Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T20:55:55.589Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Soviet Civilization through a Persian Lens: Iranian Intellectuals, Cultural Diplomacy and Socialist Modernity 1941–55

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

James Pickett
James Pickett*
Affiliation:
Yale University and University of Pittsburgh
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

During the Second World War and its immediate aftermath the Soviet All-Union Society for Cultural Ties Abroad (VOKS) engaged in an aggressive campaign of cultural outreach in Iran to promote socialist modernity amongst Iranian leftists. Iran represented VOKS’ first serious expansion outside Europe and one which the Soviet Union was uniquely poised to exploit. VOKS tapped into the Soviet Union's orientalist scholarly establishment inherited from the Russian Empire to advance the argument that not only were Iran and the Soviet Union geographically contiguous, they were both inheritors of the same Persianate cultural legacy—ironically a legacy that the Soviet Union had actively displaced in favor of Turkic national SSRs. Meanwhile, Iranian leftists were not passive receivers of Soviet propaganda. They exploited VOKS resources to found the Iranian Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR and establish regional branches throughout the country. In particular, Iranian intellectuals fixated on Soviet Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan as evidence of the abundant possibilities for a specifically Persianate articulation of socialist modernity. This article uses both Russian archival sources and Persian-language periodicals and interview transcripts to explore this unique confluence of Soviet and Iranian ambitions.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 5: Russian Orientalism to Soviet Iranology: The Persian-speaking World and its History through Russian Eyes , September 2015 , pp. 805 - 826
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrahamian, Ervand. Iran Between Two Revolutions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Ahmadī, Hamīd (interviewer). Khātirāt-i Buzurg ʿAlavī [Memoirs of Bozorg ‘Alavi]. Oral History Collection of the Iranian Left. Tehran: Dunya-yi Kitab, 1997.Google Scholar
‘Alavi, Bozorg. “The First Iranian Writers Congress, 1946.” In Critical Perspectives on Modern Persian Literature, edited by Thomas, Ricks. Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Atabaki, Touraj. Azerbaijan: Ethnicity and Autonomy in Twentieth-Century Iran, 8–25. London: British Academy Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Canfield, Robert L., ed. Turko-Persia in Historical Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Chaqueri, Cosroe. “Did the Soviets Play a Role in Founding the Tūdah Party in Iran?” Cahiers Du Monde Russe 40, no. 3 (September 1999).Google Scholar
Chaqueri, Cosroe. The Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran, 1920–1921: Birth of the Trauma. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick. Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cronin, Stephanie. “Introduction.” In Reformers and Revolutionaries in Modern Iran: New Perspectives on the Iranian Left, edited by Cronin, Stephanie, 1–16. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004.Google Scholar
David-Fox, Michael. Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921–1941. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duara, Prasenjit. “The Cold War as a Historical Period: An Interpretive Essay.” Journal of Global History no. 6 (2011): 457–480. doi: 10.1017/S1740022811000416CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engerman, David. “The Second World's Third World.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 12, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 183–211.Google Scholar
Fletcher, William. “The Soviet Bible Belt: World War II's Effects on Religion.” In The Impact of World War II on the Soviet Union, edited by Linz, Susan J., 91–106. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985.Google Scholar
Frye, Richard N. “Ethnic Identity in Iran.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 26 (2002): 78–83.Google Scholar
Gasanly, Dzhamil’. SSSR–Iran: Azerbaidzhanskii krizis i nachalo kholodnoi voiny 1941–1946 [USSR and Iran: the Azerbaijan crisis and the beginning of the Cold War, 1941–1946]. Moscow: Geroi Otechestva, 2006.Google Scholar
