“Lenin and the Bolsheviks Were All Kurds”: Folklore and Politics in the Soviet Kurdish Culture of the 1920–1930s

Abstract

To overcome imperial legacy, the Soviet policy after 1917 set itself new guidelines in the field of foreign and domestic policy. Among the policies of the Soviet government in the first decades of its existence was the systematic intensive development of the modern national identity of the non-Russian peoples of the USSR. This included, inter alia, training national specialists and developing a modern educational and cultural infrastructure, but also providing each of the ethnic groups of the USSR with a certain set of modern cultural institutions and products. This canon also included literary works related to Soviet politics which glorified the leaders of the party and the government. All these measures urgently required experts which can provide expertise for efficient implementation of these policies, and therefore contributed to greater flexibility in treating the scholars. Focusing on the cases of N. Ya. Marr and his students O. L. Vilchevsky and A. Sh. Shamilov, this article examines the implementation of the Soviet policy towards the Kurds, including various linguistic and ethnographic projects. Special emphasis is placed on the history of the appearance of Kurdish-language works about Soviet leaders. The work is based on previously unused archival material.