In the article the author deals with the years the famous Turkologist and historian Ahmet Zeki Velidi Togan (1890–1970), who is known for his great edition of the 10th-century Arabic travel account of Ibn Faḍlān was working and teaching at Rheinische Friedrich- Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn (1935–1938). Various documents relating to events from this period are reproduced in the article (including his appointment to the Oriental Seminar at the university, his appointment as a member of the Finno-Ugric Society in Helsinki, his appointment as an honorary professor, a research stay in Turkey, his leave of absence to carry out a lectureship at the Georg August University in Göttingen, and finally his defence in response to accusations regarding his “political reliability”, which are not known in detail. This defence was made both by Paul Kahle and by himself in the form of an account of his political activities in the years 1917–1929, the full text of which is appended and which was later also used by Togan himself in his autobiography.

Professor Tadeusz Kowalski (1889–1948) was in correspondence with scholars from practically all over the world. He had an active interest in the developments of Oriental studies in the Soviet Union. He valued the publications he received from the USSR as well as all contacts he had with Russian researchers. He sought to cooperate with Alexander Samoylovich (1880–1938) – one of the most eminent Turkologists in the Soviet Union. This goal had been partially achieved. The archives of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Kraków now hold, catalogued under ref. no. K III-4, j. 174, just three letters from the Russian Turkologist. These materials, despite their small number, are an engrossing source of knowledge on the state of Soviet Turkish studies in the mid-1920s and the Soviet Oriental studies community. As the author managed to determine, these letters are all the more precious as the branch of the archives at the Russian Academy of Sciences in St.-Petersburg, where the legacy of professor Samoylovich is kept, has no copies. Interestingly, there are no surviving copies of the letters from professor Kowalski to the Russian Turkologist. This article aims to analyse the contents of the letters written by Alexander Samoylovich, the Soviet Turkologist, to professor Tadeusz Kowalski, and determine the purpose and direction in which Turkish studies were developing in the USSR in the period described in these sources.