Performing as Soviet Central Asia’s source texts : Lahuti and Džambul in Moscow, 1935-1936

Abstract

This article explores the indigenization of the representation of Soviet Central Asia in Russian-language literature by examining how two Central Asian literary figures—the “Tajik” poet Abulqasim Lahuti and the Kazakh bard Džambul Džabaev were promoted in Russian in the mid-1930s. More specifically, it discusses the canonization of Lahuti and Džambul within the Soviet literary system in 1935 and 1936, arguing that it occurred when each performed in Moscow and demonstrated his ability to serve Stalin’s “friendship of peoples” both as a translated court poet and an embodiment of the East, which is to say as an untranslatable source text.