English teachers and technicians. Might Mongolia be the next communist country, after Hungary, to welcome the Peace Corps?
.... Chinggis Khan anniversary stamps are on sale in souvenir shops. Gradually Mongol national feelings have reasserted themselves. Foreigners are unwise to make irreverent remarks about Chinggis Khan in Mongolia today. A section of the National Museum devoted to the origins and early history of the Mongol nation centers on the Great World Conqueror. His battle standards and weapons are on display. Guides point to them with pride and call visitors' attention to the enormous cast-iron hub of a wheel from his war chariot. Paintings by Mongol artists recreate his battles and giant portraits of his sons and grandsons dominate a succession of rooms which depict Mongol accomplishments in subsequent centuries. A proud curator lectures before a map of Mongol conquests: "You see that Mongol armies conquered China and Russia and ruled them for hundreds of years. The sons and grandsons of Chinggis Khan conquered Central Asia and Persia and extended their control into Asia Minor..."
.... In the south Gobi, where we spent three days visiting sand dunes and a saxaul forest in the desert, climbing down a glacier in a gorge in the Gobi Altai, and viewing birds and wild animals and the site of Roy Chapman Andrews' dinasaur discoveries, I gave our cheerful driver a generous tip for his good service the evening before we were scheduled to leave. He came back half an hour later and pressed a commemorative coin with a portrait of Karl Marx into my hand, then took a gold- painted statue of Buddha out of his pocket and placed on top of the coin, and chuckled...
NEWS OF THE PROFESSION
AACAR extends warm collegial welcome to two new Institutional Members: School of Arts and Sciences, CENTRAL CONNECTICUT STATE UNIVERSITY; The Middle East Center, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
Board of Editors of the AACAR Monograph Series --Thomas ALLSEN (TRENTON STATE COLLEGE) (Secretary of the Board); Peter GOLDEN (RUTGERS); Omeljan PRITSAK (HARVARD); Thomas NOONAN (UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA)-- are interested in hearing from individuals with appropriate manuscripts. ALL COMMUNICATIONS should be sent to Prof. Thomas ALLSEN, Department of History, Trenton, NJ 08650.
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AACAR elections were held by postal ballot during Fall 1989. The Election Committee Chaired by Prof. John STREET (Linguistics, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON) and Member Prof. Iraj BASHIRI (Department of Russian and East European Studies, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA) have reported the results. The Founding Executive Committee having submitted itself for election, was duly elected for a term according to the Election Committee's report: Richard N. FRYE (Member-at-Large); Audrey L. ALTSTADT (Treasurer); Eden NABY (Secretary); H. B. PAKSOY (President). During the year, AACAR By-Laws will be adopted.
NATIONALITIES PAPERS has a Special Issue (Vol XVII/Number I, Spring 1989) on The Soviet Nationalities and Gorbachev. Edited by Henry R. HUTTENBACH and Alexander J. MOTYL, it contains the Proceedings of a Conference (April 28, 1989) sponsored by the Program on Nationality and Siberian Studies, The W. Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. To order a copy, send $10 to the Nationality and Siberian Studies Program, 1319 International Affairs Building, Columbia University, NY, NY 10027.
Newsletter of the Harvard Students for Inner Asia continues to be published by the students staff of the Harvard Committee on Inner Asian and Altaic Studies. Vol. 3, No. 1 contains the following items and communications: "The Central University of Nationalities" by Xiangyun Wang; "XINGJIANG Normal University" by Stuart DeLorme; Reports on Recent Conferences; "A Trip to Tashkent" by Kahar Barat; Requests for Information; "UNESCO Silk Roads Project Update" by Doug Hitch; "Recent Archeological Research in Soviet Turkmenistan" by Fred Hiebert; News of publications and Newsletters; Information on New Students; Reports of Public Lectures. For subscriptions, contact: Doug HITCH or Mariko WALTER, 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138.
The Committee on Inner Asian and Altaic Studies HARVARD UNIVERSITY luncheon meetings are continuing to be held under the direction of Prof. Richard N. FRYE. For notices, contact Margaret LINDSEY, Administrator, 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138. CENTRAL ASIA AND CAUCASUS CHRONICLE is the new name for the Central Asian Newsletter issued since 1982. Edited by Marie BROXUP, Simon CRISP and Caroline GRAY, published by the Society for Central Asian Studies [92 Lots Road, Unit 8, London SW10 4BQ, UK], the new title was adopted to better reflect its contents. Subscriptions are available from the above address. The Society for Central Asian Studies also publishes the CENTRAL ASIAN SURVEY.
Middle Eastern Studies Center of the OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY shall host a conference on "Soviet and American Relations with Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan: Advances and Setbacks" May 5-6 1990. In conjunction with the Mershon Center, the conference papers will
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be published in a volume. Contact: Prof. Alam PAYIND, Director; or Jeff ROBERTS, Assistant Director; 308 Dulles Hall, 230 W 17th Ave., Columbus OH 43210.
The 33nd Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC) will be held in Budapest-Hungary 24-29 June 1990, sponsored by the Altaistic Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the K r si Csoma Society. The 1990 President of PIAC is Alice SARK ZI. For further information, contact: PIAC Secretariat, Department of Uralic-Altaic, 101 Goodbody Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington IN 47405. The February 1990 issue (No. 19) of the PIAC Newsletter contains, inter alia, further information on the UNESCO Silk Roads Project.
The vast UNESCO Silk Roads Project, which involves some forty-odd countries and four to five years of activities, is now underway. In line with its objective to promote international understanding through the study of the ancient routes of exchange, the project will recreate the expeditions that linked East and West, sponsor scholarly seminars, assist in the organization of public exhibitions on the art and archeology of the Roads, and help in the publication of popular and technical materials, encyclopedias, television documentaries. The expeditions will be composed of members of the Consultative Committee, scholars, representatives of various countries involved in the project, media representatives, and members of the UNESCO secretariat. Among those already accepted include "International Festival of Ethnographic and Documentary Films and Symposium" organized by Gary SEAMAN of the Center for Visual Anthropology, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. Educational materials will be produced on a number of levels. Scholarly projects include "A Historical Atlas of the Silk Roads" and a comprehensive bibliography of the source materials. The BULLETIN OF THE ASIA INSTITUTE, edited by Carol Altman BROMBERG, has been selected as one of the publishers of primary research. Further information may be obtained from Prof. BROMBERG, Department of Art and Art History, WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY, Detroit, MI 48202.
