Soviet-Tajik Writing Intelligentsia in the Late 1930s

Abstract

This paper looks at the formation of a Tajik-Soviet writing elite in the 1930s, exploring how a new generation of Soviet writers in the late 1930s emerged out of new state institutions. Prior to their emergence, the founders of Tajik literature - Sadriddin Aini and Abolqosim Lahuti - used their unique position vis-à-vis Moscow to shape the direction of Tajik literature. Despite the former’s important place in Soviet hagiography, it was the younger generation of Tajik writers - including writers like Mirzo Tursunzoda, Jalol Ikromi, Sotim Ulughzoda, and others - that emerged on the all-Union writing scene in the late 1930s and became key cultural and political fi gures in the post-war era. While the role of the Tajik writer inevitably became the portrayal of the national subject in the modern context of Soviet development, this article shows how comparing the themes and writings of these two generations in the 1930s demonstrates how Tajik national identity building related to the nationalities policies of the early Soviet Union and, in particular, the relationship between Tajik national identity and territory. This paper relies on a few primary source materials the Central State Archive of the Republic of Tajikistan, but also online archives, newspapers/periodicals, and published Books and collections. This paper fi nds that the mobilization of a younger generation of Tajik-Soviet Writing Intelligentsia led to the creation of a new vision of Tajik national identity unfolding in a Soviet space. Unlike the early writers Sadriddin Aini and Abolqosim Lahuti, these younger writers emerged in new Soviet institutions and therefore projected a new Soviet-Tajik identity in the late 1930s and eventually became leaders of Central Asian literature in the post WWII period

Keywords

• national identity
• national politics
• tajik writers
• tajik-persian literature