“The Mukri Kurds” by O. L. Vilchevsky: What and Why Has Been Deleted Before Publication?
https://doi.org/10.22311/2074-1529-2020-16-4-99-116
Abstract
The article deals with the problem of political influence on scholarship. It analyses the existing versions of an ethnographic essay by Oleg Vilchevsky, a prominent Soviet Orientalist. Alongside a published version the ethnographic essay “The Mukri Kurds” — an author’s typescript, “Mukri Kurdistan,” has been found in the Scientific Archive of Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The first materials for this essay were collected by Vilchevsky during his journey to Iran in 1942 as he prepared a military-political description of the Kurdish regions. Before publication, the state-controlled structures removed or made the author remove from the essay a number of important thematic blocks, e. g., on interconfessional relations in Mukri Kurdistan of Iran (focusing on Mahabad), descriptions of various meetings Vilchevsky held with Kurdish activists. The paper analyses the content of this scholarly study and the problems related to the publication of the essay in the context of Vilchevsky’s participation as a Soviet military officer in the implementation of the Soviet Middle Eastern policies in 1942–1954. The author of the essay “The Mukri Kurds” apparently strived to maintain scholarly neutrality yet the facts and argumentation contained in the different variants of this study were consistently reviewed and added or omitted depending on the existing political situation. The paper raises the question about the subjectivity or autonomy of a scholar serving a government — something effectively dismissed and neglected in the work of Edward Said on the relationship between politics and scholarship in the field of Middle Eastern studies.
About the Author
A. O. Pobedonostseva-Kaya
Saint-Petersburg State University
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Аngelika О. POBEDONOSTSEVA-KAYA, Cand. Sci. (Hist.), assistant, Faculty of Asian and African Studies
7–9, Universitetskaya Emb., Saint Petersburg, 199034
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Review
For citations:
Pobedonostseva-Kaya A.O. “The Mukri Kurds” by O. L. Vilchevsky: What and Why Has Been Deleted Before Publication? Islam in the modern world. 2020;16(4):99-116. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22311/2074-1529-2020-16-4-99-116
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