The Summer Research Laboratory of the Russian and East European Center of the UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS at URBANA-CHAMPAIGN will continue in 1990, with the continued support of the US Department of State, The US Department of Education, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Associateships will be available for periods of one to eight weeks any time between June 10 and August 3. Associates will again be eligible to receive faculty privileges in the library, including access to the stacks, the use of a carrel, and the right to check out books and periodicals. Contact: Vicki MILLER, 1208 West California Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801.
33rd International Congress of Asian and North African Studies will be held in Toronto, August 19-25. Those wishing to attend or
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participate should write: Dr. A. HARRAK, Secretary-General, Victoria College, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1K7, Canada. There is a discount for early registration.
Center on East-West Trade, Investment and Communications of the DUKE UNIVERSITY is planning to publish the Journal of Soviet Nationalities. Under the direction of Prof Jerry HOUGH, the Center currently has two Visiting Scholar programs: The Carnegie Corporation is funding the "study of nationality policy;" while The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation supports the "domestic reform process" research. The awards are intended for scholars in all disciplines of the social sciences. For those Visiting Scholars Programs, contact the Center at: 2114 Campus Drive, Durham, NC 27706. 919/684-5551. The application deadline is 10 March 1990. Awards are to be announced by 1 April 1990.
The TOYO BUNKO is a library specializing in Oriental Studies, established in 1917 by the late Hisaya Iwasaki (1865-1955), who purchased the library of George Ernest Morrison (1862-1920), advisor to the Office of the President of the Republic of China. Morrison was born in Australia and studied medicine. He became interested in the Far East and came to be stationed in China as a correspondent of the Times. In 1912, he became a political advisor to the Office of the President of the Republic of China. Because of his occupational need and his private interest, he began collecting Western books on China. These books were kept in a library within his house in Beiking and were made available for those wishing to consult them. The Morrison Library became widely known among China scholars of the world, and when its sale was announced, universities and research institutions in the Western world competed to buy it.
The Morrison collection was nearly complete on China, but it was quite deficient on other countries of Asia. Hisaya Iwasaki, who purchased the library, broadened the scope of the collection to cover all of Asia and added Chinese books and other source materials written in various Asian languages. In 1924, he established the Toyo Bunko Foundation at the present location and created a research department in addition. This marked the beginning of the first library and research institution in Japan specifically devoted to Oriental Studies.
It is known that Hisaya Iwasaki established various Mitsubishi enterprises and played a leading role in the growth of modern industry in Japan. He also made great contributions to the development of scholarship and the arts in Japan. In 1948, Toyo Bunko was incorporated as a branch of the National Diet Library. In 1961, upon the request of UNESCO, the Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies was added to the Toyo Bunko. For further information on the collection itself, contact: 28-21, 2 Chome, Honkomagome, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113, Japan.
Modern Asia Research Centre (MARC) of the Graduate Institute of International Studies (GIIS), with the collaboration of the
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Institute of Development Studies (IUED) is continuing to sponsor publications, research and lecture series. MARC was founded in 1971 by the GIIS, and during 1987 IUED joined the effort and shares support of the enterprise. The Director of the Centre is Dr. J. L. MAURER, Associate Professor at IUED in Geneva. Dr. P. REIGNER is in charge of Research Coordination. One of the primary objectives of the Centre is to foster academic exchanges and cooperative projects with similar Research Centers in the US and Europe. Contact: P O Box 36, CH 1211, Geneva 21 Switzerland.
The Ninth Symposium of the Comite International des Etudes Pre- Ottomanes et Ottomanes (CIEPO) will be held in Jerusalem July 23- 26 1990. The Organizing Committee (Amnon COHEN, David KUSHNER, Jacob LANDAU and Michael WINTER) suggested the theme "The Ottoman City; Foreign Relations of the Ottomans; and Local and Regional Sources for Ottoman History; other topics relating to Pre-Ottoman and Ottoman Studies." Contact: CIEPO Organizing Committee, P. O. Box 8065, 91080, Jerusalem, Israel.
The Fourth International Conference on Central Asia is announced to take place 27-30 September 1990 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The theme is "Language, Nationality and Social Order in Central Asia 1100-1990." Contact: Ms. Deniz BALGAMIS, 4225 Humanities, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706.
The Joint Committee on Soviet Studies (JCSS) of the ACLS and the SSRC, with the participation of IREX, is announcing a pilot program for a small number of graduate students and junior scholars to participate in research projects in the Soviet Union for a period of up to six months during 1990. The experimental program will be conducted under the auspices of the US-USSR Commission on the Humanities and the Social Sciences of the ACLS and the USSR Academy of Sciences, in conjunction with the Soviet Sociological Association. This Program is offered subject to availability of funds. Contact: Joint Committee on Soviet Studies Sociology Subcommittee, SSRC, 605 Third Avenue, NY, NY 10158. Application Deadline: 15 March 1990.
Publications: James CRITCHLOW, "Corruption, Nationalism and the Native Elites in Soviet Central Asia" The Journal of Communist Studies Vol. 4, No. 2, 1988.
Arthur T. HATTO, "Mongols in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Kirghiz Epic" in Gedanke und wirkung, Festschrift zum 90. Geburstag von Nikolaus Poppe, Walter HEISSIG and Klaus SAGASTER (Eds.), Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1989.
Gunnar JARRING, The Thiefless City and the Contest between Food and Throat (Four Eastern Turki texts edited with translation, notes and glossary) Lund: Royal Society of Letters, 1989. Available through Almqvist & Wiksell International, P O Box 638, 101 28 Stockholm-Sweden.
agatay KO AR, "Examples From the Mother-Tongue Theme in Contemporary Turkistan Poetry" Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Turcology,
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Istanbul.
Hisao KOMATSU "Bukhara in the Central Asian Perspective: Group Identity in 1911-1928" Monograph Series No. 2, Secretariat of the Research Project "Urbanism and Islam," Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, 1988.
Kermit McKENZIE, "Chokan Valikhanov: Kazakh Princeling and Scholar," Central Asian Survey, Vol. 8, No. 3.
H. B. PAKSOY, ALPAMYSH: Central Asian Identity under Russian Rule (Hartford, Connecticut: Association for the Advancement of Central Asian Research Monograph Series, 1989)
Masayuki YAMAUCHI "The Unromantic Exiles: Istanbul to Berlin, Enver Pasha 1919-1920." Monograph Series No. 11, Secretariat of the Research Project "Urbanism and Islam," Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, 1989.
BULLETIN OF THE ASIA INSTITUTE Volume 4 (1990) (Festshrift Richard N. FRYE) is available. Other issues contain papers addressing Central Asian topics. Subscription orders should be sent to Prof. Carol Altman BROMBERG, Dept. of Art and Art History, WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY, Detroit, MI 48202.
