ABSTRACT
This chapter serves two purposes: What did Russians think the history of Uzbek poetry should look like and which texts epitomized that history best of all? A modern overview can start profitably with a major study of Uzbek literature published just before the Purges. It said that writing would play a very important role in social development at this time because literacy had risen in Uzbekistan by 52 percent since the Revolution; the number of children in schools had gone up from 325,000 to over half a million and students in institutions of higher education now numbered 6,000, an increase from the previous, frighteningly low figure of 411 (Madzhidi 1934a, 8). This was seen as a major achievement, especially in the light of recent data from the United States claiming that in New Jersey, for example, students with PhDs were often unable to find work and frequently obliged to labor long hours in department stores as sales clerks, simply to avoid unemployment. Some of these overlaps between life and literature may recall the goals of earlier Jadid activity, but the Soviets would always circumvent any nationalism by stressing the class divisions in society, rather than “inflammatory,” chauvinistic phrases in the style of “Uzbekistan for Uzbeks,” which purportedly did little more than fuel an exclusionary view of the world.
