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The central Asian researchcentrePublished online: 25 Feb 2011.

To cite this article: (1969) The central Asian research centre, Journal of TheRoyal Central Asian Society, 56:1, 103-106, DOI: 10.1080/03068376908732064

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THE CENTRAL ASIAN RESEARCH CENTRE

Reference to the unfortunate situation in which this Centre now finds itself wasmade at the Annual Dinner on December 6.* The purpose of the present article is todescribe the history, object and achievements of the Centre.

THE Central Asian Research Centre was founded in 1953 on the basis of anexisting organization—the Turcological Centre. Its general object was tofill the gap between Soviet and Asian studies as these are normally con-

ducted in universities and other research organizations. It had been establishedthat no study of existing conditions in Soviet Central Asia or of Soviet Asianpolicies in general was being carried out either in the Slavonic or in the OrientalSchools of any university in Britain, and that in consequence the vast quantity ofSoviet writing on these subjects was not being subjected to any systematic exam-ination or analysis. This was due partly to the fact that British experts on Asianaffairs seldom had any knowledge of Russian, and partly because it was com-monly supposed that Soviet writing on Asian subjects contained "nothing butpropaganda".

Until 1956, the Centre confined itself to the study of conditions in the SovietCentral Asian and Kazakh republics of the U.S.S.R. In 1953, the importance ofthe experiment being conducted in this region by the Soviet Government wasstill barely apprehended. In Western propaganda directed towards Asia andAfrica it was being represented as an economic and social failure, and as carryingwith it untold miseries for the Muslim population. Soviet propaganda, on theother hand, declared it to be an unqualified success. The realities of the experi-ment, its shortcomings as well as its achievements, if only they could be arrivedat, clearly held lessons of great significance for the emerging countries of Asiaand Africa, many of which were examining the applicability of western andeven of socialist methods to the solution of their various problems. The regionwas, and still is, closed to any kind of impartial and unsupervised first-handinvestigation except in a few of the larger cities; but unlike China and otherclosed areas, a large amount of descriptive, historical and technical literature wasknown to exist which, if properly analysed, would probably enable at least someof the facts to be established.

The first need was to ensure a regular supply of current daily newspapers,books and periodicals relating to the region. For some time, newspapers couldonly be obtained on loan, and books and periodicals could only be acquired fromthe Soviet Union with difficulty. By 1955, however, the republican newspaperswere being received regularly by air mail with a delay of only ten days, arrange-ments had been made for subscriptions to all relevant periodicals and exchangesnegotiated with the Academies of Sciences in all the Central Asian republicancapitals for dieir specialized publications. Study of this material confirmed thatit was possible with the exercise of due discrimination to construct a reliablepicture of developments in such matters as living conditions, education, languagereform, demography, communications and irrigation.

* See p. 96.103

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104 T H E CENTRAL ASIAN RESEARCH CENTRE

The problem of how research of this kind was to be conducted and pre-sented required very careful consideration. The choice lay between the prepara-tion of ad hoc reports issued in brochure or book form and the production of aperiodical review. The only precedent for the publication of the results of cumu-lative research of the kind contemplated by the Centre was to be found in thebulletin on the Central Asian Republics issued by the Publications Division ofthe Government of India between 1944 and 1949. It was decided to develop thisidea still further and to produce Central Asian Review, a quarterly periodicalwhich would take constant stock of developments in the fields mentioned above.This method was found to have two distinct advantages over the brochure andbook system: it would provide a running and up-to-date commentary on theprogress of the new political, social, cultural and economic experiment; and itwould be the best way. of organizing and using the work of a research staff who,in most instances, had neither previous knowledge of the area under examina-tion, nor any experience in research. It had, of course, been foreseen that sinceCentral Asia fell outside the scope of university studies, there would be littlehope of obtaining outside contributions to the Review.

