Regarding the Activity of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Tajik SSR

REGARDING THE ACTIVITY OF THE INSTITUTE OF ORIENTAL STUDIES OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE TAJIK SSR

(Report presented at a meeting of the Social Sciences Section of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 29 April 1972).

The history of economic and cultural ties of the peoples of Central Asia and the peoples of India, Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan go back centuries. And Tajiks have a linguistic relationship with many of them. That is why Tajikistan as a base of Iranian studies (Iranistika) in the USSR has long attracted the attention of orientalists. This has also made possible the growth of national orientalist cadres. ..

The Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Tajik SSR has the following structure:

1. Manuscript section

2. Textological section

3. Afghanistan section

4. Iran section

5. India and Pakistan section

6. Arabic studies section

7. Eastern manuscripts section.

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The main direction of the institute is the study of the history of cultures, economy and national-liberation movements of the peoples of the Near and Middle East. (96-97)

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In connection with the fact that one of the main tasks of Soviet Oriental Studies, as of all Soviet scholarship, is active criticism against bourgeois concepts, especially those that pervert the national politics and practices of the CPSU the Institute has a special group dedicated to the critical analysis of such materials their denunciation in the press.

The institute of Oriental Studies currently has scholarly contacts with 68 institutions and individual scholars abroad.

The works of the institute are read by may progressive scholars in Western Europe, the USA, Japan, India, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and Turkey.

Articles by our scholars have begun to be regularly published in foreign scholarly journals. For example, a number of articles by our researchers are published in Iran by the journals “Wahid” and “Iranian Studies” as well as the journal “Indo-Iranica” published in Calcuta, as well as among the woks of the 24^th congress of Oriental Studies in Munich, the 26^th congress of Oriental Studies in Delhi, and the first Congress of Iranian Studies in Teheran.

Besides this, annotated texts of Persian-Tajik literature prepared by the institute’s researchers are now starting to be published in Iran.

An encouraging fact is that the works of our scholars published abroad have so far received positive reviews in the foreign press.

These ties are one of the most effective ways to spread the achievements of our oriental scholarship and our ideology abroad.

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