Paper abstract:

From the mid-twentieth century, political shifts along the Soviet-Xinjiang border contributed to the rise of a new Soviet academic subject – uigurovedenie (Uyghur Studies). This paper examines the relationship between Soviet uigurovedenie and Soviet-Xinjiang political dynamics from the 1940s to the 1980s. I argue that Soviet uigurovedenie was, on the one hand, used as a tool to exploit cross-border Uyghur ethnic ties to project Soviet political influence into Xinjiang. On the other hand, the scholarship shaped the Soviet understanding of Xinjiang and the Uyghurs, influencing Soviet policymaking toward Xinjiang. Given the political vicissitudes in Xinjiang and Soviet Central Asia, Soviet intellectual discourse on the Uyghurs and Xinjiang varied over time. In the 1950s, Soviet scholars viewed cross-border ethnocultural linkages between Xinjiang and Soviet Central Asia as an opportunity to strengthen Sino-Soviet friendship and simultaneously expand Soviet soft power in Xinjiang. Following the Sino-Soviet split in the early 1960s, Soviet scholars found the Uyghurs an exploitable agent in Sino-Soviet rivalries in Central Asia, and gradually developed the idea of Xinjiang as a Uyghur land.

Two dichotomies – national assimilation-consolidation and primordiality-modernity – underlay Soviet uigurovedenie over time, despite their fluctuating implications. Whereas Soviet scholars tried to justify Uyghur assimilation with other peoples, including the Chinese, post-split uigurovedy (Uyghur Studies specialists) advocated the concept of unique, primordial Uyghur nationhood. Those who studied modern Uyghurs consistently promoted the idea of cross-border ethnic commonality between Soviet and Xinjiang Uyghurs. Beginning in the mid-1960s, Soviet uigurovedy intensified their efforts to legitimize the assimilation of Soviet Uyghurs into a unified Soviet entity, a process that should also involve the Xinjiang Uyghurs, whose independent nationhood was being destructed by the “chauvinist” Maoist regime. Glorifying the Sovietization of modern Uyghurs neutralized any potential nationalist sentiment in the scholarship, ensuring the Sovietness of uigurovedenie.

This paper relies primarily on Soviet academic publications, including monographs, journals, encyclopedias, and dictionaries. Newspapers, archival documents, and biographical materials are among other sources. Though providing only an on-paper perspective, Soviet uigurovedenie reveals a Soviet paradigm of generating and utilizing borderland and ethnic knowledge, which has broader implications for Soviet nationalities policy and foreign policy. Moreover, while academic discourses cannot directly expose concrete policies, investigating the scholarship and scholars sheds light on Soviet political agendas on the Uyghurs and Xinjiang after 1949, which contemporary historians have not thoroughly explored.