Letters of Alexander Samoylovich to Tadeusz Kowalski as a source of information on research activities of the Soviet Turkologist in the mid-1920s
Letters of Alexander Samoylovich to Tadeusz Kowalski as a source of information on research activities of the Soviet Turkologist in the mid-1920s

Summary/Abstract: Professor Tadeusz Kowalski (1889-1948) was in correspondence with scholars from practically all over the world. He had an active interest in the developments of Oriental studies in the Soviet Union. He valued the publications he received from the USSR as well as all contacts he had with Russian researchers. He sought to cooperate with Alexander Samoylovich (1880-1938) - one of the most eminent Turkologists in the Soviet Union. This goal had been partially achieved. The archives of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Kraków now hold, catalogued under ref. no. KIII-4, j. 174, just three letters from the Russian Turkologist. These materials, despite their small number, are an engrossing source of knowledge on the state of Soviet Turkish studies in the mid-1920s and the Soviet Oriental studies community. As the author managed to determine, these letters are all the more precious as the branch of the archives at the Russian Academy of Sciences in St.-Petersburg, where the legacy of professor Samoylovich is kept, has no copies. Interestingly, there are no surviving copies of the letters from professor Kowalski to the Russian Turkologist. This article aims to analyse the contents of the letters written by Alexander Samoylovich, the Soviet Turkologist, to professor Tadeusz Kowalski, and determine the purpose and direction in which Turkish studies were developing in the USSR in the period described in these sources.

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