DEAR LEWIS:

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP68-00069A000100290005-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 5, 2000
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: October 17, 1955
• Content Type: LETTER

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1t. Levis C. Coffin
Assistant Director
Processing Department
Library of Congress
weahingtos 25, DC.
Q :cL
90005-2
V!,~y~, r L~ .~
To bring you up to date on my activities, for the past three
weeks i have been travelling without interry'uption ( this explains
why you have received no letter from we for some time.)
quested nothing in particular in exchange, primarily because they
are in tttal ignorance of what is being published in America; it
has literally been years xiuaxtx since they have received dlny
you most prob..,ply don't have* then either. The Uzbek Academy re-
you an: Harvard. I don't know whether or not you have these works;
V rather think 'ot, given their _djAtes of publication; also I have
Professor Frye. m *of liar vard) that llarvard does not have them, so
"history of the Uzbek Peoples" published by the Uzbek Acea,femy of
Sciences a few years ago, an: they promised to send this also to
had extra copies; they did an-'. promised to send copies of vols. 1
and three to ,ou_ and llarvard. I also asked for set.; of a multi"olume
three not being available. At the Academy Li Israry I asked if they
academic bo.,k store I ha,.1 bough. vol. 2 of a three volume edition
of "Descriptions of Medieval Uzb,-k Manuscripts", volumes one and
was simply no opportunity to write.
On the first trip I visited Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara and
Alms vita. All of these stops,except tukhura, were for purposes of
buying books and contacting the local universities and academies.
The trip to Bukhara was an aftert.,o. ght, and undertaken only because
I had a days wait in Tashkent fora. plan= to alma Ata and decided to
use the time visiting tkhara. the visit to Tashkent w-,s very rewarding.
Astong the provinical cities it is oi.e of the largest book publishing
centers, and both the university and the Academy of Scieeuces are very
.active. In all these respects Tashkent is much more important than
the other Central 4si an republican c,...p>i t._, l s. In the academi c book
store and in the most important general book store I bought all that
was uzix available of the local publications. The visits to the
Central Asian Stato University - the largest and most important in
Central Asia and the Uzbek Academy of Sciences were even more
rewarding. At present the university 1,,-s exchanges only with a very
few American insitutions and on a very small scale, while the
Acadesy_.o.f Sciences has no such exchanges at all. Both are desirous
of instituting substantial and direct exchanges t with rbuerican librawries.
The Academy of Sciences ps promised -:ie to send you two volumes
as an opener. The way the offer came to br? made is thisr in the
time to draw my money, change my clothes ant catch the train; there
My travels break down into two trips= the first to Central Asia
and the second to Kiev and the Caucwsus.Since I was delayed a day and
and half: in returning from' Central Asia Lo Moscow because of faulty
plane connections I had only a.few hours here before lo,.ving for
the second trip to Kiev and the 19s=max Caucasus, for inch I had
alre.dy ordered my ticket before going to Central Asia. I b.:rely had
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, Teri c an publications. What they wanted more t was to atat start re-
American bibliogro*phie-,q such as US Quarterly Book Review.
I didn't cQsiatsi t . ou to anything specific , of course, beyond saying
you Were interested in exchantges and that you would soon write
making u? offer, and tt;ey are expec ling a letter with an offer, an=l
perhaps a .1lumb,r or two of the US Quarterly hook 13ewiew. With resroet
to What drotrld e.t,ect in the wady of exchanges with them, the output
of the academy is fe.irly 1,tu-ge . Unfortunately I wens unable to
ge t a 10 prospectus of their etiitiur)~;aei then iron the academy book
store or the A.cn '.emy Libr,,r?y, since race such pa [ar?o. pectus exists.
44?reve'r~, a lip t of all their rutAi c.ytit;ns sine, the founding of the
Academy 1, ai, prt ,ont it prtesks, :a.ra' i a~ sch(?,luini to .p,rear before the
end of to year. [trey, ,,,rni::*J to :r,t it to you, with irrciicrra, al ihcugh eas than zkioai tht? Uzbek
Anadee*y, and they art west ax eager- to mtr,kE exchanges 1wi th users ca
aFa big as possible. Li e the people in foahkent they ar?e at present
tee*'i veng very little-from mori clay in gcnera1 t:[-el no bi lrl i eggr-ttphi es
iW ptu'ticulur, so they don't know vt?ryp tve 11 wt,at they wasnt. What they
have to offer is the whole sprFndoz of ieir t,wn pubiitut.iu;,,, 'Unfortunately
the first catalo a of the pubiicati jns ws11 not be nut till th(- end
of this ye..r so couldn't get a copy of it, but they will aehd it to
y3`ou osd the universities aR soe,n &I as it tp,s.=,ars, They re,ue-ted tlrtt t
articularly 1ntereted in receivinV, zany particular Arun.ric.tr, newspaper
Or periodical. ( In 4rhkc?nt the hirrtor y people were pkrt~ cut arly
44ger to receive such material and that is why they red
to hel
were non-to triturl? The explanstion I th,, pik lies in t.ht= fact that the=y
are' smu l ler than P ,shkerst and that r .*w ~-.c, one ot. tlru f , cul ey is
public?tion, its iJchenye Zuptski, which t" Id to e_ic:lrange, bit this
is all. With regards to fiL xkntt helpiF,~ u-- get local non--arrli~ier. ity
publ i e,ti ons in return for Aaeri c.tn pert udi c..la and
jvurnrrl.is they
oral cuunt for much lesr5 tlrt:tn inati tuti o : c:i ccr responding; si.e in
Aaweri ca. Motet of the writings *t* of thr f . ;ul ty do not 4pper under
C. Q
uni^versit apt""aiaspicera but in. onto iran ,thee icudemn of Sciene Apu
bo-
1ic4tion ouot~ru
t~ p,h, either ad, Moscow :;r ir,nxnrrt,d, or in the r ?p,-
ublicean a * c.epitals, l,tu?ttcu!arly, i,ssttnor:t, kA and 'l`ift S. .:f ter
Samarkand i went to M$ tiukhar=x, simply st~Pht. seei, g, since had a
day to kill before I could get a plane for timu t -rta.
