ISSN: 0898-6827
A A C A R B U L L E T I N
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 06067
BOOKS 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
3 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
4 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
5 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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.
6 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
7 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
8 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
9 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
"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)
10 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
11 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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.
12 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
13 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
14 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
15 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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,
16 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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)
17 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
18 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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.
19 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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.
20 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
21 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
22 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
23 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
24 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
25 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
26 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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.
27 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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).
28 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
29 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
30 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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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31 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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)
For individual orders, pre-payment is required.
Since its publication, this volume has been adopted as a textbook
for use in area studies, history and literature courses in
universities both in the US and internationally.
Copies may be ordered from:
BAKER & TAYLOR BOOKS
652 East Main Street, P O Box 6920, Bridgewater, NJ 08807
MIDDLE EAST BIBLIOGRAPHIC SERVICES, 12077 Wilshire Boulevard -
Suite 605, Los Angeles, CA 90025
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AACAR, Treasurer, c/o History Department, CCSU, New Britain CT
06050
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
32 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
33 AACAR BULLETIN VOL. III, NO. 1, SPRING 1990
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
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