Russia's Turn to Persia

Volkov, Denis V.

doi:10.1017/9781108645270

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 43 publications

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“…125 His views of Afghanistan's economic development aligned with those of other Bolshevik specialists who believed that the Soviet Union should help Eastern states go through a period of nationalist development. 126 The elephant-riding image on Ogonek's cover suggests Raskol´nikov's and Reisner's behavior resembled that of their imperialist foes, and the same could even be said of their economic support for Afghanistan. Britain's representatives drew related conclusions when they saw that Aman Allah sent delegations to Germany and Italy.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comrades on Elephants: Economic Anti-Imperialism, Orientalism, and Soviet Diplomacy in Afghanistan, 1921–23

Hirst¹

2021

Kritika

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A 1923 cover of the magazine Ogonek displays two Afghans and a third man in Soviet military clothing assisting a Russian couple in broad-brimmed hats onto an elephant (fig. 1). The headline proclaims the scene anti-British and anti-imperialist, but the image could easily adorn a Victorian celebration of empire. The photograph is emblematic of the time Fedor Raskol´nikov and Larisa Reisner spent in Kabul: they urged Moscow to provide diplomatic and economic aid to the Afghan state while they themselves collected antique coins to take home with them when they left. Raskol´nikov and Reisner demonstrated a pronounced sense of cultural superiority during their stay in Kabul, and they seem almost to embody the paradox that has led scholars to refer to the Soviet Union as an "anti-imperialist 'empire.'" 1 Yet Raskol´nikov, Reisner, and the editors of Ogonek evidently saw little incongruity in their performance. The magazine confidently drew readers' attention to the Soviet presence in a 19th-century site of imperial rivalry, to a landscape that evoked the Great Game. Sightseeing on elephants was an exotic but irrelevant sideshow; the radicalism of the Soviet Union's approach to independent states in what was to become the Third World lay elsewhere. The Bolsheviks cared most about economics, and they were convinced that the imperative to consolidate political independence from and against a global capitalist system defined anti-imperialism.Raskol´nikov and Reisner were part of the Bolshevik elite, and they promulgated its economic analysis even as many of their gestures evoked another

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comrades on Elephants: Economic Anti-Imperialism, Orientalism, and Soviet Diplomacy in Afghanistan, 1921–23

Hirst¹

2021

Kritika

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100 years of Dura Europos

Elsner¹

2021

J. Roman Archaeol.

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It was more than 100 years ago, in March 1920, that British troops camping in the ruins of some unknown ancient fort on the Euphrates, named Al-Salihiyah in Arabic, during the skirmishing that followed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of the First World War, dug a trench and excavated some astonishing wall paintings. The officers in charge, along with the Civil Commissioner, managed to call in an American archaeologist who happened to be in Syria at the end of April, James Henry Breasted, first director of the Oriental Institute in Chicago (founded the previous year, 1919). Breasted visited in May, in dangerous conditions and with the British about to withdraw. He stayed only a day, managing to clear and take photographs of the murals that depict the sacrifices of Conon and Julius Terentius in what later became known as the Temple of Bel or the Temple of the Palmyrene Gods.

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Observing Iran from Baku: Iranian Studies in Soviet and Post-Soviet Azerbaijan

Гасимов¹

2022

Iran. stud.

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Azerbaijani national identity emerged in post-Persian Russian-ruled East Caucasia at the end of the nineteenth century, and was finally forged during the early Soviet period. After the fiasco of the short-lived independence period of 1918-20, Azerbaijan became Soviet. Soviet power then instrumentalized Azerbaijan for political and ideological penetration into Iran by galvanizing local separatist movements. Azerbaijani Iranology was shaped within Soviet oriental studies and put into service of Azerbaijani nation-building. Exiled Iranian communists found asylum in Baku, joined local research institutions, wrote the first Persian academic and school textbooks, and contributed to the translation of classic Persian poetry into Azerbaijani. Soviet Azerbaijani Iranologists were sent as translators to the Soviet missions to Iran and Afghanistan. After Azerbaijan regained independence in 1991, its Iranological infrastructure was represented by several departments at the National Academy of Sciences and the Iranian Studies Program at Baku State University. While the number of Persian classes at schools during the last three decades diminished, a new generation of post-Soviet Iranologists-those who studied in Iran-emerged. While Soviet Azerbaijani Iranologists never created a solid bilingual dictionary of Persian, several Persian-Azerbaijani and Azerbaijani-Persian dictionaries were published in the 2010s. Post-Soviet Azerbaijani Iranology is still trying to find its place within humanities in the transitional nation.

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Russia's Turn to Persia

Cited by 5 publications

References 43 publications

Comrades on Elephants: Economic Anti-Imperialism, Orientalism, and Soviet Diplomacy in Afghanistan, 1921–23

Comrades on Elephants: Economic Anti-Imperialism, Orientalism, and Soviet Diplomacy in Afghanistan, 1921–23

100 years of Dura Europos

Observing Iran from Baku: Iranian Studies in Soviet and Post-Soviet Azerbaijan

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