The first issue (October 1989) of the BUG NK T RKISTAN/TURKISTAN TODAY is published. Contact: Dr. Timur KOCAOGLU, Editor, H rwarth Str. 37, 8 M nchen 40, W. Germany.
CRIMEAN TATAR REVIEW Vol. IV., No. 2, 1989 has been issued. For subscriptions, contact: M. Batu ALTAN, Editor, P O Box 307, Essex Station, Boston, MA 02112.
THE MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL has published a special issue on Central Asia. Subscription orders should be sent to Indiana University Journals Division, 10th & Morton Streets, Bloomington Indiana 47405. The special issue is $9 + $2 postage. Prepayment required.
NEWSLETTER of the Nationality and Siberian Studies Program of the W. Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union (Winter 1990; Number 5) contains a listing of the most recent activities of the Program. Contact: Alexander J. MOTYL, Director; Charles F. FURTADO, Jr., Secretary, at 1319 International Affairs Bldg., COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
The Middle East Documentation Center of the UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO has issued a catalogue of microfiche of the Ottoman Microforms Project. Titles include a number of new entries. Contact: Laurie ABBOTT, 5828 S. University Ave., 201 Pick Hall, Chicago, IL 60637.
ISIS Books Ltd. has moved to new quarters: Semsibey Sokak 10/2, Beylerbeyi-Istanbul 81210, Turkey. Telephones (90-1) 321 38 51 & 321 38 47. ISIS also issued a new catalogue, available form the same address.
OXUS BOOKS Oriental Booksellers, specializing in Rare and Out-of-print books [121 Astonville Street, London SW18 5AQ; Telephone 01-870 3854; Fax: 01-877 1173] has issued three new catalogues: Catalogue Eleven-Central Asia/China/Japan/S. E. Asia; Catalogue Six-Arab World/ Turkey/Iran/Cyprus; Catalogue Nine-Russia. J. M. S. SLATER Esq., the proprietor, announces that orders may now be charged to Visa and Master Card.
BEYOGLU KITAP ILIK LTD. [Galip Dede Caddesi 141/5, T nel-Istanbul 80020, Turkey. Telephones: (90-1)
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145 49 98 & 149 06 72] issued a new catalogue, "Pax Ottomanica," which includes titles of Central Asian nature.
IDC/Inter Documentation Company-Microform Publishers, specializing in microfilm publications of archival materials on a large number of topics, have announced their move from Switzerland to Leiden, Netherlands. Their catalogues may be obtained from: P O Box 11205, 2301 EE Leiden, The Netherlands. Telephone: 31-71-14 27 00; Fax: 31-71-13 17 21.
ORIENTAL RESEARCH PARTNERS [Box 158, Newtonville, MA 02160-0158. Telephone: (617) 964-2818; Fax: (617) 720-3909] has issued its Frequent List number 38.
UPA Microform Collections [44 North Market Street, Frederick, MD 21701-5420. Telephones: (301) 694-0100 & (800) 692-6300] has a number of new issues pertinent to Central Asia. Stephen BLANK is now teaching at the US Army War College, Pennsylvania.
Stephen L. BURG has been appointed Dean of the College at BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY. Richard N. FRYE was an official guest of the Tajik SSR Academy of Sciences during the commemoration ceremonies held in honor of the late Academician B. GAFUROV during December 1989.
Vincent FOURNIAU has accepted a post in the Department of History, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON.
Paul GOBLE has moved to Radio Liberty Research-Munich.
Reshat JEMILEV, a prominent Crimean Tatar leader living in the USSR, has addressed a group at the HARVARD UNIVERSITY Russian Research Center during October 1989.
Cemal KAFADAR has accepted an post at the Department of History, HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
Kemal H. KARPAT has announced that the Fourth International Central Asian Conference will be held at the UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON, 27-30 September 1990.
Diane KOENKER has been appointed to the Directorship of the Russian and East European Center, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA- CHAMPAIGN.
Eden NABY has been appointed to teach Turkic Literature at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures of HARVARD UNIVERSITY during Spring 1990. During Fall 1989, she taught at the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations.
Teresa RAKOWSKA-HARMSTONE has been appointed as a Secretary of the Navy Fellow, US NAVAL ACADEMY, Annapolis, for 1989-90.
Uli SCHAMILOGLU has accepted a post in the Department of Slavic Studies, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON.
Nazif SHAHRANI has accepted a post at the Deaprtment of Uralic-Altaic, INDIANA UNIVERSITY.
Thomas VENCLOVA (YALE UNIVERSITY) will be offering a course in the non- Russian literatures of the Soviet Union during spring 1990, within the Program on Nationality and Siberian Studies, The W. Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
BOOK REVIEWS
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Yasushi Inoue, WIND AND WAVES [Translated from the Original Japanese by James T. Araki]. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989). xi + 200.
This historical novel by one of Japan's most popular writers is a useful and interesting book, whether one is interested in it as history or as literature. It is a curious mix of straight history, psycho-history and story-telling, and relates the events surrounding Khubilai Khan's two disastrous attempts at conquering Japan. As such, it involves the fates of at least four peoples, namely, the Mongols, the Japanese, the Koreans and the Chinese. While these attempts at conquest were at best peripheral events in the histories of Japan and the Mongol Empire, the same can hardly be said for Korea, which served as the base of operations and source of labor and provisions, and actually suffered the most from the campaigns.
Thus, the most significant thing about this book is that it takes the view of the occupied and beleaguered Koryo Dynasty: events throughout are seen through the eyes of the main Korean figures, i.e. King Wonjong, who succeeded his father Kojong in 1259, his son King Ch'ungnyol, enthroned in 1274, Yi Chang-yong, Wojong's chief minister, Kim Pang-gyong, chief military commander and later chief minister, etc. The book's point of view is all the more significant when one considers that the author is Japanese, and perhaps this is another reason the book has been favorably received in Korea. Indeed, WIND AND WAVES has been translated at least twice into Korean.
When this book first appeared in Japan in 1963 (Japanese title: "Fuutoo"), Japanese critics noted that it was in many ways a logical continuation of Inoue's other Inner Asian/"Silk Road" - related historical novels, in particular his AOKI OOKAMI ("The Blue Wolf"), which told the story of Chingis Khan. Critics also noted that this novel was the first in which Inoue used a strictly documentary, chronogical style and stuck closely to the historical record. Whereas in AOKI OOKAMI Inoue was apt to "fill in gaps in the historical facts with literary imagination" (Fukuda 1979, 218), in FUUTOO Inoue relies heavily on the Korean sources, namely the KORYOSA (History of Koryo). Fukuda even makes much of the fact that Inoue spent a week in Korea on a fact- finding mission for this book, although I would not.
