Between Russia and Iran: Soviet Tajik Literature and Identity, 1920--1991

This dissertation analyses the formation and transformation of Soviet Tajik nationalism from its conception in the 1920s until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. I argue that Tajik poets, prose writers, and scholars consistently understood Tajik literature and national identity as something which was in continual dialogue with Russian and Iranian culture and literature. Tajik writers and scholars, I reveal, were by no means passive receivers of a Russian conception of Tajik nationalism. Rather beginning in the 1920s, they utilized their role as a Persian minority of Central Asia to work within the framework of Soviet ideology, promote a new understanding of Tajik nationalism, and create prominent roles for themselves as important and effective cultural and political leaders.;My dissertation organizes the transformation of Soviet Tajik literature chronologically. The first chapter summarizes Tajik culture and identity prior to Soviet influence, and offers a theoretical framework for my study. The second chapter examines the formation of Soviet Tajik literature through an analysis of the 1920s prose and poetry of Tajik intellectual and writer Sadriddin Aini and Iranian socialist and poet Abulqasim Lahuti. The third and fourth chapters analyze the emerging influence of Russian and Soviet culture and literature in Soviet Tajik prose and poetry of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Chapter five is devoted to the new international aspect of Tajik national identity that was promoted in 1960s and 1970s Tajik literature and scholarship. My sixth chapter examines how the Soviet-Afghan War and weakening of the Soviet Union affected 1980s Soviet Tajik literature. Ultimately, I conclude that these events led to a reevaluation of Tajik literature and the role of Tajik writer which would have lasting effects upon Tajik identity in both the late-Soviet and post-Soviet Tajik world.