Documents / FOIA release
This is a 1990 JPRS report distributed by the Central Intelligence Agency. It translates the English summaries of major articles from the Soviet journal Narody Azii i Afriki, No 4, July to August 1989. The topics include small business policy in Asia, non-capitalist development in Central Asia, the Truman Doctrine and Turkey, pre-Islamic Turkic religions and al-Mawardi. One article, by A.D. Dikaryov, looks at how Chinese UFO enthusiasts search ancient Chinese sources for historical evidence of UFOs.
“Siberia”1 page
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
Document 4 of 8 18. The Soviet-Turkish relations reached a high level of tension during first post-war years. In course of the second world war Turkey took in fact anti-Soviet positions, and after the war the Soviet government denounced the Treaty on friendship and neutrality between the two countries, signed in Paris in 1925, and suggested to prepare a new treaty. However, Soviet proposals that followed, aggravated even more the bilateral relations, contributed to the western orientation of Turkey. With approval of Stalin, Georgia and Armenia put in claims on the adjacent parts of Turkish territory. In the course of the diplomatic discussion on the regime of the Black Sea straits between USSR, USA, Great Britain and Turkey, the Soviet party also raised claims unacceptable for the Turks, which resulted in drawing up of a common British-American-Turkish position. 19. SYNCRETISM OF RELIGIOUS AND MYTHOLOGICAL CONCEPTS OF PRE-MOSLEM TURKS ## 20. I.V. STEBLEVA 21. The article deals with insufficiently explored problem of various religious and mythological pre-Islam systems which functioned among Turkic peoples of Central Asia, Southern and Eastern Siberia. From the 6th century Turkic peoples began to form military, political and state unions of tribes. On their territories written texts were created, dealing with shamanism, Buddhism, Manichaeism and Christianity. The adoption of Islam by Turks in Central Asia began in 10th century, but this process was long, and during several centuries Turkic peoples lived in the sphere of other cultural and religious traditions. 22. Turkic manuscripts available for studying these pre-Islam conceptual systems are written by runic, Manichaean and Uighur scripts. They include special religious texts (prayers, hymns, instructions and norms of religious behaviour) as well as literary works (epitaphs, historical and heroic poems, didactic parables and novels). 23. A most peculiar feature of these works is the interaction of various religious and mythological traditions. Shamanic texts are influenced by the Manichaean religion (the runic fortune-telling book), Manichaean hymns are created under the influence of Buddhism. The syncretism of Manichaean and Buddhist ideas and notions reaches the level where Mani is identified with Buddha. Manichaeism receives as well an impact of Christianity: in the prayer addressed to 'Mani-Angel (and) Buddha'' the word equivalent of 'angel'' means also 'apostle.' Turkic Christian texts were influenced by shamanism (the ritual formula of space description) and Manichaeism which
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 7 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.