ИСМАИЛ ГАСПРИНСКИЙ : реформатор и просветитель мусульманских народов

Ismail Gasprinskij (1851-1914) was an eminent national revival ideologue for Muslim nations under the Tsardom of 19th century. As is well known, the Khans of Crimean Tartars, descendents of Chingiz Khan, maintained prestige among the Muslim people not only in the Russian empire, but also in the territory of the Ottoman empire. The capital of the Crimean Tartars, Bachczsaraj, was a splendid city, as well as beingthe homeland of Gasprinskij, where arts and culture flourished over 300 years up to the annexation by Ekaterina II in 1783. Gasprinskij, the son of an officer in the Russian army, first entered into the military academy, but soon resigned the military service and came back to Bachczsaraj. Although he working as a teacher of Russian language in the Muslim theological school, he soon recognized the nonsense of applying Arabic orthography to the Tartars' language, and took a critical attitude toward the Muslim traditional education system. Bitterly attacked by the Muslim side, he was obliged to resign the job. In 1872 he took a trip to Europe and arrived in Paris, where he had the good fortune of meeting the famous Russian author, Ivan Turgenev. As his secretary, Gasprinskij energetically learned French and interpreted many works concerning European civilization into Turkish. Then he became convinced that "without learning inside European civilization, we can grasp nothing". After coming back to Bachczsaraj, he understood the necessity of enlightening the common Tartar people. In 1881 Tsardom accepted his desire to publish in Turkish, so Gasprinskij started to issue a journal in Turkish, as well as in Russian entitled "Terdjiman" (Translator). The printing of this journal was only 320 at first, but it gradually increased to more than 15,000. "Terjiman" gained many subscriptions among Muslim people in the Caucasus, Kazan, Central Asia, Siberia and the Ottoman Empire. Gasprinskij himself energetica lly engaged in propagation among Muslim people, relying on this journal. But the Bolsheviks treated his contributions totally negatively, and later, under the Stalinist regime, his works were labeled as "propagandist of military feudalism and imperialism", "ideologue of Tatars' bourgeoisie", "pan-Turkism", "pan-Islamism", "reactionary" and so on. The expulsion of the Tartars in 1944 by Stalin resulted in the total effacement of this nationality. In the 1970s the Crimean Tartars were gradually rehabilitated. In March 1991, at an international conference to honor Gasprinskij, many Orientalists assembled from the Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe. We must dedicate our future academic efforts in re-evaluation Gasprinskij's contributions to Turkish culture. Much depends upon our dedication.