Inoue's choice of this matter-of-fact, chronological style inevitably led some critics (e.g. Kawamori 1963) to complain that "...the impressions of the characters are superficial: all are depicted with identical depth." On the other hand, Inoue's book succeeds in its realistic description of the abject suffering of the Korean land and people and of the agonizing of the highest Koryo officials as they tried every possible means to avert each of the campaigns and the awful consequences they knew they would have for Korea. Araki's translation also faithfully renders the mixture of ship's log-type narration and descriptions of the psychology and thoughts of the Korean King.
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Especially interesting, but ultimately impossible to verify, is Inoue's characterization of Khubilai Khan's personality and of his relationship with the Korean king. It is appropriate that this book should appear at the same time as Rossabi's new book on Khubilai Khan.
One interesting side-effect or side benefit of this book is that it portrays for the Japanese a situation of colonial and military exploitation of Korea that is not very different from the experience Korea had with Japan earlier in our century. Thus, Hirano (1963) writes that "...FUUTOO opened my eyes to the bitterness of a tiny country in the process of being colonized, and to problems like occupation policy, agricultural levies for the troops, and failed military resistance. On this point, even though FUUTOO is a tale of the distant 13th century, it can be said to be a topical work."
On the more mundane level, this book helps correct the view propagated in Japanese history textbooks that Koryo was somehow an accomplice to the attempted invasions and shared the blame for the damages suffered by Japan at the time. For us as English readers, though, it provides a useful starting point for more fundamental research into the events and personalities surrounding the attempted invasions, and is of some use for students of Korean and Mongolian history. For those who wish to delve deeper into the history here, I include additional references below.
N.B. Korean here is transliterated according to the Yale System. Aoyama 1921. "Nichi-Gen-kan no Koorai [Koryo between Japan and Yuan]." Shigaku Zasshi 2-8, 9.
Aoyama 1955. Nichi-Rai Kooshoo-shi no Kenkyuu [Research on the History of Japanese-Koryo Negotiations]. Maiji Daigaku Bungakubu.
Fukuda H. 1979. Inoue Yashushi Hoodenkaku [Critical Biography of Inoue Yashushi]. Tokyo: Shuueisha. Hirano K. 1963. Review of FUUTOO in July 30 issue of Mainichi Shinbun.
I Unkyu. 1972. "Wen uy Ilpon Cengpel Kochal - Kolye wa Wen uy Kwukcey Kwankyey lul Cwungsim ulo [An Examination of the Yuan Campaigns against Japan - From the point of view of Koryo-Yuan International Relations]." Honam Sahak 1.
I Wenhyep (tr.). 1968. Phungta ("Hyentay Seykyey Munhak Cencip 6") Seoul: Sinkwu Munhwasa.
Kawamori Y. 1963. Review of FUUTOO in the September issue of Gunzoo.
Kim Chelmin. 1973. "Wen uy Ilpon Wenceng kwa Ko-Wen Kwankyey [Yuan's Japan Expeditions and Koryo-Mongol Relations]." Kentay Sahak 3.
Koh Byong-ik [Ko Pyengik]. 1960. "An Aspect of the Korean- Mongol relations in the 14th century." Proceedings of the First International Conference of Historians of Asia (Manila), 332-338.
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Murai Shoosuke. 1982. "Koorai-Sambetsushoo no Hanran to Mookoo Shurai no Nihon [The Koryo Sambyolch'o Rebellion, the Mongol Campaigns and Japan]. Rekishi Hyooron 382, 384.
Nakamura EIKOO. 1963. "Juusan-yon Seiki no Tooa Joosei to Mooko no Shuurai {The Far Eastern Situation in the 13th and 14th Centuries and the Mongol invasion of Japan]." Iwanami Kooza Nihon Rekishi 6.
Nedachin, S. V. 1911. "Poxod Imperatora Xublilaia na Iaponiiu (Po Kitaiskim, Koreiskim i Iaponskim Istochnikam). Vyderzhki iz doklada [Emperor Khubilai's Campaign against Japan (according to the Chinese, Korean and Japanese sources). Excerpts from a Report]." In: Otchet o Deiatel'nosti Obshchestva Russkix Orientalistov v. St. Peterburge za 1910 god Prilozhenie II, pp. 31-65. St. Peterburg.
Pak Hyengyun. 1969. "Ko-Mong Yenhapkwun uy Tongceng kwa ku Cenmal [The Circumstances surrounding the Eastern Campaigns of the Koryo-Mongol Allied Army]." Sahak Yenkwu 21.
Pak Sangkyun (tr.). 1975. Phungta ("Ilpon Munhak Tay-Cencip 4") Seoul: Tongse Munhwawen.
Reck, Karl-Heinz. 1968. "Korea und die Mongolen." Verhaeltnis 135-144.
Rockstein, Edward. 1972. "The Mongol Invasion of Korea: 1231." Mongolia Society Bulletin 1:2, 41-54.
Rossabi, Morris. 1988. Khubilai Khan, His Life and Times. Berkeley: University of California Press. {See AACAR BULLETIN Vol II, No. 1 for a Review by Buell.}
J. R. P. King Harvard University & SOAS-London
Leslie Dienes, SOVIET ASIA: ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND NATIONAL POLICY CHOICES. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987). 289 pp. Softcover, 29.95.
In a country of the enormous size of the Soviet Union, it is not surprising that imbalances in regional economic development have always been among the most challenging of the economic problems. Regional factors are becoming even more important under perestroika, because in this time of capital shortages and "self- financing" the outlying regions can expect less inflow of capital from the center to help equalize regional disparities in development. In this study, Leslie Dienes expands upon his extensive previous work with Soviet regional economic development and energy resources, including his collaboration with Theodore Shabad (to whom the book is dedicated), to analyze the role of national policy on economic development in the largest of the regions outside of the European heartland, that of Soviet Asia. Following an initial chapter on the problem of regional integration in the Soviet Union and the setting of the various parts of Soviet Asia, the book presents chapters on the role of energy in Siberian development, the Soviet Far East, Central
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Asia, population and labor in Siberia and Kazakhstan, and regional planning in Soviet Asia's development. Although Dienes covers economic development in an area "exceeding the size of Brazil and Australia combined," he manages to pack an impressive array of sources into this volume to provide considerable detail to support his analysis.
As a result of the subordination of regional interests to those of the center, he writes, economic development in these regions has been primarily to serve the interest of the European core area (which he refers to as the "metropolis") and not the balanced economic development of the regions. In Siberia, the bulk of the investment capital has gone to the westernmost part (West Siberia and North Kazakhstan), especially for development of the oil and gas fields in Tyumen oblast. This part of Soviet Asia is close enough to the core that its raw materials can be transported to the European region for processing or consumption. Further east, the remoteness of Central and Eastern Siberia makes their resources --especially their energy resources such as coal and hydropower-- less useful to the center, and lack of capital has prevented development of a balanced industrial base to process their raw materials.
