The spreads from the preceding pages are taken from Molla Nasreddin, a weekly political satire that ran from 1906 thru 1930, first in Tbilisi, briefly in Tabriz in northern Iran, before settling down in Baku. One of the most important periodicals of the Muslim world in the 20th century, Molla Nasreddin was a progressive weekly read from Morocco to India, thanks in large part to illustrations reminiscent of an Honoré Daumier of the Caucasus. In 2011, Slavs and Tatars edited and translated a selection of the magazine’s illustrations for the first time in English for the publication Molla Nasreddin: the magazine that would’ve, could’ve, should’ve (JRP|Ringier).
As we leafed through 8 volumes, running roughly 500 pages each, recently re-issued in the original Azeri by the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences, only the occasional page or two of Molla Nasreddin bore the mark of censors. In choosing what would make the final cut of 200+ pages, however, no poker-faced authorities advised us with the nudge of an elbow or a raised monobrow against this or that illustration.
They did not have to, as we did their job for them.
Whether attempting to accurately represent the magazine’s uniquely pro-Armenian stance (given the past and current enmity of Armenian-Azeri relations) or toning down its virulently secular anti-Islamism for fear the publication play into the hands of current-day Islamophobes around the globe, we turned to self-censorship and willfully lodged ourselves inside the very confines and responsibilities increasingly overlooked or categorically dismissed in this age of diuretic publishing. Despite a particularly turbulent period in Russian history, book-ended between two revolutions (in 1905 and 1917) not to mention the devastation of World War I, the editors of Mollla Nasreddin were able to take risks that we, sitting safely in Europe and the United States a century later, were not able to. So much for conceived notions of historical progress or the much-touted press freedom laws at the heart of liberal democracy.
Since that blistering day several years ago, carrying and caring for these volumes between Brussels, Moscow, Paris, New York, Berlin and Warsaw has toned our muscles if not our thoughts. We have wrestled with Molla Nasreddin: like any object of intense interest, it both repels and attracts us. But it is rare to embrace one’s antithesis, as we have with MN: spending years and significant sums of money translating, funding and publishing a historical document with which we often and fundamentally disagree. Standing squarely as a champion of secular, Western values, the weekly is in some sense a mascot, in reverse, of Slavs and Tatars’ practice. Where MN is secular and pro-Western, we tend to err on the side of the mystical and remain suspicious of the wholesale import of Western modernity. But, like the best cultural productions, Molla Nasreddin is polyphonic, joyfully self-contradictory and staunchly in favour of the creolisation that results from multiple languages, ideas and identities.
The magazine’s pan-Caucasian character (itinerant offices between Tbilisi, Baku and Tabriz), linguistic complexity (across three alphabets) and use of humour as a disarming critique make for an irresistible trifecta which, despite any partisan polemics, we celebrate unequivocally.
A version of this article appeared in the catalogue for The Station at Konsthall C, Stockholm.
A version of this article appeared in the catalogue for The Station at Konsthall C, Stockholm.
