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Alexandre Bennigsen in the Eyes of the Soviet Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Abstract

Soviet reactions to Western writings on the Soviet Union are as old as the Soviet regime itself. They are handled in an organized manner, with targets, delivery vehicles and gradation of response carefully coordinated and measured.

Soviet response is, moreover, not solely connected to the perceived degree of offensiveness of the given Western work; in addition, such considerations as general relations between the USSR and the country from where the publication came, as well as political opportunities of the moment, are given even more importance than the committed “offense.”

Type
Symposium: Soviet Responses to Western Studies on Soviet Nationalities
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 by the Association for the Study of the Nationalities (USSR and East Europe) Inc. 

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References

1. Zevelev, A.I., in “Protiv fal'sifikatorov istorii Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana,” Voprosy istorii, 9 (1963), mentions Wheeler, Kolarz, Caroe, Pipes, as well as Hayit, but not a single French author.Google Scholar

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Kirgizskii Gos. Universitet, Problemy sblizheniia sotsialisticheskikh natsii v period stroitel'stva kommunizma (Frunze: Mektep, 1966) mentions several English-language writers such as Barghoorn, Baczkowsky, Park, Towster, Hostler, Dinerstein, Wheeler, Kolarz, Seton-Watson, Henze (and also Hayit who publishes in German), but no French authors.Google Scholar

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2. Khidoiatov, G., Strolitel'stvo sotsializma v Srednei Azii i sovremennyi anti-kommunizm (Tashkent: Uzbekistan, 1978) p. 61. Bennigsen is lumped together with a whole array of American scholars.Google Scholar

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5. Such scholarly volumes as Bromlei, Iu.V. (editor), Sovremennye etnicheskie protsessy v SSSR (Moscow: Nauka, 1975) and others contain no attacks on individual Western writings.Google Scholar

6. This information on the system comes from a Soviet emigré whose job was to criticize German-language writings on Soviet nationalities affairs.Google Scholar

7. Specifically dealing with French historiography (but not with Bennigsen): Afanas'ev, Iu. V., “Kharakteristika sovremennogo etapa frantsuzskoi burzhuaznoi istoriografii oktiabr'skoi revoliutsii,” Istoriia i istoriki. Istoricheskii ezhegodnik, vol. 7, 1974 (Moscow: Mysl: 1976).Google Scholar

Afanas'ev, Iu., “50 let evoliutsii frantsuzkoi shkoly ’Annalov‘ ot idei global' noi istorii k ideologii antirevoliutsionnosti,” ibid, vol. 10, 1977 (Moscow: Nauka, 1980).Google Scholar

Dzhangveladze, G.A., Kritika burzhuazhykh fal'sifikatorov natsional'noi politiki KPSS (Tbilisi: Akademiia Nauk Gruzinskoi SSR, 1964) attacks several German scholars as well as Richard Pipes, whose name has been mispelled as Peips, the author having probably seen some partial German translation of Pipes' English original. W. Kolarz is similarly quoted from a German translation of his work. Same for I. Zenushkina. Soviet Nationalities Policy and Bourgeois Historians The Formation of the Soviet Multinational State (1917-1921) in Contemporary American Historiography (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976).Google Scholar

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Kiiutin, V., “Pristrastnyi verdikt sovetologov, ili kak na zapade izvrashchaetsia leninskaia natsional'naia politika, Sovetskaia Kirgiziia, 8.4.82, quotes only Conquest and Rywkin whose excerpts were probably the only ones presented to the “rebuff writer”.Google Scholar

8. Hans Kohn was so honored in a brochure by Kariakin, Iu. and Pil'niak, E., entitled Mister Kohn issleduet ’Russkii vopros' (Moscow: Gosizdat sotsial‘ noekonomicheskoi literatury, 1961).Google Scholar

9. Inoiatov, Kh., “O popytkakh fal'sifikatsii istorii sovetskikh respublik Srednei Azii,” Otchizna (Moscow 1972), fumes: “Books by Alexandre Bennigsen and Chantal Quelquejay … published by the Central Asian Research Center, a civilian branch of English intelligence services … are filled with slander at nationalities policies of the Soviet government.”Google Scholar

Tuzmukhamedov, R., How the National Question Was Solved in Central Asia (A Reply to Falsifiers) (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973) lists as the “most notorious” Vernon V. Aspaturian, Serge Zenkovsky, Edward All worth, Alexander G. Park, Richard Pipes, Michael Rywkin and Elisabeth Bacon in the USA; Olaf Caroe, Walter Kolarz, J. A. Newth, Hugh Seton-Watson, Geoffrey Wheeler, Alex Nove and Ann Sheehy in Britain; Alexandre Bennigsen, Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay in France and Boris Meissner and Stefan Wurm in the Federal Republic of Germany. Exactly the same classification is repeated in A. Malashko, Voinstvuiushchii natsionalizm- ideologiia i politika imperializma (Minsk: Belarus', 1971). Thus the listing was obviously supplied from the same source.Google Scholar

