Letters of Academician Alexander Samoylovich to Professor Tadeusz Kowalski

Professor Tadeusz Kowalski (1889–1948) corresponded with scholars from practically all over the world. He was interested in the developments of Oriental studies in the Soviet Union. He valued the publications he received from the USSR, as well as all contacts he had with Russian researchers. He sought to cooperate with Alexander Samoylovich (1880–1938) – one of the most eminent Turkologists in the Soviet Union. This goal had been partially achieved. The archives of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Kraków now hold, catalogued under ref. No. KII-4, j. 174, just three letters from the Russian Turkologist. Despite their small number, these materials are an engrossing source of knowledge on the state of Soviet Turkish studies in the mid 1920s and the Soviet Oriental studies community. These letters are all the more precious – as the author managed to determine – as the branch of the archives at the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, where the legacy of professor Samoylovich is kept, has no copies. It is interesting that there are no surviving copies of the letters from professor Kowalski to the Russian Turkologist. The article’s purpose is the edition of the letters of Alexander Nikolaevich Samojłowicz – a Soviet turkologist – to Professor Tadeusz Kowalski, including their translation into Polish. These documents constitute a certificate of international academic relations development between scientists from Poland and the Soviet Union in the interwar period.