In Alma It Alta the visit to the university waa disapf)oitiugl the
visit to the : cedemy > ik,:ia xKx of c i =: g is very sta t e L.f'-_, tort' .
The r*ks Kazakhstan State University, i$ tc,s1led, has only r>ne
hlaivereity in CentrA Asia, however, the results of the trip were
very diafpointng. The rector of the university was away in Tt.shkent
when I culled, and the dire?cfor of the library sus out picking cotton.
It in normel .ii most Soviet educt tional institutions, in particular the
smaller onsn,i for studdnts and a part of the f..culty to help with the
harvest tbia`?wfry. All I could find out at t,.e librLr) wus that the
university had published nothing for the last Ye r. At the bo k store
there were no university ;,u rl i cations. The case u.t' ,~,unurkand is I
think r.tther typic-I of they swaller Soviet universities, and bears
out the impression i received at Qorkii( and later- at Rostov). Such
places "re small as irsct.t ins titutsouts, pubiish 1itcle and in gen-
After Tashkent I went to Samarkand, which bus the second largest
. `universi t e s send them their c tal ogues an1 drat LC send them s oae
frehe=nsive lit national bibliography. I told them that. Iwo, ld inform
eFsph 01 the libraries I represented of their willingness to eiclaanee-
directly and they are expecting letters from you anal the universities
and hope to have -xclranges operating by thp first of the year. They
a- 'so agreed,, i f you are ?e, i i ing, to exci.t nga. on rs unit for unnt basis,
t"estehetr the
,a dollar for dollar. I mentiorrne?:4 this only because lfitrvard
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prefers it this way, but I did not comauit anyone but Harvard. (I beliee
that your ezehsnge s with the aeni n Library s are on this bmd= bus i s
alas, ?p perhaps you wou&d went to adopt the same proceedure with the
Usakhs . Their si**ss address is simply AN Kazakhakoi tf SSA, Alma
Ate Kazakhstan, USSR.. The address of the university is Kazakhskii
Oo$ darstven yi Universitet, Alma Ata. The address of the university
in Tashkent ie XxXA_ *i X Sredne-Aziat$kii Universitet, Biblioteka,
Tashkent, s Uzbekskaia SSA, USSR. I might add in conclusion
that all 'these insitutions were delighted and touched by my visit
and very tr to start exchanging. They only very recently received
permis?io* or rather instructions,to ezcisaan a siitb foreign inatitutivona,
and don't seen to know very well how to go about doing it, since with
the exception of the university in Tashkent, they are all too young to
have had exchanp s before km the war. Therefore that are eagerly
awaiting ,you first letter with concrete proposals as to what to do;
I doubt rreryt ac rlastlaee- they have c1 ecua? aei ou(;,h pi1 picture of
.tssaric oc"pre ictioa or`'the ndaxc> anci'loc3tiox of Aaerican lib-
raries to take the init-ia#ive them.s, lve . They are e1pectiiig the in-
itietive to come from us, and tb only r ouurti tmerat i. made (except in
the came of li rvarii) was that LC aan(i the other iibrcaries would aali
write soon. finally I might-add that sO i of these i nsi ti tuti ona are
very younge Tashkent Unsver?sity 19221 ti5a 1.):bek lcwdemy ly44 or there
?bou*-s; the Kazakh Academy 1947. So far- their book o_1t,-pt t has not
eot very great ti (this is one of 'tb >easoras why aloe ha,ent been
eta iaep~ it). but they are all' growing veef f .st aaed their hook sam
.>Rtr'?put is going to increase correspontUhg. Both the Uzbek a:-d the
1 Kazakh Academies are buildng _xew libraries, and bobs the_Jr.
all nd for books and their out-put is graving very fast. Therefore
?s haven't missed b very aa4ach so far by not exchanging with them,
bat this is rapidly ceasing to be: tans..
One final word in closing. est a ay I sent you a xx cable re
pesting answers to two que:itions put ?k.# some time afrop (ythe 'Lenin
,ibrary. The reason for this is that both of t.hes goe5(xou:a are of
very great importance to them and I feel I have to give thorn some
sort of answer OPWASM soon unless I a to tawk a}apes' inn their eyes
,,as an impostor or a fraud, which I teor would nave a b,.d of?'ect on
your relations with then a just at t:. time when they 'seem ;o be willing
;sas ; 1, [fair 1ri'tit ;. .rit an libraries, Also I' feel ti that if I an able
to tell thou nothing it will be more ditiicult to get vsriosxs microfilms
from then, for which I have asked, in pArti cul e; mi crizi lms uc_the missing
numbers of *m ltini zhnaai.a Letopi s `. VN-r-haar?s the reason I bave,lhaAd a=6 an
Awonswer from you is that it is long and slow to communicate through the
State Departs-ent (Lowry is of the sane -.,pinion). A quicker '4y to write
ter iee is to send the letter in an euve t) oppe addressed to *. Roye
La y, c/o US I?mb-say Helsinki, by the, wi z regular air-moil v The
letter will be pouched in from Helsinki. It seems Lhat very often State
is very slow in fowarding letters f.
etow, and write you again in a few days regar*ing the any trite to Kiev
Since I want to get this letter in todays pouch, I will break off
n4 the Caucasus. Sincerely ;ours,
,- f.ys.. hoT elt' o c k z ~t
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