Speech at a reception in the Kremlin for participants in the decade of Tajik art on April 22, 1941
I want to say a few words about the Tajiks. Tajiks are a special people. These are not Uzbeks, not Kazakhs, not Kirghiz, these are Tajiks, the most ancient people of Central Asia. Tajik means the bearer of the crown, so the Iranians called them, and the Tajiks justified this name.
Of all the non-Russian Muslim peoples on the territory of the USSR, the Tajiks are the only non-Turkic, Iranian people. Tajiks are the people whose intelligentsia gave birth to the great poet Firdousi, and it is not for nothing that they, Tajiks, derive their cultural traditions from him.
You must have felt during the decade that they, the Tajiks, have a finer artistic flair, their ancient culture and special artistic taste are manifested in music, in song, in dance.
Sometimes our Russian comrades confuse everyone: a Tajik with an Uzbek, an Uzbek with a Turkmen, an Armenian with a Georgian. This, of course, is wrong.
Tajiks are a special people, with an ancient great culture, and in our Soviet conditions, they have a great future. And the whole Soviet Union should help them in this. I would like their art to be surrounded by universal attention.
I raise a toast to the flourishing of Tajik art, the Tajik people, to the fact that we, Muscovites, are always ready to help them in everything that is needed.
