ТУРЕЦКИЙ КОНТИНГЕНТ В КОММУНИСТИЧЕСКОМ УНИВЕРСИТЕТЕ ТРУДЯЩИХСЯ ВОСТОКА. ЧАСТЬ II

Abstract

Turkish students could attend courses at the Communist University of Workers of the East (Kommunisticheskii Universitet Trudiashchikhsia Vostoka, KUTV) since its opening in 1921. Nazim Hikmet (1902–1963), who would later emerge as the first Turkish futurist poet, arrived at KUTV with his friends in 1922. It was during his studies in Moscow that he began experimenting with free verse and reformation of the traditional language of Turkish poetry. The intellectual stimulation of Turkish students occurred through communication with other foreign students, regular excursions to museums and trips to different cities, work practice in Soviet factories, close acquaintance with the culture and life of Soviet people. According to the published memoirs of Zehra Kosova (1910–2001) who studied at KUTV in the mid-1930s, one can clearly imagine the learning process and everyday life of students who had their families with them in Moscow. Like many other foreign university graduates she was forced to leave her child in the USSR, in order to ‘build socialism in the East’ and conduct underground work in her homeland. For the period 1921–1938, about four hundred members of the Turkish Communist Party (TCP) and leaders of the political left were educated at the KUTV. Particularly in the TCP, the most productive groups of students were those, who studied in Moscow between 1926 and 1939. During this period, the foreign sector of the KUTV was under the direct control of the Comintern. Many of the graduates from this period were illegally employed in leading positions of the Turkish Communist Party.