10. Two of Bennigsen's works are currently most often mentioned in the rebuff press: Alexandre Bennigsen and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, Islam in the Soviet Union (N.Y.: Praeger, 1967), and Alexandre A. Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Muslim National Communism in the Soviet Union. A Revolutionary Strategy for the Colonial World (University of Chicago Press, 1979).Google Scholar

11. Inoiatov, Kh., Otvet fal'sifikatoram istorii sovetskoi Srednei Azii i Kazakhstan (Tashkent: Gosizdat, 1962), p. 121.Google Scholar

12. Inoiatov refers to Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique (1959), p. 108.Google Scholar

13. , Inoiatov, p. 106.Google Scholar

14. , Aminova, loc.cit. Google Scholar

15. Bennigsen, A., “Les limites de la déstalinization dans l'Islam Soviétique,” L'Afrique et l'Asie, 39 (1957).Google Scholar

16. Smirnov, N.A., Miuridizm na Kavkaze (Moscow: Akademia Nauk, 1963), pp. 3637.Google Scholar

17. Akademia Nauk SSSR. Dagestanskii filial. Aktual'nye problemy razvitiia natsional'nykh otnoshenii SSSR (Makhach Kala, 1973).Google Scholar

18. Abdullaeva, M.A. and Kurbashev, R.O., “Criticism of some concepts of anticommunism on the problem of national relationships” (title from English table of contents), in ibid, 240ff.Google Scholar

19. Magomedov, M.A., “Anglo-amerikanskaia burzhuaznaia istoriografiia natsional'noi politiki sovietskogo gosudarstva na kavkaze,” Voprosy istorii 12 (1978).Google Scholar

20. In addition to Islam in the Soviet Union, two of Bennigsen's articles are mentioned: “Colonization and Decolonization in the Soviet Union,” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 4 (1), 1967, and “Soviet Nationality Policy in Pracitce,” N.Y.-Washington, 1967 (no journal mentioned).Google Scholar

21. However Bagdasarov, K.A., “Raschety ‘sovetologov’ i sotsialisticheskaia deistvitel ‘nost’ Srednei Azii,” Akademiia Nauk Turkmenskoi SSR, Seriia obshchestvennykh nauk 1 (1979) again ignores Bennigsen and all other French writers.Google Scholar

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23. Salov, V., “The History of the formation of the USSR and its bourgeois falsifiers,” International Affairs (1983), p. 50. Salov refers to Bennigsen's “Sufi Brotherhood in North Caucasus” in Soviet Nationality Policies and Practices, ed J. Azrael (New York, 1978), p. 240.Google Scholar

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30. Abdullaev, loc. cit. Another article published in Baku's newspaper, Kommunist (18 Dec. 1982) refers 3 times to Bennigsen, 9 times to Wimbush, and 6 to Quelquejay, his collaborators in the publications in question.Google Scholar

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33. Rakhimov, Samin, “Osushchestvlenie natsional'noi politiki v Uzbekistane i ee fal'sifikatsiia v sovremennom antikommunizme, Aftoreferat (Tashkent, 1979), p. 16, refering to Islam in the Soviet Union, pp. 180-96.Google Scholar

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, Abdullaev, loc. cit. quotes in his support “the known anti-communist E. Allworth” whose views on the subject are said to be contrary to Bennigsen's.Google Scholar

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40. Bagramov, Eduard, “Natsional'nye otnosheniia v obshchestve zrelogo sotsializma (protiv burzhaznykh fal'sifikatsii),” Obshchestvennye nauke (1982), pp. 130-31.Google Scholar

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43. Nekrasov refers to a large number of Bennigsen's and Quelquejay's publications (all in French) published in Cahiers du Monde Russe et Sovietique in the following issues: 1964, vol. V (1), 1967; vol. VII (2), 1967; vol. VII (3) 1971; vol. XII (4) 1972; vol. XIII (3 and 4), 1972; also to “Le Khanat de Crimée dans les Archives, du Musée du Palais de Topkapi” (Paris, 1978), and Quelquejay's “Les Khanats de Kazan et de Crimée face à la Moscovie en 1951” (publ. not indicated by Nekrasov).Google Scholar

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45. V nauchnom sovete po natsional'nym problemam,” Istoriia SSSR, June-July 1982, p. 208.Google Scholar