Bacha Boy in Russian Cultural Reception

Abstract

The article examines the type of culture, the institution that the Russian colonialists faced upon their arrival in the Turkestan region in the ХIХth century - the art of bacha boys. The mismatch of mentality - European and Asian - gave rise to rejection of this institution among the newcomers, who took key administrative positions and charted a course to fight Bachism. The actual destruction of the bacha boys falls on the Soviet period (the play Ecstasy with the Pomegranate from the repertoire of the Ilkhom Theater reflects this process). The authors of the article trace the growing discourse associated with rejection of bacha boys in Russian publicism (articles and fragments of memoirs by V.V. Vereshchagin, N.S. Lykoshin, D.N. Logofet and others), and also analyze the points of view of a number of Russian artists and writers that does not coincide with the official position (N.N. Karazin, V.G. Yan, Usto Mumin, E. Alennik). In the process of reasoning the authors come to the conclusion that the art of bachа boys was organic for Central Asian culture, it correlates with Sufi practices. The article presents arguments from the judgments of Islamic theologians, Russian Islamic scholars, and the Sufi poet Jalaladdin Rumi According to the authors, the so-called evidence-based practice of prerevolutionary persecutors of вacha boys for their alleged immorality is based on rumors and speculation, with which folklore reality usually works, mythologizing this or that phenomenon. N.N. Karazin writes the novel Atlar precisely in the algorithm of the rehabilitation of the вacha boys.