These problems apply even more strongly to the economy of the Far East, which, in spite of the great distance from the European core area, remains dependent upon the center and is only weakly connected to other parts of Siberia. Lavish efforts -- including the building of the BAM railroad-- at developing its natural resources for export to pacific countries have not been particularly successful. Dienes concludes that "the outward foreign trade orientation of Siberia's eastern half remains essentially a potential, and a potential that is increasingly remote," (p. 87) but that the strategic situation will continue to cause the military to play a crucial role in the region's economy.
Dienes blames much of the labor shortage in Siberia, which is so great that a major share of labor in the West Siberian oil and gas fields and in the Far East is supplied by temporary workers, on the poor living conditions, especially housing. Improvement in living conditions is partially blocked by rampant "departmentalism," uncoordinated development fostered by each ministry having its own agenda and providing its own facilities and services. Even efforts at creating Territorial Production Complexes, which supposedly should make possible cooperation among all economic organs, have been largely unsuccessful in reducing this "organizational anarchy."
Unlike Siberia and North Kazakhstan, Central Asia and South Kazakhstan represent a zone of largely indigenous Central Asian population concentrations where internal factors, as opposed to the national policy decisions that dominate Siberia, are of increasing importance. Rapid population growth, over-supply of labor in contrast to Siberia's labor shortages, the process of "korenizatsiya" or nativization of the local economy and institutions, and increasing constraints on the availability of
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subsidies from the center are producing stresses which threaten economic development.
The author concludes that, under Gorbachev's economic plans, the subordination of regional interests in Soviet Asia to those of the developed European part of the USSR will become even more pronounced. Investment will be concentrated mainly in natural resource development --especially energy resources such as West Siberian oil, gas and coal-- to serve the needs of the metropolis, while eastern Siberia will be essentially "mothballed" for lack of investment capital. This strategy may be possible with sparsely settled parts of Siberia, but is more problematic in the case of Central Asia, where the rapidly growing and increasingly restive native Central Asian population may not accept economic decline under its continuing plantation economy.
In spite of the author's excellent coverage of Soviet Asia, the concept of Soviet Asia as a region of analysis remains somewhat difficult to accept. The author himself discusses at length the considerable differences between the two main parts of this Asian periphery: Siberia, a sparsely-settled and largely Slavic hinterland of the Slavic core; and Central Asia, populated by indigenous Central Asians, a "quasi-colonial dependency" of that Slavic center. Since these regions are so different in their relationship to the center, and, aside from a single chapter on Central Asia, the book is devoted almost exclusively to the various parts of Siberia, it might have been more appropriate to have limited the analysis to that vast region alone.
Aside from this regional issue, over which geographers doubtless can legitimately disagree, and the paucity of maps (only three maps in a work devoted to detailed regional analysis), there is little to criticize in this excellent book. Dienes' exceptional knowledge of the literature, his first-hand visits to many of the areas discussed, and his thorough background on and long experience with issues of Soviet energy and regional development, have enabled him to produce what is surely one of the best works available on the problems and prospects of Soviet regional economic development.
Peter R. Craumer Florida International University
Helene Carrere d'Encausse, ISLAM AND THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE: REFORM AND REVOLUTION IN CENTRAL ASIA, [translated by Quintin Hoare, with a preface by Maxime Rodinson] (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) 267 pages.
A number of the works of H. C. d'Encausse have been available in English for some years, especially her contribution to E. Allworth's CENTRAL ASIA: A CENTURY OF RUSSIAN RULE (1966) where she provided the main historical sections. It is therefore quite useful to have d'Encausse's history of reform in Bukhara
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available for use in English alongside her surveys of similar periods in Central Asia as a whole. This book is a translation of a work originally published in 1966 and reprinted in 1981 by a scholar of the Soviet Union who has since gone on to become one of the incisive students of 20th century Soviet politics in the West. The present volume includes a number of helpful additions to the French versions, including a Supplementary Select Bibliography and a Glossary of Arabic, Persian and Turkish Terms. The town name index of the French version has been replaced by two indices: one subjects and the other of names.
The main body of the work is divided into three parts and nine chapters: the parts are titled, The Origins of Reformism in Bukhara; In Search of an Ideology, 1900-1917; and National Reconquest, 1917-1924. In addition it includes four appendices: 1) a list of the rulers of the Bukharan Khanate 2) the statutes of the Istanbul-based 1909 "Benevolent Society of Bukhara for the Dissemination of Knowledge among the Masses," 3) the Manifesto of the Emir of Bukhara in 1917, 4) the reform program of the Young Bukharan Party. All three documents are translated from Russian sources. The author demonstrates her ability to tap the sources from the Jadidist period as well.
Understanding both the colonial and reform period in Bukharan history helps in better realizing the processes that were taking place throughout Central Asia, including in Chinese regions. While much of the terminology for hierarchy differs in Kashgar for example, nevertheless the pattern of relationships within the three basic parts of society --the tribal, religious and emirate rulers-- reflects similarities. In the same way, the road to reform follows roughly similar turns in neighboring Muslim areas. The author points to crosscurrents when her sources allow, thus providing, with her detailed study of Bukhara, the possibilities for creating a model for comparison elsewhere. The author's remarks on the doomed Bukharan attempts at rebellion against Tsarist colonial rule, in particular the climate in the late 19th century when the Andijan revolt and its antecedents take place, provide leads for exploration of similar movements in and around Bukhara.
This English edition has appeared unrevised from the earlier French original. For this reason perhaps, it retains some peripheral factual errors. The exile periodical "Qanun" is attributed to Sayyid Jamaluddin al-Afghani (p. 66) when it is the work of another important Iranian reformer of the 19th century Mirza Malkom Khan. While it is known from other sources that al- Afghani excited considerable interest among Tsarist Muslims, one wonders whether "Qanun" also penetrated into Bukhara. The author makes the same erroneous association in the volume edited by Allworth referenced above. Likewise the Khwajagan are identified as "a branch of the Yassawiya specific to Bukhara," (P. 34 fn. 132; p. 212) when, subsequent analysis of 14th-17th century histories has revealed the Khwajagan as a variety of a powerful Central Asian mystical order of independent families and/or
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silsileh frequently associated with the Naqshbandiyya. In addition to these problems, one would have wished for a more careful and complete glossary explaining terms such as "jeti- khan" (seven khans) (p. 66), where neither the language of the term (Uzbek? Chaghatay?) is clear nor the function and organization of the group. Perhaps parallels may be found if the term was referenced in some way. Despite these problems, this work will be indispensible in the classroom English-medium English.
