The majority of the Turkic peoples and lands described in the Book of Dede Korkut were part of the Soviet Union from 1920 until 1991, and thus most of the research and interest originated there. The attitude towards the Book of Dede Korkut and other dastans related to the Turkic peoples was initially neutral.
Turkish historian Hasan Bülent Paksoy argues that after Joseph Stalin solidified his grip on power in the USSR, and especially in the early 1950s, a taboo on Turkology was firmly established. He observed that the first full-text Russian edition of the Book of Dede Korkut, by Azerbaijani academicians Hamid Arasly and M.G.Tahmasib and based on the Barthold translation of the 1920s, was published on a limited basis only in 1939 and again in 1950.[12][33] He asserts, "Turkic scholars and literati (who raised the same issues) were lost to the Stalinist 'liquidations' or to the 'ideological assault' waged on all dastans in 1950–52."[12] According to Paksoy, this taboo of the early 1950s was also expressed in the "Trial of Alpamysh" (1952–1957), when "all dastans of Central Asia were officially condemned by the Soviet state apparatus".
Soviet authorities criticized Dede Korkut for promoting bourgeois nationalism. In a 1951 speech delivered at the 18th Congress of the Azerbaijani Communist Party, Azerbaijani communist leader Mir Jafar Baghirov advocated expunging the epic from Azerbaijani literature, calling it a "harmful" and "antipopular book" that "is shot through with the poison of nationalism, chiefly against the Georgian and Armenian brother-peoples."[34]
Nevertheless, the publication of dastans did not wholly cease during that period, as editions of Alpamysh were published in 1957, 1958 and 1961,[35] as they had been in 1939, 1941, and 1949;[36] the entry on dastans in the second edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (volume 13, 1952) does not contain any "condemnation" either.[37] Despite the liberalization of the political climate after the denunciation of Stalinism by Nikita Khrushchev in February 1956, the same "Barthold" edition of the Book of Dede Korkut was re-published only in 1962 and in 1977. Problems persisted until perestroika, when the last full edition in Azerbaijani was sent for publication on July 11, 1985 but only received permission for printing on February 2, 1988.[12]
