Title: Compelex Orientalism: Soviet Kurdology and Kurdish Nation Building
Author: Akobirova Sarvar
Place of publication: Poland
Publisher: Jagiellonian University in Kraków
Release date: 2022

The primary purpose of this thesis is to fill the research gap that exists in Soviet and Russian studies – that is the study on the Kurdology department which existed in Soviet Armenia and Soviet Russian cities of Leningrad and Moscow. The Kurdology department in the Soviet Union was one of the few to exist globally – other research centers being located in France, and later on in Turkey. The Soviet Kurdology department has managed to publish hundreds of manuscripts, fictional stories, novels, and academic pieces on Kurdish history and politics that have not been thoroughly studied by Russia studies and Middle Eastern studies academics before. These archival materials not only contribute to the gaps that exist within studies of Kurdish history, but also reveal the complex Soviet state mechanisms that these materials were produced under. Kurdologists were operating under a complex form of Orientalism as practiced by the Soviet Union. The Soviet form of Orientalism can be defined as complex in that it does not entirely adhere to the definitions of Edward Said in his conception of Western form of Orientalism, in which he argued that Western scholarship on the Orient was a power vehicle that promoted Western superiority over Oriental cultures in its mission to colonize them. In the Soviet case, the power influence over central discourse was rather hybrid – native Kurds actively participated in the Kurdology departments in Yerevan and Leningrad, and actively influenced their identity construction within the Soviet Union. In contrast, such privileges did not exist for their Kurdish kin in Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. However, Kurdologists also were mandated to adhere to the Soviet language of state socialism in order to interrogate the central discourse and incorporate their own political ideologies and aspirations, such as the Kurdish national liberation movement. Through demonstrating the hybrid and complex nature of the Orientalism practiced by the Soviet Union through Kurdology Studies, exploring the limitations of Orientalist Kurdish identity constructions, and addressing the nuanced and uniquely-situated freedoms Kurds possessed in their constructing identity within the Soviet Union, I ultimately argue that the Soviet Union utilized the Kurdology department as a way to construct and promote its own hegemonic discourse of what a Kurd is, or, more specifically, what a Kurd living within the borders of the Soviet Union is. Through incorporate Foucadian discourse analysis and Bakhtin’s heteroglossia, I will exposes how constructions of Soviet-Kurdish identity simultaneously created unique forms of expression, involving but not limited to secularization of the identity and centralization of Yezidis in Kurdish identity construction, essentialization of Kurdish identity and history, and proliferation of liberatory and anti-imperialist narrative in Soviet-Kurdish historiography.[1]