Eden Naby Harvard University
Edward Allworth, (ed.) CENTRAL ASIA -- 120 YEARS OF RUSSIAN RULE. (Duke University Press, Durham and London, 1989).
Duke University Press has added to its Central Asia Book Series an attractive large-format paperback reprint, complete with maps and illustrations, of the original 1967 Columbia University Press edition of this book. The original included the work of six specialists. Seven of its sixteen chapters were written by Helen Carrere d'Encausse. The book was and remains a compendium of information and analysis otherwise unavailable in a single volume. The original edition extended to 550 pages. Another book would have been necessary to take advantage of the new material that has become available --and continues to emerge- - bearing on the pre-1967 Soviet period, let alone deal with the past 20 years of Central Asian history. The compromise was to add Chapter 17, an additional 45 pages by editor Edward Allworth. The result is invariably unsatisfactory, for the new chapter is both deficient in information and inadequate in many of its tentative judgements.
The era of glasnost' and perestroika is not only opening up archives, reviving memories and leading to rehabilitation of previously condemned political and cultural figures, it is giving Central Asians the opportunity and the impetus to think anew about their history, their culture and, above all, the condition of their economy and society. A process of reevaluation of the entire Soviet period is under way in Central Asia, as in the rest of the Soviet Union. It is probably irreversible. The reevaluation, we can already sense, is not going to be confined to the Soviet period. Central Asians are reevaluating the entire Russian colonial experience. The process is perhaps most advanced in Kazakhstan, which receives comparatively little attention in the new concluding chapter, but it is in motion everywhere in Central Asia. It is not confined to Soviet Central Asia, in fact, but to an increasing extent Soviet Central Asians are beginning to communicate across the borders that have cut them off from kin living under Chinese rule to the East and in Afghanistan and Iran to the South. All Central Asians are showing a marked tendency to look Westward too, and there the Turkish Republic attracts their attention. Last year a Kazakh scholar in Alma Ata begged me to send him publications from the Turkish Republic. "Everything that
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is published there is interesting for us," he said, "for Turkey is the only independent Turkic nation in the world and we know they have been successful in managing their economy and a democratic political system. We need to know more about their experience to liberate ourselves."
Given the speed with which developments have unfolded in the Soviet Union during the past three years, many of Allworth's judgements, though usually qualified, seem too conservative. There is a good discussion of literary developments in the 1970s and 1980s when ideas and aspirations that are now discussed daily in public and in the press could only be expressed indirectly in novels and plays or alluded to in poetry. Allworth notes that "schoolbooks have insistently emphasized an ideology that thinking people of the region often repudiate," and adds: "The ethnic question remains the crucial one for Russian authorities and for the Central Asians as well." (p. 539) True. But is bilingualism really making so much headway? (p. 538) And will "Central Asian children begin to accept Russian literature as part of their own heritage"? Doubtful, I should think, in light of the cultural resurgence that has now been reinforced politically with the formation of vocal national front organizations that appear to be gaining support steadily. Recent developments lead one to wonder, in fact --if Central Asia were to attain a level of autonomy or independence comparable to that which India enjoys-- whether the Russian language and Russian culture would survive at all, as the English language and culture in India?
How firmly is use of the Cyrillic alphabet for the indigenous languages established? Is the renewed interest in the Arabic script which has manifested itself during the past two years a passing phenomenon? Nothing but speculation is possible, given the fact that all these issues are in a process of accelerating evolution. My guess would be that rather than shifting back to Arabic, Central Asians would eventually gravitate toward the Latin alphabet [in use between ca. 1928- 1939] as used in the Turkish Republic. There is a keen interest in it in Azerbaijan. The cataclysmic developments in Azerbaijan during the first weeks of 1990 may have profound resonance in Central Asia. In late January 1990 Olzhas Suleymenov rushed to Baku to demonstrate solidarity with the Azerbaijanis. Another of Allworth's speculative comments prompts debate: "Divergence between regional sublanguages, more than the intrusion of Russian as a second tongue, may represent a most divisive factor within the culture of Central Asia, under certain circumstances." (p. 543)
He was wise to qualify this judgement, for no clear answer to this question is possible now. A strong sense of Turkic/Islamic solidarity is developing throughout the Soviet Union. All the Turkic peoples, not only the Central Asians, are showing a heightened interest in each other. This tendency may overwhelm the particularist tendencies the Soviets tried for so long to foster. The very dialectic process that Marx was so fond
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of may be at work here: changes the Soviets tried to engineer are rejected, even though they may have some logic, for the very reason that they were imposed from Moscow by Russians and communists who can now be openly scorned.
Nothing in Allworth's judgements strikes me as already more dated than his comments on Islam: "A tendency by some outsiders, including Soviet Russians, to see threats to the state from what they term a resurgent Islam...probably have exaggerated the potential of religious revival as a disruptive social or political thrust in the region. The region has undergone greater change through modern education and development than most other neighboring countries. The fashion in the West of generally categorizing Central Asians as Muslims, therefore, distorts the reality and confuses issues of primary identity and loyalty. (pp. 562-563)
Islam has never recognized a clear boundary between the secular and the religious. Even in an Islamic country as successfully secularized as the Turkish Republic, Islam remains an important part of national and individual identity. This sense of identity is reinforced both by internal factors resulting from the modernization process itself and by external attitudes that see Islamic societies as different. The current concern in the European Community about entry of the Turkish Republic --in contrast to already favorable attitudes toward the entry of Poland and Hungary-- is a good example. None of this has much to do with fear of "fundamentalism" and extreme forms of Islamic revivalism. It is more a reflection of attitudes that have their roots in the time of the Crusades.
For Central Asians, like the Muslims of the Caucasus and Volga, Islam has enormous usefulness as a unifying political vehicle. We will see Muslims all over the Soviet Union making increasing use of it. But we will mislead ourselves if we dismiss it either as only tactically significant on the one hand or, in contrast, equate insistence upon Islamic identity with radical anti-Western movements in Islam. The majority of citizens of modernizing Islamic societies, such as those of the Turkish Republic, Tunisia, Egypt and Malasia, do not see their desire to maintain Islamic identity as being in conflict with their desire for further Westernization and modernization.
