In Sicily, a reception was held recently to launch the Italian translation of a controversial book written by Saparmurad Niyazov, dictator and "president for life" of Turkmenistan. In Amsterdam, a Dutch translation of the book was unveiled at a party in a historic 17th-century house.
The various releases this month of the two-volume "Book of Spirit" -- "Ruhnama" in Turkmen -- are part of an international drive to boost the book's circulation as well as what the government-controlled Turkmen media call a "victorious march around the world" by the author-president, 65, also known in his country as Turkmenbashi the Great.
The book contains Niyazov's moral code as well as his philosophical and historical musings. Its translation into 30 languages and publication outside Turkmenistan have been underwritten by international firms doing business in the natural gas-rich Central Asian republic, according to Turkmen media reports, exiled opposition groups and a number of the companies involved that were contacted by The Washington Post.
Human rights groups say the book is at the center of Niyazov's cult of personality and is ravaging educational and cultural life in his country. Almost everyone in Turkmenistan is compelled to study the book and pass exams about it, and the country's libraries have largely been emptied to leave little but the Ruhnama and Niyazov's collections of poetry. This month, Niyazov ordered most libraries in Turkmenistan closed, according to Russian news reports.
"If the Ruhnama were a benign text, like the memoirs of a U.S. president, this would be harmless, but the Ruhnama is the principal instrument for indoctrination and brainwashing in Turkmenistan," said Erika Dailey, a specialist on the country at the Open Society Institute in Budapest. "Companies cannot ignore that and they have to be called to account."
Those involved in the translation and publication of the book, however, described their efforts as philanthropic.
"We sponsored it for inter-cultural understanding," said Arantxa Doerrie, a spokeswoman for Zeppelin Baumaschinen, a German machinery company that translated the second volume of the book and presented it to Niyazov this month. The company plans to distribute the book in Germany, she said.
"In principle, yes, it is a dictatorship," Doerrie said, "but simultaneously we see that very much is being done to help the people there -- for the infrastructure with the building of streets, for example. That is what we understand. We sell building equipment, so yes, there is a market for us there, but we see our contribution as a way to help the people there."
Niyazov, who allowed the United States to use his country's airspace during the war in Afghanistan, has been in power since the collapse of the Soviet Union. He tolerates no dissent and has turned the country of 5 million into a monument to himself.
The president's image adorns vodka bottles and is shown constantly in the top right corner on national television. A 36-foot-tall, gold-leaf statue of the president rotates atop a 250-foot base to follow the sun. The streets of the capital, Ashkhabad, are shut down when he chooses to whiz around town in one of his cars. And he has renamed months of the year after himself, his mother and his book.
Niyazov appeared in a 90-minute live broadcast from one of his palaces last September to read from his new poetry collection, "The Spring of Inspiration." He also interrupts government meetings to recite his poems, including a session last May when he told his military leadership that he had some verse about the dangers facing the country:
Be vigilant and be cautious, that is my request to you
Even when you and your country are facing luck
And you are as mighty as King Solomon
And when you feel yourself strong
Be aware, for there are many traitors with traps to set
Foreign distribution of the Ruhnama began several years ago.
"Dear Mr. President," wrote a director of the Finnish electricity concern Ensto in a letter last year. "The publication of your book will undoubtedly serve as a stimulus for the development of relations between our countries. It will allow for close acquaintance with the culture and national traditions of your people, and the political principles of Turkmenistan. . . . The international industrial concern has an important role in the manufacture and maintenance of energy grids."
The company's chief executive, Seppo Martikainen, said in a telephone interview that the company now planned to translate the book only for its employees. "The situation has changed," he said. "We had discussion on how far we should go with this, and it's only for our own use."
The Irish firm Emerol, which has contracts in Turkmenistan worth tens of millions of dollars, published the book in Lithuanian -- one of its directors is Lithuanian, according to company registration documents filed in Dublin.
DaimlerChrysler, the automobile giant based in Stuttgart, Germany, and Auburn Hills, Mich., sells ambulances and other vehicles to the Turkmen government. The firm published the first volume of the Ruhnama in November 2003.
"I can tell you that employees of DaimlerChrysler translated the book," said Ursula Mertzig-Stein, a company official. "A contract was signed and the book was presented to the leader." She said the company did not otherwise publish books but noted that "there are, I believe, not many other heads of state who are authors." She declined to be quoted on the human rights situation in Turkmenistan.
When a translation is complete, the book is launched abroad with coverage in the Turkmen media.
"Millions of readers whose mother tongue is Italian are looking forward to an opportunity to [get in] touch with the great history of the ancient Turkmen," reported the State Information Agency of Turkmenistan after this month's reception in Sicily, which was attended by local schoolchildren.
A sales representative for an Italian water company with major contracts in Turkmenistan organized the Italian translation.
Turkmen opposition leaders say they are dismayed by what they see as a cynical quid pro quo -- books for business.
"Having millions of copies of his nonsense in various languages is immoral when children in school have no textbooks," said Khudaiberdy Orazov, a former deputy prime minister under Niyazov. He is now in exile in Sweden, where he leads the opposition group Watan.
"For these companies, who should know better, it's unforgivable," he said.
A spokesman for the Turkmen Embassy in Moscow said the companies were under no obligation to publish the president's work and acted on their own initiative.
"Who can prohibit this if they wanted to do it of their own free will?" said Grigory Kolozin, the embassy spokesman. "The Turkmen leadership approaches the issue of making contracts with foreign companies on the basis of pragmatism."
"We felt it was only polite to do it," said Imre Sesztak, head of the gas industry firm Turbo Team in Hungary, which paid for the publication of 1,000 copies of the book in Hungarian in October. "People know very little about Turkmenistan, so we feel we're spreading information."
Russian news media reported recently that the energy giant Gazprom, which has been involved in a dispute with Niyazov over huge natural gas contracts, is behind a recent proposal by a number of renowned Russian poets to translate the president's poems into Russian. The offer kicked up a literary storm. Alexander Tkachenko, general director of the Russian PEN center, condemned the offer as a "disgrace and a shame." He also said that Niyazov's "gibberish is impossible to translate."
A Gazprom spokeswoman said the report was untrue. One of the poets, Mikhail Sinelnikov, would say only that "a sponsor with business interests," whom he declined to identify, had suggested that they write to Niyazov offering to translate his work. The poets, who had planned a volume of classical Turkmen poetry, now suspect they were hoodwinked into a second project.
"We made ourselves targets by signing this in haste," said poet Yevgeny Rein, who co-signed a letter to Niyazov that read, "Your verses about mother, moral purity, about family and statehood have become secular prayers in the life of Turkmens. Their publication in Russian would raise the significance of poetry."