Some of Our Considerations on the Bases of Socio-Political, Economic, and Cultural Development of the Turkic Peoples of Asia and Europe
Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev, translated and introduced by Örsan Şenalp and Asim Khairdean
Contradictions: A Journal for Critical Thought III, no. 2 (2019): 181–208
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Keywords: Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev, Colonialism, internationalism, Turkic peoples, Soviet nationality policy
Örsan Şenalp and Asim Khairdean present here an English translation of one of the key texts of the visionary militant Mirsaid Sultan Galiev, written between 1923 and 1925, entitled “Some of our Considerations on the Bases of the Socio-political, Economic, and Cultural Development of the Turkish People of Asia and Europe.” We believe that Sultan Galiev’s work and writings are highly relevant for today, in relation to, among other things, important debates about identity politics and the Left, decolonisation, political Islam, Marxism, the Russian Revolution, Bolshevism, the re-emergence of the extreme right, and the new Eurasianism. The translated text is one of the key sources in which Sultan Galiev summarises the main tenets of his analysis of the world situation in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Bolshevik Revolution, and in which he lays out an original and alternative strategy for world revolution. Alongside this we also include two supporting documents from the political trial against him, which began in 1923, was re-opened in 1928 and remained open until a final verdict was pronounced in 1939, sentencing Galiev to execution, which took place on 28 January 1940.
doi: 10.46957/con.2019.2.10
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