Transnational Life in Multicultural Space: Azerbaijani and Tatar Discourses in Interwar Europe

Abstract

Dans la période entre les deux guerres, la presse européenne dite d'information ne traitait que rarement des problèmes de l'Orient musulman.2 After a short intermezzo between 1918 and 1921, Soviet Russia was able to reconquer most of the territories of the former Tsardom in the Caucasus, the Ukraine, and in Central Asia, which became independent or at least self-ruled around 1917. The short-lived independent republics of Crimea, Azerbaijan, and Turkestan3 with their predominantly Muslim population were occupied by the Red Army, and then gradually sovietized.4 The Sovietization challenged the political elites of these countries dramatically. Those who survived the invasion of the Bolsheviks either had to accept the Communist regime or escape. Thousands of former politicians and intellectuals, both Shīʿa and Sunnīs, left for Turkey, France, Germany, and Poland. While living in exile many continued political, journalistic, and public activities writing against Communism, and protesting against the persecutions in the Soviet Union. At the same time, these intellectuals were eager to inform the society in their host countries about their countries of origin, which were left under Soviet occupation. Being quite well integrated into the intellectual milieus of interwar Paris, Warsaw, Berlin, and other European cities in the 1920s and 1930s, they were confronted with European realities, ideas, and views on Christianity and Islam.