Russian institutions leaders in promoting the cultural legacy of Central Asia
Jewelry and national costumes. Daggers and sabers. Horse equipment and silverware. As well as carpets, fabrics, tiger skin and other gifts from eastern khans to Russian emperors. New publication by the State Hermitage Museum and museums in Tatarstan were presented at the 6th International Congress Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan — the Foundation of a New Renaissance in Samarkand. In the project, which unites orientalists from all over the world and currently includes 60 volumes, national collections related to the Central Asian theme occupy a leading position. The Russian periodical Izvestia visited the congress and interviewed experts, which allowed them to appreciate scholars' achievements in preserving and popularizing the world cultural heritage.
How it all began
In May 2017, the first international academic and cultural congress Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan — a Path to Dialog between Peoples and Countries was held in Tashkent and Samarkand. At about that time, the idea of establishing the World Society for the Study, Preservation and Popularization of the Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan as one of the centers of civilization that united many world cultures and religions on the Great Silk Road was put forward.
In 2018, the congress was held in St. Petersburg, a recognized center of oriental studies. Exhibitions of Uzbek art were opened in eight museums at once, and more than 350 scholars and experts approved the charter of the society. At the third congress, in 2019, its official registration was announced. By that time, the organization's initiatives were already in full swing, in particular, the project Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan in the World Collections was being actively developed and documentaries based on it were being created.
"The contribution of Russian partners to this project is huge, I'm talking about it with excitement," Firdavs Abdukhalikov, the chairman of the Management Board of the society admitted to Izvestia. "When we started publishing books, we sent letters to many countries, applied to various scholars, libraries and museums, but the first country that believed us was Russia. The first seven volumes of the project are collections of Russian museums. After the world saw that they started working with us, others gradually joined in. And now every year, despite the pandemic, we stably publish ten volumes."
Another major project by the society is the publication of Masterpieces of Written Monuments of the East, facsimiles of ancient manuscripts stored in foreign collections. Russian orientalists have already created and donated facsimiles of ancient manuscripts to Uzbekistan, including those of the Kattalangar Quran dated to the 11th century, the Divan of Hussein Baykaro, Rauzat-as-Safo and The Regulations of Temur.
"Facsimiles of our manuscripts were among the first that were published," said Irina Popova, director of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Sciences, where documents in 65 oriental languages are stored. "The goal of the project from its very first days is to show these objects, their value and what they can give to a person for further development. The mission of preserving a manuscript is to make it serve the spiritual power of humanity."
Hot discussions
The 6th Congress took place on the hottest time of the year, when the temperature rose to +45. Nevertheless, 250 orientalists from Russia, India, Japan, China, France, Great Britain, the USA, Egypt, Switzerland and other countries came to Samarkand.
The central moments of the forum were two presentations — facsimiles of the manuscript Book of Fixed Stars, created by order of Mirzo Ulugbek, and ten new books-albums from the Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan in the World Collections series, including two Russian ones. The Hermitage presented its third volume in the series — Diplomatic Gifts by Uzbek Khans and the Ethnographic Collection of the 19th and mid-20th Centuries. That was the first participation of the National Museum of Tatarstan in the project with the volume Collections of Museums in the Republic of Tatarstan presenting jewelry, hats, costumes and household items.
"These things were common in Tatar families," explained the deputy director general of the museum Lilia Sattarova. "Kazan Tatars have a very deep connection with this region. They were educated here, worked as translators, traded with Central Asia."
The following speakers presented their reports: Vsevolod Obraztsov, a researcher at the Arsenal Department of the State Hermitage Museum, who spoke about Central Asian weapons in the Hermitage collection; Tatiana Emelianenko, a leading researcher at the Russian Ethnographic Museum, who presented the materials of ethnographer and photographer S. M. Dudin on the traditional culture of Uzbekistan in the museums of St. Petersburg; Kirill Gavrilin, professor at the Stroganov Academy, who spoke on the subject of the artistic heritage of Uzbekistan and Central Asian countries in the collection of the Stroganov Academy Museum, and other specialists. In total, representatives of six cultural institutions in Russia participated in the event.
Vice-President of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan Bahrom Abdukhalimov believes that the contribution of Russian scholars to the development of science in Uzbekistan is difficult to overestimate.
"Our generation mainly used their textbooks and recommendations," he recalled. "We can say that Russian orientalists were at the origins of Uzbek oriental studies. Russian oriental studies on a global scale is very strong, and we are students of our teachers. We read their books, attended lectures, and this knowledge became the foundation for the development of local experts."
Tatiana Emelianenko agreed with her colleague, stressing that Russian scholars contributed to the development of art history and ethnography schools in Central Asia.
"Local specialists went to Russia to train, and a lot of people from Russia came here: to study, to collect items, to work in research institutions," she said. "Of course, something was lost in the turbulent times of the 1990s and 2000s. But everything will get better, it will come back to normal. The school of Central Asian oriental studies has not disappeared.
Uzbek example
Russians actively participate in all projects, with a total of 15 museums and libraries involved in them. The result is impressive. Of the 60 books-albums from the Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan in the World Collections series, fifteen are dedicated to museums in the Russian Federation. Cultural institutions join their efforts working on some of the volumes. For example, the book-album Carpet-making of Uzbekistan was created by the staff of the State Museum of Oriental Art, the Hermitage, Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Institute of Oriental Studies under the Russian Academy of Sciences and Russian Ethnographic Museum. The Pushkin House and the Glinka State Museum joined the last two in the creation of the volume Musical Heritage of Uzbekistan.
Svetlana Naborshchikova, editor of the Culture Department of Izvestia, Doctor of Art History, believes that Uzbekistan, which successfully catalogues its cultural heritage, inspires and serves as an example.
"I can't remember another such phenomenon, when experts from so many countries united around the cultural heritage of one state," she noted. "Russia's history is no less great, and there is a lot of material related to Russian culture in museums and libraries around the world. We lost it some time ago, but Uzbekistan has shown how a loss can be turned into an acquisition. To collect Russian values in such a publication means to unite specialists from different countries, to acquaint Russians with the national art that has gone abroad, to offer socially oriented businesses work for the benefit of their culture by financing the project, and, of course, to strengthen the intercultural interstate dialogue."
The society and Russian scholars plan to publish several volumes dedicated to the collection of Kunstkamera. The next big meeting with Uzbek culture will take place on December 29. On this day, Navoi readings dedicated to the 581st birthday of the poet and thinker Alisher Navoi will begin in St. Petersburg. The first event of this kind took place in December 1941 in besieged Leningrad. Last year, the society initiated and its members — the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts under the Russian Academy of Sciences, the State Hermitage Museum and the Russian National Library — supported the resumption of the readings on an annual basis.
https://iz.ru/1370650/marina-ivanova/vostok-delo-muzeinoe-zachem-ermitazhu-uzbekskoe-oruzhie
