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Tajikistan
Culture and the Arts
As they did during the Soviet era, educated Tajiks define their
cultural heritage broadly, laying claim to the rich legacy of
the supraethnic culture of Central Asia and other parts of the
Islamic world from the eastern Mediterranean to India. Soviet
rule institutionalized Western art forms, publishing, and mass
media, some elements of which subsequently attracted spontaneous
support in the republic. However, since the beginning of Soviet
rule in the 1920s, the media and the arts always have been subject
to political constraints.
Literature
Despite long-standing Soviet efforts to differentiate between
the Persian speakers of Central Asia and those elsewhere, Tajiks
in Tajikistan describe all of the major literary works written
in Persian until the twentieth century as Tajik, regardless of
the ethnicity and native region of the author. In Soviet times,
such claims were not merely a matter of chauvinism but a strategy
to permit Tajiks some contact with a culture that was artificially
divided by state borders. Nevertheless, very little Persian literature
was published in Cyrillic transcription in the Soviet era.
Three writers dominated the first generation of Soviet Tajik
literature. Sadriddin Aini (1878-1954), a Jadidist writer and
educator who turned communist, began as a poet but wrote primarily
prose in the Soviet era. His works include three major novels
dealing with social issues in the region and memoirs that depict
life in the Bukhoro Khanate. Aini became the first president of
Tajikistan's Academy of Sciences.
Abu'l-Qasem Lahuti (1887-1957; in Tajik, Abdulqosim Lohuti)
was an Iranian poet who emigrated to the Soviet Union for political
reasons and eventually settled in Tajikistan. He wrote both lyric
poetry and "socialist realist" verse. Another poet, Mirzo Tursunzoda
(1911-77), collected Tajik oral literature, wrote poetry of his
own about social change in Tajikistan, and turned out various
works on popular political themes of the moment. Since the generation
that included those three writers, Tajikistan has produced numerous
poets, novelists, short story writers, and playwrights.
Data as of March 1996
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