Gafurov, Bobojan Gafurovich
(1908–1977), Tajik politician and scholar. Bobojan Gafurovich Gafurov led the Tajikistan Soviet Socialist Republic from 1946 until 1956 as the first secretary of the Communist Party. Born in Ispisar (a remote northern province of the republic) in 1908, he began his career as a journalist and lecturer before joining the Communist Party apparatus and climbing up to the highest political post in the republic under Josef Stalin (1879–1953), then Soviet leader. In 1956 he left the republic to become the director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Science in Moscow.
However, it was his works on the history of Central Asia, and particularly on the history of Tajikistan and Tajiks, that won him nationwide recognition in Tajikistan and a reputation as one of the founders of the Tajikistani oriental school and Tajikistani nationalism. In his publications, including two versions of Tarikhi Mukhtasari Halki Tochik (The History of Tajik People), he put forward the idea that the beginning of the Tajiks could be in ancient civilizations of Central Asia. This interpretation of history was widely used in the consolidation of the Tajik identity in the territory of modern Tajikistan.
Further Reading
Abdullaev K., and Shahram Akbarzadeh. (2002) The Historical Dictionary of Tajikistan. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.
Djalili, Mohammad-Reza, Frédéric Grare, and Shirin Akiner, eds. (1997) Tajikistan: The Trials of Independence. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Gafurov, B. G. (1947) Tarikhi Mukhtasari Halki Tochik (History of the Tajik People). Part 1. Stalinabad, U.S.S.R.: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo.
Gafurov, B. G., and B. A. Litvinskii. (1963–1965) Istoriia tadzhikskogo naroda (History of the Takik People). 3 volumes. Moscow: Izdatelstvo vostochnoi literatury.
Shashi Bhushan. (1977) Academician Babajan Gafurov. New Delhi: Progressive Peoples Sector Publications.
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