Chapter 9 - Soviet “Afro-Asians” in UNESCO: Reorienting World History and Humanism

Summary

Abstract

This chapter highlights the activities of Soviet Central Asian intellectuals within the Soviet Committee for Solidarity with African and Asian Countries (SKSSAA) at UNESCO. It argues that the SKSSAA activated the UNESCO East-West Project (1956-1966) with the specific aim to advance a historical agenda that posited the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity at its center. When looking at the UNESCO Peoples’ History of Asia project, this approach to history resonated with lived experiences of complex solidarities that often transcended the boundaries of states. While there were political reasons for the disintegration of the UNESCO History of Asia Project, such as the Sino-Indian border war, the UNESCO regimes of professionalization seriously undermined the imaginary landscapes that the Peoples’ History of Asia project sought to sustain.

Keywords: Afro-Asianism, UNESCO, historiography, Soviet intellectuals, Central Asia

Narratives of African and Asian unity figured prominently in the agendas of national liberation pursued by decolonizing countries in the first half of the twentieth century. As historians have pointed out, across Afro-Asia, anti-colonial elites formulated agendas of modern statehood that shared a remarkable dualism. Analyzing the agenda of the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Movement (AAPSM) in the early 1960s, historians observed a shift from a “universalistic” ideal of African and Asian cultural liberation and modernization towards a more “particularistic” agenda of anti-colonial struggle. This they generally regarded as the logical consequence of inter-state conflict, notably the Indo-Chinese border war of 1962. Shifting focus, this chapter traces the demise of a universalistic agenda of Afro- Asian Solidarity to the non-state realm of cultural and intellectual activism, and to contesting visions of world history and humanism in particular.

Specifically, this chapter traces the activities of Central Asian intellectuals on the Soviet Committee for Solidarity with African and Asian Countries (Sovietskii Komitet Solidarnost’ Strany Azii i Afriki – SKSSAA), showing how these committed “Afro-Asians” came to activate the UNESCO institutional infrastructure in support of a humanist agenda that stressed the cultural-historical agency and unity of African and Asian peoples. In 1956, the UNESCO General Conference adopted a Major Program for the Mutual Appreciation of Eastern and Western Values, at the initiative of India and Japan.