The first mimeographed issue of Central Asian Review appeared in July1953. During the next three years two junior research assistants were added tothe initial research staff of two, and the quality of the Review steadily improved.In 1956, it was decided to extend the scope of the Centre's research to the analysisof Soviet writing on the countries adjoining Soviet Central Asia—Persia,Afghanistan, the Indian sub-continent and North-west China. This writing, inspite of its political significance and rapidly increasing scholarly value, was beingtotally ignored by the universities. The results of the Centre's analysis were in-cluded in the Review, which by 1958 had attracted considerable attention asproviding an objective, reliable and up-to-date account of a hitherto litde-knownsubject. The Centre was now recognized by all organizations interested inSoviet-Asian policies, not only as the leading authority on Soviet Central Asia,but as having developed a new technique in the handling of Soviet material onAsian subjects in general. It was employed by the Encyclopaedia Britannica torevise its numerous articles on Central Asia and by Chatham House to preparean annotated bibliography of Soviet publications on the Middle East. It alsocontributed for five years a regular feature on the Central Asian republics to theRoyal Central Asian Journal. Foreign, and particularly American, visitors dis-played great interest in the Centre's method of lecording the contents of Sovietperiodicals and newspapers, and expressed astonishment amounting to incre-dulity at the results produced by such a small and comparatively low-salariedstaff.

Between 1958 and 1962, realization of the growing Soviet interest in Asianand African affairs resulted in the Centre being asked to extend its research toother areas. The additional funds provided for this purpose were used to starttwo new periodicals—Mizan, which reviewed Soviet writing on the Middle Eastand Africa, and Yuva, concerned with South-east Asia. These periodicals dif-fered from Central Asian Review in the sense that they were not concerned withactual conditions in the area with which they dealt. Their aim was rather theassessment of Soviet policies towards the countries in question, policies whoseessence and trend were now being increasingly revealed in Soviet writing. In1966, Yuva was incorporated in Mizan, which thenceforward appeared at two-monthly intervals together with two separate supplements containing Soviet andChinese press reports—one on the Middle East and Africa, and the other onSouth-east Asia.

In addition to its periodicals, the Centre also produced a number of mono-graphs on various Central Asian languages and on linguistic and ethnic prob-

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THE CENTRAL ASIAN RESEARCH CENTRE IO5

lems, most of them written by outside specialists in these fields. Special attentionwas from the beginning paid to maps. A large number of sketch maps wereproduced in the Review, and in 1959 and 1962 two editions of a four-sheet six-colour map of the Central Asian and Kazakh republics were issued. The secondedition is still the most up-to-date large-scale map of the area published outsidethe U.S.S.R. The Centre also published several books in association with com-mercial firms and institutions. Some of these were written and others translatedand edited by members of the Centre's staff. The most recent in the lattercategory was Islam in the Soviet Union, by Alexandre Bennigsen and ChantalQuelquejay-Lemercier, published with the Pall Mall Press in 1967.

The heightening of the Sino-Soviet dispute after i960 naturally caused theCentre to pay particular attention to the Sinkiang-Uygur Autonomous Regionwhich adjoins Soviet Central Asia for a distance of i,8oo miles. Since 1956 allSoviet writing on this region had been carefully analysed in the Centre, whichnow undertook, the examination of relevant Chinese and Soviet broadcasts. Inthe light of knowledge gained of Soviet Central Asian policy since its foundationthe Centre prepared an appreciation of Soviet intentions towards Sinkiang,which was published in the Royal Central Asian Journal in 1967 and has so farproved correct. The Centre had never been equipped to handle Chinese languagematerial but it was now confronted with the suggestion that it would do well toturn its attention to such material, which was said to be awaiting examination.Exhaustive enquiries, however, showed that even if significant Chinese materialexisted, it was not available; nor was there any prospect of its becoming avail-able in the foreseeable future.