Gheissari, Ali. Iranian Intellectuals in the 20th Century. 1st ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Giunashvili, Liudmila. “Said Nafisi i russkaia literatura (K 115-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia).” Karavan no. 3 (September 2011): 77–97.Google Scholar
Grigor, Talinn. “Recultivating ‘Good Taste’: The Early Pahlavi Modernists and Their Society for National Heritage.” Iranian Studies 37, no. 1 (2004): 17–45. doi: 10.1080/0021086042000232929CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gross, Jan. “War as Revolution.” In The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944–1949, edited by Naimark, Norman and Gibianskii, Leonid, 17–35. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998.Google Scholar
Halliday, Fred. “The Iranian Left in International Perspective.” In Reformers and Revolutionaries in Modern Iran: New Perspectives on the Iranian Left, edited by Cronin, Stephanie, 19–36. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004.Google Scholar
“Historians and the Question of ‘Modernity’: Introduction.” The American Historical Review 116, no. 3 (June 2011): 631–637.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodgson, Marshall G. S. The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization. 3 vols. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jahānbānī, Tīmār Sipāhbād Amānallah. “Aghāz-i Payām-i Navīn” [The beginning of “Payam-i Navin”]. Payām-i Navīn 1, no. 1 (Mihr Māh 1337/October–November 1958).Google Scholar
Khalid, Adeeb. The Making of Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirasirova, Masha. “‘Sons of Muslims’ in Moscow: Soviet Central Asian Mediators to the Foreign East, 1955–1962.” Ab Imperio (April 2011): 106–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kishāvarz, Karīm. “Safar-i Tashkand” [Travel to Tashkent]. Payām-i Naw 2, no. 2 (Dī Mah 1324/December–January 1945).Google Scholar
Kotkin, Stephen. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kotkin, Stephen. “Modern Times: The Soviet Union and the Interwar Conjuncture.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 2, no. 1 (2001): 111–64. doi: 10.1353/kri.2008.0119CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kowalski, Tadeusz. “The Turks in the Shāh-Nāma.” In The Turks in the Early Islamic World, edited by Bosworth, C. Edmund, 121–34. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Variorum, 2007.Google Scholar
Lahuti, Abdulkasim. “About Myself.” In Critical Perspectives on Modern Persian Literature, edited by Ricks, Thomas, 373–7. Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Levin, Theodore. The Hundred Thousand Fools of God: Musical Travels in Central Asia (and Queens, New York). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Marashi, Afshin. Nationalizing Iran: Culture, Power, and the State, 1870–1940. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Mark, Eduard. “Revolution by Degrees: Stalin's National-Front Strategy for Europe, 1941–1947.” Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Working Paper # 31 (n.d.). http://cwihp.si.eduGoogle Scholar
Matin-Asghari, Afshin. “Iran and Russia.” Paper presented at “Empires and Revolutions: Iranian–Russian Encounters since 1800,” London: School of Oriental and African Studies, June 12–13, 2009.Google Scholar
Morrell, Sydney. Spheres of Influence. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946.Google Scholar
Nafīsī, Saʿīd. Muḥīṭ-i zindagī va aḥvāl va ashʿār-i Rūdakī [The life, times, and poetry of Rudaki]. Tehran: Ahūrā, 1382/2003.Google Scholar
Nafīsī, Saʿīd. “Nuh Rūz dar Tashkand” [Nine days in Tashkent]. Payām-i Naw 2, no. 2 (Dī Māh 1323/December–January 1944).Google Scholar
Naimark, Norman. The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Raine, Fernande Scheid. “Stalin, Bagirov, and Soviet Politics in Iran, 1939–1946.” PhD diss., Yale University, 2000.Google Scholar
Sela, Ron. The Legendary Biographies of Tamerlane: Islam and Heroic Apocrypha in Central Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shayegh, Cyrus. Who is Knowledgeable is Strong: Science, Class, and the Formation of Modern Iranian Society, 1900–1950. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slezkine, Yuri. “The USSR as a Communal Apartment.” Slavic Review 53, no. 2 (1994): 414–52. doi: 10.2307/2501300CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stronski, Paul. Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City, 1930–1966. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vaziri, Mostafa. Iran as Imagined Nation: The Construction of National Identity. New York: Paragon House, 1993.Google Scholar