Chapter 17 is inadequate in its discussion of economic matters and party politics. Among other shortcomings, it does not reflect the concern with environmental degradation, especially in Uzbekistan, and nuclear testing in Kazakhstan, that have aroused broad segments of the population. There are signs that degeneration in the Central Asian communist parties may be accelerating to the level we have recently seen exposed in Azerbaijan. Party headquarters in Tashkent is crowned with the Leninist slogan in Russian and in Uzbek in huge letters: "The Party is the Intelligence, the Honor and the Conscience of our era." Considering the corruption that has been exposed in the Uzbek Communist party during the past decade, the claim is an affront to all Uzbeks.
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So it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the title Chapter 17, "The New Central Asians" is inappropriate. Central Asia has entered a very dynamic period. It is impossible to characterize Central Asians today except in terms of accelerating change that could lead to a rejection of the colonial imprint at least as radical as occured in Algeria. The true New Central Asians will emerge only when that process has run its course.
Paul B. Henze RAND Corporation-Washington D. C. Mahnaz Z. Ispahani, ROADS AND RIVALS: THE POLITICAL USES OF ACCESS IN THE BORDERLANDS OF ASIA. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989) xvi + 286 pp. Bibliography. Index.
This book is an important contribution to the study of the spatial context of politics, a topic that seems to be attracting increasing interest. Indeed, it focuses on the problems of imperial power in Inner Asia, a part of the world that has stimulated several major contributions to geopolitical thought, such as those of Halford Mackinder (whose writings have been reread since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan) and Owen Lattimore (whose INNER ASIAN FRONTIERS OF CHINA has recently been reissued). Ispahani's particular concern is the political implications of spatial processes in Baluchistan, Afghanistan, and the Karakorum-Himalayan borderlands of South Asia -- that is, how accesibility to those areas has been a factor in the political behavior of states.
Ispahani is attempting to counter two --in her opinion, mistaken-- approaches to the study of state politics and international affairs. For one thing, she feels that the preoccupation in our time with the awesome capability of modern weaponry and transport technology --nuclear explosives, ballistic missiles, and the like-- has obscured the continued importance of geography in local and international affairs: "Geography has yet to be confounded by technology" (p.4); "the tyranny of terrain remains a stubborn reality" (p.2). Because of this indifference to the influence of geography on political affairs many scholars and strategic planners have overlooked the primary and unique importance of the more familiar transport technologies such as roads and railroads. These, she reminds us, "support the daily interactions of developing countries and make up the connective tissue of their societies" (p.230); they are also, as she demonstrates by numerous examples, important vehicles of state security. The constraining influence of natural barriers and underdeveloped transport technologies is especially significant for nations of the Third World; for "physical distance remains fundamental to the political, economic, and security concerns of developing countries, where terrain and topography still pose no small obstacle to the expansion of state power" (p.3).
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To challenge the prevailing indifference to geography and transport technology Ispahani presents evidence to show that routes and "antiroutes" ("any natural or artificial constraint on access" [p.21]) have long affected political policy (p.2, 231, 233). In these three frontier regions of South Asia governments have used routes and antiroutes to effect their political, economic, and strategic agendas (p.32, 86, 233). A central concern of her study, then, is to demonstrate how political interest has affected, and been affected by, geographic conditions, particularly through the conscious attempt of states to use the material environment for political purposes. Her second problem with current approaches to politics and international affairs is that economic development and security problems are usually considered separately, as if one issue had no relation to the other: "one of the most wasteful errors in the analysis of the developing world ... [is] the persistent segregation of the study of security from the study of development" (p.4). To overlook the relation between economic development and political security in the Third World is potentially to misjudge the political implications of economic development or the economic consequences of political policy. Ispahani argues that it is important, in the study of transportation history, to recognize how security as well as economic interests work together to affect development policy. In reviewing the histories of these three frontiers of South Asia she shows that development decisions were not always motivated by economic concerns. More often political policy was the determining factor: worries about security controlled decision on development. It was for security reasons that the British at first left Baluchistan underdeveloped in the nineteenth century, and it was for strategic reasons (i. e., because of the growing Russian presence in Central Asia) that they later decided to build roads and railroads there. It was for security reasons that the rulers of Afghanistan and Bhutan left major sectors of their domains underdeveloped --that is, to ensure that their more powerful neighbors had no easy access into their territories; economic underdevelopment was in these cases, she argues, a studied political pose. Similarly, the construction of the Karakorum highway was more than an economic and trade enterprise: it was an attempt by China and Pakistan to outflank their rivals, the Soviet Union and India. Security concerns and economic development thus had to be carefully balanced: so long as Afghanistan kept its transport infrastructure underdeveloped it could maintain a relative autonomy, despite the superior strength of its neighbors; but when Afghanistan "embarked on a routing policy that sacrificed security for development" (p.123) it presented the Soviet Union with an irresistible strategic opportunity; the Soviet invasion took place over a transport infrastructure recently installed with Soviet and American help. Routes and antiroutes have thus been central issues in the economic and political history of the marginal regions of South
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Asia, both in the "Great Game" of the nineteenth century and in the current geopolitical tussles in the region. This book is thoroughly researched and well written . It deserves careful attention, especially by planners and political analysts in government, for if Ispahani is correct, nations only at their own risk can ignore the influence of routes and antiroutes on the course of world affairs.
Robert L. Canfield Washington University -- St. Louis
Boris Z. Rumer, SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA: "A TRAGIC EXPERIMENT" (Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman Publishers, 1989) xx, 204 pp. $37.50.
The ethnic upsurge and occasional violence that has rocked Soviet Central Asia in the Gorbachev years has not occurred in a socio-economic vacuum. Rather, these outbreaks of unrest and sporadic violence have taken place as a result of the increasingly perilous socio-economic condition of the region that even Soviet works have labelled as a tragic experiment. Hence Rumer's title and the devastating indictment of Soviet socio- economic policies offered here. There used to be a time a generation ago or so when Soviet writers, mainly in Moscow, held up the region as a showcase for selected Moslem audiences abroad or for Westerners interested in development. They concurrently denounced Western critiques of unequal development, investment, and economic policies as bourgeois falsifications. Rumer, however, verifies every single one of these critiques in the current Soviet literature and uses them pointedly to make the case justifying such a depiction of Soviet Central Asia. Thus, despite an enormous population rise, investment has remained the same over twenty years. Secondly, Central Asian industry remains basically one of extractive industries that have prevented Central Asia from obtaining and extending its own vertically integrated industries. Thirdly, its soil and water are on the verge of exhaustion and a tremendous ecological catastrophe. Fourth, its main product, cotton, is becoming increasingly uncompetitive on the world market, so the hard currency earned through this source is unlikely to remedy its ails in sufficient volume to make a difference. Fifthly, investment in social overhead and manpower is not keeping up with regional needs. And the same holds true for investments in health care, etc. Due to the prevalence of an economy of shortages and the impossibility of the center's monitoring the processes which it imposes on Central Asia, crime is also rampant despite constant purges.
