Connecting the two Easts: Central Asian cultural diplomats and Soviet Internationalism of the late Stalinist era, 1947–1950

The paper addresses the relative neglect of non-Russian Soviet republics—particularly those in the “Soviet East”—in Cold War historiography and situates Central Asia within the broader Second–Third World interactions that shaped the global order after WWII. Building on the “global turn,” the study highlights Central Asia’s crucial role in Soviet cultural diplomacy as a showcase of socialist modernity for decolonizing Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It frames the research around the first postwar Asian forum where Central Asian and Caucasian republics represented the USSR abroad—the 1947 Asian Relations Conference in Delhi—and examines how this encounter informed Soviet interpretations of postwar Asia and the evolving discourse of Soviet internationalism. It further focuses on the travel writings of Mirzo Tursun-zade (Tajik SSR) and Oybek (Uzbek SSR), who served as informal cultural diplomats in India and Pakistan. Through their texts, which drew on shared historical, cultural, and religious symbolism, the paper explores how Soviet internationalism was localized and how Central Asia fashioned a mediating identity between Moscow and Asia beyond Soviet borders.

The study engages a body of scholarship that extends Cold War analysis beyond Moscow and the West to Second–Third World interactions (e.g., Young 2016; Babiracki & Jersild 2016; Kirasirova 2018; Djagalov 2020; Mark, Kalinovsky & Marung 2020; Mark & Betts 2022; Muratbekova 2023). It draws on works that reassess Central Asia’s external engagements and its function as a model of decolonized socialist development (Khalid 2007; Kirasirova 2011; Kalinovsky 2018; Djagalov 2020; Cucciolla 2020). The paper also engages literature on the Asian Relations Conference and early Afro-Asian internationalisms (Abraham 2008; Thakur 2019; Stolte 2014, 2019), Soviet peace campaigns and the two-camps doctrine (Zhdanov 1947; Suslov 1950; Liberman 2000; Johnston 2008, 2011; Dobrenko 2016; Roberts 2014; Goedde 2019), and contextual studies of wartime/postwar Soviet identity and internationalism. This review positions the late Stalinist period as an understudied yet formative phase for East–East cultural diplomacy, setting the stage for Khrushchev-era expansion.

Qualitative historical and textual analysis. The paper examines: (1) Soviet participation and messaging at the 1947 Asian Relations Conference, including contemporaneous reactions; (2) literary travel accounts by Mirzo Tursun-zade (Poems about India/Indian Ballad) and Oybek (Impressions from Pakistan/On the Other Side of the Hindukush), focusing on imagery, symbolism, and depictions of colonial Asia versus Soviet Central Asia; and (3) Soviet internationalist discourse (e.g., Zhdanov’s two-camps speech, peace campaigns) and how it was localized in Central Asian republican literature. Sources referenced include published literary texts, Soviet press (e.g., Pravda, Izvestiia), proceedings/reports of the Asian Relations Conference, and archival materials (e.g., RGASPI reports by Soviet Orientalists Zhukov and Plyshevskii). The approach traces how cultural diplomacy and discourse were mutually constitutive in late Stalinism.

- The Asian Relations Conference (Delhi, 1947) was the first postwar international forum where Central Asian and Caucasian republics represented the USSR abroad, signaling an early late-Stalinist effort to cultivate East–East solidarity. - Soviet delegates from the Asiatic republics presented their regions as exemplary postcolonial socialist societies—industrialized, educated, and integrated under the “friendship of the Soviet peoples”—and screened films highlighting achievements. Attendees acknowledged the rapid cultural-educational advances but deemed the Soviet model largely inapplicable to other Asian contexts. - Soviet observers (Zhukov, Plyshevskii) reported lukewarm reception from Nehru’s circle and perceived greater receptivity among All-India Muslim League figures, noting potential leverage in shared ethnic and religious ties between Soviet Central Asia/Caucasus and South Asia. - Post-1947, Soviet internationalism was reframed through Zhdanov’s two-camps doctrine and the global peace campaign, intertwining socialist patriotism with anti-imperialist solidarity; mass mobilization linked production and cultural output to “defending peace.” - Central Asian writers functioned as cultural diplomats who localized Soviet internationalism using familiar historical, cultural, and religious symbolism to resonate with Central Asian audiences and connect with South Asia, thereby crafting Central Asia’s identity as mediator between Moscow and decolonizing Asia. - Tursun-zade’s poems exoticize India’s natural and cultural riches but emphasize inequality and aspirations for social emancipation; explicit anti-British colonial critique is muted in earlier texts. Oybek’s travelogue offers a starker indictment of British colonialism and feudal remnants, contraposing colonial deprivation with Soviet Central Asia’s socialist modernity. - References to figures like Tamerlane and Babur, and to Indo-Persian literary heritage (Hafez, Bedil), indicate state tolerance for culturally resonant—but sometimes ideologically sensitive—imagery when deployed to advance socialist internationalist solidarity. - Overall, Central Asian cultural diplomats played a formative role in shaping postwar Soviet cultural diplomacy in Asia, earlier than commonly associated with the Khrushchev period.

The findings show that late-Stalinist Soviet internationalism was not solely inward-looking or Eurocentric; rather, it actively engaged Asia through cultural diplomacy, with Central Asia positioned as an Asiatic exemplar and intermediary. By analyzing the 1947 ARC and the travel writings of Tursun-zade and Oybek, the study demonstrates how Central Asian intellectuals adapted and disseminated Soviet anti-imperialist discourse using shared cultural and religious frameworks that resonated locally. This localization helped bridge Moscow’s ideological goals with Asian audiences and reframed Central Asia’s domestic identity within the USSR as internationally relevant. The evidence addresses the research question by tracing how encounters with “the outside East” both informed Soviet readings of decolonization and empowered Central Asian actors to negotiate cultural-political leverage. The significance lies in reperiodizing the origins of East–East solidarity to the late Stalinist era and highlighting the agency of non-Russian republics in crafting Cold War cultural internationalisms.

Tursun-zade and Oybek—prominent literary and public figures from Tajik and Uzbek SSRs—were among the first Central Asians to serve as informal Soviet cultural diplomats, traveling to India and Pakistan and publicizing socialist modernity and anti-imperialist solidarity. Although the late Stalinist years (1947–1950) saw fewer Central Asian missions compared to the Khrushchev period, this phase laid crucial groundwork: the 1947 Asian Relations Conference reconnected Central Asians with their Asian neighbors and, alongside a shift in Soviet foreign policy rhetoric, prompted a reconceptualization of Soviet internationalism. By mobilizing shared historical, cultural, and religious symbolism between Central and South Asia, Central Asian cultural diplomats forged a distinctive mediating identity as the Asiatic vanguard of the socialist, anti-imperialist movement. These encounters enabled them to view the world through a Soviet lens and the USSR through an Asian lens, offering a re-interpretation of the global Cold War from an Asiatic standpoint and foreshadowing Central Asia’s expanded role in Soviet cultural diplomacy under Khrushchev.

The study focuses on a narrow time frame (late Stalinist era, 1947–1950) and on select cases (the 1947 Asian Relations Conference and travel writings by Tursun-zade and Oybek), which may limit generalizability across regions and later periods. The paper is interpretive and text-based, relying on published accounts, press materials, and select archival reports; it does not present systematic quantitative data. Moreover, the period examined itself saw comparatively limited Central Asian involvement relative to the subsequent Khrushchev era, and the 1947 conference did not directly alter Soviet foreign policy, constraining causal claims.