[INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY
VOL.4 NO.24; Jun 19, 1998]
Zeki Velidi Togan (1890-1970), a Bashkurt Turk and professor of
history for over half a century, studied and taught in
institutions of higher learning on three continents. His first
book, Turk ve Tatar Tarihi (Turk and Tatar History), was
published in Kazan in 1911. In 1913, Togan was asked by the
Archeology and Ethnography Society of Kazan University to
undertake a research trip to Turkistan. Togan, after successful
completion of that endeavor, was sponsored by the Imperial
Russian Academy of Sciences and the International Central Asia
Research for a more extensive expedition. Portions of Togan's
findings began to be published in scholarly journals prior to the
First World War. His professional output approaches four hundred
individual items in at least five languages.
Togan became a leader of the Turkistan National Liberation
Movement--called the Basmachi Movement by the Russians--in
Central Asia from 1916 to the 1930s. This is but one example of
how--like the Ukrainian scholar Mikhail Hrushevsky (1866-1934)
and the Czech Thomas Masaryk (1850-1937), Togan was not only a
scholar devoted to writing about the history of his nation, but
also worked to secure its intellectual, cultural, civil, and
political independence.
A Poem of My Mother's and Freud
My mother knew how to write, and while teaching her students
prayers, she would write. But, she would not write letters.
However, when my father was angry with me during 1908, when I was
in Kazan, she did send me one or two letters. There were also
poems she wrote to my father. These were kept scattered in my
father's books.
Every now and then, property ownership issues would cause a
fuss. For example, mother was very sensitive concerning the
animals she had brought into the marriage from her father's
house--what we called "turkun." When one of those animals was
sold, without securing her complete acquiescence, she took
offence with my father. Then, my father wished to marry a
second woman, or, it is said, at least threatened to do so.
Consequently, my mother wrote the following poem:
You said there is no other sweetheart to love/
You had not loved anyone else, have you changed?/
You are the one who had tasted my ruby red lips,/
And the one who broke my seal/
Are you a stranger, what is the meaning of this jest?/
Possibly, the last two lines were quoted from another poet, but
my mother had used them very fittingly. With its completely clear
meaning, this poem had remained in my memory. However, until I
grew-up, I had not paid attention to its reference to the sexual
relations between husband and wife.
In general, whether or not there were sexual relations between
our mother and father would not even enter the minds or
imagination of us children. Our parents would have us read the
religious instructions regulating sexual relations. Sometimes
our parents would have some of the cows mated in our presence, or
we would observe the birthing sheep that had been brought into
the warmth of the household during the winter. To us, these were
normal and natural affairs.
Thus, we had memorized our mother's poem only because it is a
beautiful piece. There were times when my sister Sare and I
recited this and similar ones. But, according to the Viennese
philosopher Dr. Freud, there's more to it than this.
While I was studying in Vienna during 1935, I had rented a room
on Berggasse No. 9 to be near the History of Art Seminar of Prof.
Strezegovski. I knew that there was an institute on the floor
below me, but I was not aware that this was Freud's
Psychoanalysis Institute. One day, the landlady said "The
residents below you are complaining of your very hard steps at
night. Could you wear slippers?" I agreed but kept forgetting,
and the request was repeated. One evening, the landlady said "The
Professor is asking for you." This person introduced himself as
Professor Freud and said there were sensitive instruments in his
institute, and because of that, repeatedly requested that I wear
slippers in my room if possible.
I had never seen Freud before. However, a Syrian Armenian
student, said to be working under this Freud, had given me books
by him. I had read some of them but had not liked his philosophy
at all. I responded to Freud with "I am a person who had arrived
from the vastness of Central Asia. I wonder if I could have my
feet comply with this stipulation." Freud invited me to his
room. There, I told Freud that his writings pertaining to a girl
of six to seven years of age lusting after her father was
inapplicable to the Bashkurts and Kazakhs. Then I translated my
mother's poem. I stated that I had grasped the sexual allusion
of "breaking my seal" in this poem only after reading Dr. Freud's
pamphlets.
I conversed with him several more times after that. Earlier I had
analyzed the Arab traveller Ibn Fadlan's writings on the old
Oghuz. I knew that their understanding of sexual relations was
entirely different from other Muslims and the Arabs and had
compared those writings to Herodotus' records pertaining to
sexual relations among Scythians. During our second
conversation, I relayed all this to Dr. Freud. I even said to
him "With your conversion of psychoanalysis into your
'philosophy,' which is an important and interesting branch of
knowledge, you are providing material to the 'perverts' who
unabashedly write about watching their naked sisters through
keyholes."
He was not at all angered by my words. He wished very much to
continue our talks, but as I had moved from Austria to Germany,
there were no further opportunities.