Overall these problems derive from the fact that central, ministerial, branch planning imposes policies upon the region which are tailored to central, not regional needs, and clearly frustrate the area from developing according to its own balance of resources and needs. For the most part, Rumer's evidence is
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from Soviet press, much of it local economists and commentators' observations. In this connection he encounters a phenomenon that this reviewer has also found in his work. Analysts or historians writing on Central Asian affairs who are Russian or Moscow based paint an entirely different picture (within the confines of Leninist discourse) of Central Asian developments from that pictured by local Central Asian scholars. For the former the Soviet experience has been, if not an uninterrupted triumphal progression, on the whole basically a progressive internationalist experience that vindicates Soviet history. Central Asian scholars, on the other hand, paint an almost entirely opposed picture of strife, underdevelopment, acute and unresolved socio-economic problems which are getting worse, etc. What makes this situation increasingly alarming is that the central view is also taking on increasingly overt aspects of an anti-Asian chauvinist Russian mentality as is discernible from Rumer's discussion of the Siberian water diversion controversy. Purely nationalist considerations became quite explicit in 1985- 86 and led to a reversal of the plan which could well have benefitted Central Asia immensely and which had been promised as the counter to the otherwise destructive policies currently in place. As a result Central Asian nationalist considerations have also become increasingly more overt as well in the professional literature. Given the fact that the Gorbachev regime has launched policies whose implications are decidedly not to those republics' advantage, the future of the region under Gorbachev looks both increasingly bleak and conflicted vis-a-vis Moscow. This sobering account of the tragic experiment of Soviet Central Asia provides an essential foundation of socio-economic analysis by which Western and perhaps Soviet analysts alike can gauge the inevitable conflicts and possible explosion that will take place in the nineties.
Stephen Blank US Army War College
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AACAR BULLETIN SUPPLEMENT
H. B. PAKSOY ALPAMYSH: Central Asian Identity under Russian Rule (Hartford, CT: Association for the Advancement of Central Asian Research) 200 Pp., Bibliography, Index, Appendix. ISBN: 0-9621379-9-5 (Hardcover) $49.95 ISBN: 0-9621379-0-1 (Paperback) $10.95 Plus $2.50 S&H in the US; $5.50 International (air)
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I believe Professor Paksoy has made a germane contribution to our understanding of the dastan genre. His investigation of the Alpamysh epic reveals both the intricacies of the discriminatory processes employed by patrons to suppress individuals' concerns for their nation, and the resilience of the culture itself. He shows as well how determined generations of Central Asians have been to safeguard the integrity of the Turkish culture. Furthermore, Professor Paksoy's study sheds light on the stories in The Book of Dede Korkut. It shows not only how the Alpamysh epic is preserved in the story of the "Bamsi Beyrek of the Grey Horse", but also what processes the latter story, and possibly the other stories in the collection have undergone after the transplantation of the Oghuz from Central Asia to Anatolia. This is, of course, in addition to the lively discussion of Alpamysh's own "ordeal" at the hand of the Russian and Soviet censors who endeavored to destroy its national and Islamic contents.
Iraj Bashiri University of Minnesota
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Through his scholarly commentary on this important epic of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia, Paksoy conveys an understanding of its political as well as its cultural significance for the relationship between the Turkic peoples and the Russian or Soviet state.
Ralph T. Fisher University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Epic and politics -- yes, always!
Arthur T. Hatto University of London
I have only the highest praise for its scholarship. It combines a solid examination of the dastan with an illuminating case study of the importance of the collective memory for the maintenance of ethnic and community identity.
Keith Hitchins University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
H. B. Paksoy masterly reconstitutes the shabby saga of Tsarist/Soviet efforts first to muzzle this authentic vox populi and then to pervert the message of these texts, now with such petty means as alphabetical/orthographic discrepancies, artificially introduced to limit popular access to such or such variant, then through "softer" and more subtle methods such as various "refinements" of the text itself, i.e in fact outward, fraudulent rewriting of it. Soviet totalitarianism added to this panoply of interferences in foreign affairs the corruption of the corrupters by including into, and submitting to "administrative" structures ultimately dependent on political police the very students put in charge of violating these dastans (pp. 28-32), cornering them at a time into having to express shameful --and how ridiculous-- judgements (pp. 26-27) while depriving them -- until now-- of the main, first-hand documents, still buried in various "spetzkhraneniia." No wonder in such conditions if some notorious "coryphei of Soviet Science" turned out, on inquiry, to be mere plagiarists and "falsifiers of History" of the usual, Lyssenko-type (p. 120).
Guy Imart Universite De Provence Aix Marseille I
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The epic of Alpamysh (oddly, the very name is virtually unknown in the Turkish Republic) may fairly be described as part of the soul of the Central Asian Turk. Dr. Paksoy's absorbing book contains, besides a text and annotated translation, the story of its fortunes under successive Russian regimes and a concise account of Soviet language policy. This policy has largely succeeded in persuading the scholarly world that the various Turkish dialects of Central Asia are so many distinct languages. The Central Asian Turks, happily unaware of this, find little more difficulty in communicating with each other than a Yorkshireman finds communicating with a Californian. And they all know and love Alpamysh.
Geoffrey L. Lewis Oxford University
Dr. Paksoy has with the publication of his book rendered a great service not only to Turcologists and Orientalists but also to all those scholars who devote their time to research in Soviet inter- ethic relations. The Alpamysh is a Central Asian Turkic epos which is of fundamental value and importance for Turkic literature in general. Dr. Paksoy's translation of the Alpamysh, his extensive comments on the text, his deductions based on this genuine Turkic literary monument will be received with great satisfaction everywhere. In addition I would like to express my admiration for Dr. Paksoy's wide reading in a field which has always been connected with difficulty of access.
Ambassador Gunnar Jarring Stockholm-Sweden
Dr. Paksoy opened a new stage in Central Asian area studies. The fresh fruits of [his] thorough investigation on Soviet Central Asian literature, history and politics are integrated in this work, in which readers can find two impressive stories, one is the heroic story of Alpamysh commonly known in whole Central Asia and the other the admirable story of Central Asians' persistent efforts to defend their national heritage.
Hisao Komatsu School of Letters-Tokai University
I feel that Paksoy's work is significant, not only in that it lays out the most complete rendition of Alpamysh in English to date, but also in that the accompanying background and analysis present a good picture of an aspect of the cultural transition from a traditional to modern society for the peoples of Central Asia. I recommend it to my students and colleagues.
David C. Montgomery Brigham Young University