A Self‐Regulating Academic Community in Turbulent Times: Ethical Dilemmas in the History of Turkic Studies in Leningrad in the 1930s

Abstract On February 1931, Russian linguist Sergei Malov sent a complaint to the Union of Education Workers’ Disputes Commission regarding one of his colleagues, Alexander Samoilovich, who was one of the leading Soviet scholars of the time. According to Malov, Samoilovich had used his position and influence to obstruct Malov’s appointment to a professorship for the sole purpose of revenge. Malov demanded an official apology from Samoilovich, certified by the union, for his actions. Scholars who study the history of Oriental Studies in Russia usually focus on the evolution of ideas and approaches within the field, or on the relationship within the profession between knowledge and power. But they have not paid sufficient attention to the self‐regulatory mechanisms that operated within the Soviet Orientologist community. This article argues that during the 1920s and 1930s, a period of great social and political uncertainty, Soviet scholars used “ethics” for specific goals, one of which was to try to limit the scale of intervention by state and party officials in academic life and thereby shelter their community from the unpredictable effects such intervention might have. Malov and Smoilovich, however, attached different meanings to this notion, which consequently played a major role in the collision between the two scholars who previously had been allies.