TURKISH AND OTHER ASIATIC MSS were collected in Imperial Russia, mainly at St. Petersburg, where they were kept in the Asiatic Museum from its foundation in 1818. The number of MSS continued to grow after the city was renamed Leningrad, and the institution became the Leningrad Branch of the Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. The state of its collections and of previous cataloguing until the mid1960s was surveyed by J. D. Pearson. 50 His references are very valuable, but many researchers would have found them even more so if he had also evaluated the bibliographical items he noted. Russian and Soviet scholars, including, in recent years, many from the Turkish-speaking groups of Soviet Central Asia, Kazan and Azerbayjan, have taken a keen interest in Turkish studies, including literature in all major Turkish languages. That interest is not confined to those languages used within Soviet borders, but includes even Turkey's Turkish and that of its Ottoman predecessor. Although Ottoman Turkish is well represented in major Soviet collections of MSS, they all include a large proportion in the classical Turkish literary language of Central Asia from the 15th through the 19th century, which is usually called Chaghatay by most scholars, except in the Soviet Union. There, for ideological reasons, the language of one of the existing Turkish-speaking Central Asian Soviet Republics is used also to designate the classical language, generally preceded by the word Old. The most prevalent of these names is Old Uzbek. The greatest literary figure of classical Chaghatay, 'Ali $Tr Navadl (NavayT, Navoi, Navoil, 1440-1505) has indeed been adopted as a kind of patron saint in Uzbekistan, providing the population with a focus for ethnic and religious feeling-a legally acceptable substitute, in an atheist regime, for many previous centuries of devotion to Muhammad and to Islamic saints. The highest quality collection in the USSR is certainly that in the Oriental Institute in Leningrad. Liudmila Dmitrieva estimated in 1963 that its MSS in various Turkish languages numbered about 3500, including about 1000 each in Chaghatay (Uzbek), Ottoman Turkish and Tatar.'5' The newest catalogue of its Turkish MSs is now in progress, the work of Mrs. Dmitrieva and sundry colleagues. In the three volumes *Part 2 appears in JAOS 103.3 (July-September, 1983, pp. 515-32). '9 My gratitude is due to the Canada Council (now the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) which financially supported my visit to the USSR between May and July 1973. 1 also wish to thank the many librarians, scholars and administrators who kindly granted me access to their collections, some going out of their way to relax the usual bureaucratic obstacles, and provide me with scholarly information. LENINGRAD, Oriental Institute: furil E. Borshchevskil, S. M. Muratov; LENINGRAD, Salty'kov-Shchedrin Public Library: Viktor Lebedev; TASHKENT, Uzbek Academy of Sciences, Oriental Institute: Sabahat A. Azimdzhanova, Kivameddin Munirov; Tashkent State University, Department of Uzbek Literature: Anvar Hadzhiakhmedov, Gulom Karimov; TASHKENT, Navd'T Museum of Literature: the late Hamid Sulayman; SAMARKAND, Alisher Navoif University: A. M. Rish, Abdulhamid Polati, Vahid Abdullaev; DUSHANBE, Tajik Academy of Sciences, Oriental Institute: the late A. M. M irzoev. 150 J. D. Pearson, Oriental manuscripts in Europe and North America: a survey. Zug, 1971, pp. LIX-LXI, 286-303. .'. In Akademiia Nauk SSSR. Institut Narodov Azii. Vostokovedenye fondy krupnetshikh bibliotek Sovetskogo Sojuza. [Compiler] A. S. Tvertinova. Moskva, 1963.