St Petersburg International Conference of Afghan Studies

24 Санкт-Петербургская международная конференция по афганистике Секция 1. Историография и источниковедение Афганистана... Vladimir S. Boyko (Altai State Pedagogical University / Altai State University, Barnaul, Russia) A. V. Stanishevsky and the Problems of Forming an Expert-Analytical Direction in Soviet Afghanistan Studies Since the mid-1850’s. B. Dorn, and later other orientalists, had been attempting to develop the teaching of Afghan Studies as well as to foster academic and practice- oriented research in this field; however, political necessities — above all the Russian- British rivalry inAsia, promoted an expert-analytical approach dominated by themilitary who formed the cadre that shaped the agenda in the field ofAfghan Studies. During the transition from the Imperial to the Soviet system, a key role in the shaping of this new field of study including its analytical dimensionwas played by Lt GeneralA. E. Snesarev and his students of bothmilitary and civilian persuasion (I. M. Reisner and others). Due to geopolitical reasons, similar work, whichwas donemainly by themilitary, also began at the southern border of the USSR, primarily in the regions neighbouringAfghanistan. It is in this context that the life and activities ofA. V. Stanishevsky (Aziz Niallo) should be considered. His contribution, with all its acheivements and shortcomings, toAfghan Studies and related disciplines in their expert-analytical version remains a little-known aspect of the Soviet Oriental Studies. This paper is based on the materials kept at the Central State Archive of the Republic of Uzbekistan and the field researches of the author (interviews with colleagues and students of A. V. Stanishevsky). While serving as a Red Army soldier in Ukraine, A. V. Stanishevsky enrolled as an extern at the Kiev Institute of Foreign Relations, where he was a student of the outstanding Ukrainian orientalist Academician A. E. Krymsky. Soon, A. V. Stanishevsky found himself as a Soviet Secret Police (OGPU) operative serving for several years on the Soviet borders with Afghanistan and Xinjiang, where he learned much about the religious, political and cultural problems of Ismailism and collected a large collection of rare Ismaili manuscripts, including Tarikh-i Badakhshan. While being engaged in both academic and applied Afghan Studies, he prepared several works on the contemporary problems of Afghanistan viz, Amanullah Khan’s Administrative Reforms (240 pages), The TwentyYears of Struggle forAfghanistan’s Independence: 1912–1932. Documents, Essays, Notes (480 pages), which were never published, but were available to his colleagues as manuscripts. In the spring of 1933, A. V. Stanishevsky was transferred to Moscow, where he was tasked by the OGPU commanding officers to prepare a History of the Basmach Movement. However, he soon interrupted this work as he was appointed Head of the Special Team of the Tajik-Pamir Expedition of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Severely ill and disabled due to travel deprivations in the East, A. V. Stanishevsky continued his work in various areas of Oriental Studies; thus in 1935 he, together with A. P.Vostrikov andM.A.Nemchenko (later anAfghan immigrantG.M. Rauf joined them) began translating the first part of the well-knownAfghan chronicle “Siraj at-Tawarikh”,