|
FOREWORD
The compilation of this Bibliographical Directory, begun as a scholar’s personal search for sources with which to support a small specialized study, ended as a large work in itself, expanded greatly with the realization that knowledge should be shared about the existence and location of what are surely rare publications in the West, and, one has good reason to believe, often in the East as well. A second motivation behind extending the bibliographical effort stemmed from a recognition that the time has almost passed when these scarce materials—too many of which are disintegrating into dust, disappearing into refuse barrels, or being pilfered—can be preserved.
Hopefully, scholars and curators will find this Bibliographical Directory a useful aid in selecting for filming, or other methods of copying, the valuable books and serials which may otherwise elude a promising new generation of American students capable of probing all aspects of society, politics, and the humanities in the Soviet East.
In both these broader aims the School of International Affairs, with the Middle East and Russian Institutes at Columbia University, concurred, generously providing support for the purpose of completing the compilation and preparing the Directory for publication. This volume now becomes the second in a series of such directories, the first, by the same author, being entitled Central Asian Publishing and the Rise of Nationalism (1965). A third contribution, listing bibliographies pertaining to the Soviet East, is well on its way toward completion.
The other major part of the present study, comprised by the Transliteration Tables, was generated by the first portion when it became clear that, to present the data required to identify each publication, some sort of transliteration would have to be provided. Our plans to print all titles in the original alphabets had proved to be slow and far too expensive. By the time the compiling ended, no fewer than eighty-six alphabets spread through almost half a dozen writing systems had to be dealt with. It was obvious that the informality with which the task of transliterating had first been approached would have to be abandoned in favor of something much more systematic. Consequently, the Transliteration Tables were worked out with the help of many of the publications included in the Bibliographical Directory which are devoted to the alphabets in the Soviet East. The tables serve a dual purpose, making possible the reproduction of this list and at the same time supplying in themselves a convenient guide for persons seeking information about the development of modern writing systems and alphabets of the Soviet East.
In conducting the research for the Bibliographical Directory we examined every publication, or a photocopy of it, named in the Directory. Since one of our primary aims consisted of registering particularly those titles which exist in peripheral collections but find no place in the general catalogs of the principal American research libraries, the compilers concentrated upon finding such publications. The search inevitably led, however, also to those cataloged materials, held in the same libraries, which fall within our bibliographical framework. No guarantee can be given that all such treasures have been discovered. Details about the method employed in that process will be described in the section introducing the Directory.
A work of this magnitude could not have been prepared without a huge amount of assistance and advice from qualified persons, and it is one of the pleasures of soliciting counsel from colleagues that the receiving of it not only educates the questioner but provides an opportunity to express one’s gratitude to wise, generous people, surely making this one of academic society’s most satisfying and civilized interactions. Thus, to Professors John R. Krueger and Ilya Gershevitch as well as Mr. Mustafa R. Bucak, who gave their time graciously in clarifying special problems relating to the Chuvash, Yakut, Ossetic, and Kurd titles in the Directory, sincere thanks. Neither they nor any others mentioned here of course are accountable for mistakes which may have crept into this study. Within the Department of Middle East Languages and Cultures at Columbia University I am particularly indebted to Dr. William Hanaway, Jr., and to Professors John Badeau, Karl H. Menges, Isaac Barzilay, and Maan Madina. Dean Schuyler Wallace gave the effort a sympathetic nudge at its inception.
Special mention deserve those who shared with me the labor of compiling the several thousand titles listed below: Azamat Altay, Dr. Leon Kassin, Professor Edward Keenen, Dr. Aman B. Murat, Dr. David Nissman, and Professor Andreas Tietze. Many who contributed in a variety of ways to benefit the general effort were Professors Salo Baron, Sakine Berengian, Alexandre Bennigsen, Dr. Gustave Burbiel, Dr. Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, Garip Sultan, Malihe Sattarzade, Saniye Altay, Helly Barzilay, Izzudeen Essa’id, Shafiq Kazzaz, Eleanor Buist, Eugene Sheehy and John Waddell. At several of the libraries surveyed we enjoyed the helpful cooperation of Ibraham Pourhadi (Library of Congress), Dr. Viktor Koresaar (New York Public Library), Arline Paul (Hoover Library), Donald Anthony and Robert Karlowich (Columbia University), and Dr. Simon Cohen (Hebrew Union College).
Joan McQuary, at Columbia University Press, edited the unruly material into good order after the very difficult manuscript was typed and retyped in large part by Janet Allworth, Azamat Altay, Ellen Ervin, and Halime Shahmay. There must be more creditors, and to them also goes sincere appreciation in repayment, if possible, for kind assistance rendered on a thousand different days.
Edward Allworth
New York March, 1970
Nationalities of the Soviet East, Publications and Writing Systems
The peculiar social and political complexity which characterizes the Soviet East today, quite aside from the great natural ethnic and linguistic diversity, has resulted to a large extent from the manipulation of outsiders. An extraordinary flux marking the progress of Eastern nationality affairs now increasingly attracts the attention of American scholars, and can be traced directly through conflicting but politically inspired tendencies within the area. Throughout recent history the Eastern territory and population, annexed by the Czarist and then the Soviet regime, have served as a laboratory accommodating zealots eager to test their formulas for unifying the widely disparate nationalities into one homogeneous mass.
As Russia invaded the East in centuries past, Orthodox missionaries mixed with or followed Czarist soldiers moving into the Asian expanse, driven on by a fervor for uniting heathens and heretics alike with Russia through the teachings of the church. (This effort reflects itself noticeably, for example, in the cultural history of the Chuvash, Freshen Tatars, Yakuts, and smaller groups whose writing systems and publications are recorded below.)
After Christianity ceased to provide the official faith in 1917, new ideologies brewing in what St. Petersburg had called “indivisible” Russia claimed the same right to universal popular allegiance as religion had before. Communism has likewise devoted a substantial part of its energies for fifty years to the purpose of binding together the nationalities, a considerable proportion of them (about 40 percent of the over 100 million non-Russians in 1959) inhabiting the Soviet Fast. Paradoxically, while the new regime was attempting to reunify all the nationalities around a novel, Marxist (non nationality) core, it was simultaneously endeavoring to divide these Eastern populations administratively and culturally down to the smallest ...
|