Since it constituted a new departure not only in the subjects of its researchbut in the methods which it employed, the Centre naturally attracted a good dealof comment and some criticism conveyed orally, in correspondence and in print.All this was carefully studied in the Centre and considerable profit was derivedfrom such constructive criticism as was received, for example, from St. Antony'sCollege, Oxford, with whose Soviet Affairs Study Group the Centre had beenassociated since 1954. The best informed and most favourable comment on theCentre's publications came from the ficole des Hautes fitudes of the SorbonneUniversity. In the United States, too, the Review and Mizan have been studiedwith attention and extensively used in the increasing number of books publishedthere on Soviet Asian affairs and policies. Central Asian Review is known to becarefully studied in Indian Government departments, and Mizan is widely sub-scribed to in the Middle East and Africa. Adverse criticisms have been inspiredby a variety of motives in which a desire for objective accuracy has not figuredprominently. Some Western critics found that the Review gave too muchprominence to Soviet positive achievements and not enough to Soviet moral andmaterial delinquencies as described by refugees. During 1958 exception wastaken to the Centre's treatment of the vexed question of nationalism among thepeoples of Central Asia: one critic felt that the Centre underestimated the possi-bility of this taking some concrete form in the near future. A little later, anothercritic expressed concern at the statement made in an article on "Recent Litera-ture in Central Asia" that "there is no ideological crisis in Central Asianliterature". In fact there was—and is—none; but this critic felt there ought to be.Criticisms of this kind were the result not of conviction derived from anyspecial knowledge, but of that wishful thinking against which the Centre hadfrom the beginning set its face. The notion that those of the Centre's publica-tions dealing directly with Soviet affairs were in some way in line with theSoviet point of view was not, of course, shared by Soviet official commentators,who, as a matter of routine, object to any foreign criticism of Soviet policy andaction even if it merely repeats what they have said themselves. It is known,

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106 THE CENTRAL ASIAN RESEARCH CENTRE

however, that individual Soviet scholars pay careful and appreciative attention tothe Centre's frequently favourable analyses of their writings on non-ideologicalsubjects.

By 1967 the Centre had reason to be satisfied with its progress. In the courseof fifteen years of concentrated research it had assembled a large amount ofdetailed information on a hitherto little-known area and had recorded thisinformation in fifteen fully indexed volumes of Central Asian Review, whichwas now being printed from type instead of being mimeographed as formerly.From very smallbeginnings in 1959, Mizan had greatly expanded its circulationand was widely quoted as an authority on Soviet Asian and African policies.The Centre as a whole had acquired an assured position in the academic worldand members of its staff were frequently called upon to lecture, broadcast andparticipate in international conferences. Much, it is true, remained to be done:with its small staff and resources the Centre was unable to cope single-handedwith the huge mass of relevant material published in the U.S.S.R.; nor was itable to handle material in languages other than Russian. But as far as could bedetermined it was still the only organization carrying out systematic, continuousand cumulative research into the progress of the Soviet experiment in CentralAsia and into Soviet policies towards non-Soviet Asia and Africa.

During 1968 financial stringency resulted in the reduction of the Centre'sactivities by nearly four-fifths, and its very existence now hangs in the balance.Funds are available for the continuation on a reduced scale of the MiddleEastern, African and South-east Asian side of the work at any rate for a time;but the work on Central Asia, for which the Centre was originally constituted,has already been brought almost to a standstill, and Central Asian Review willhave to cease publication altogether, at any rate for the present.

Perhaps the main reason for the apparent impossibility of obtaining funds forthe maintenance of the Centre's activities at their 1967 level lies in the fact that itdoes not fall into any known category. It is not a society organizing lectures andsocial functions; it is not an information service, a translation bureau or apropaganda organization; not being part of or affiliated to a university it did notcome within the terms of reference of the Hayter Sub-committee, and is there-fore not eligible for a grant from the University Grants Committee. It mayeventually be realized that the technique evolved by the Centre is the best, themost economical and probably the only satisfactory way of assessing Soviet-Asian and African policies as a whole. In the meanwhile, however, the con-tinuity which it has taken sixteen years to build up will have been fatallydisrupted.

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