Description
The roots of the Arab world's current Russian entanglements reach deep into the tsarist and Soviet periods. To explore those entanglements, this book presents and contextualizes a set of primary sources translated from Russian, Arabic, Armenian, Persian, French, and Tatar: a 1772 Russian naval officer's diary, an Arabic slave sale deed from the Caucasus, an interview with a Russian-educated contemporary Syrian novelist, and many more. These archival, autobiographical, and literary sources, all appearing in English for the first time, are introduced by specialists and in some cases by pairs of scholars with complementary language expertise. They highlight connections long obscured by disciplinary cleavages between Slavic and Middle East studies.Taken together, the thirty-four chapters of this book show how various Russian/Soviet and Arab governments sought to nurture political and cultural ties and expand their influence, often with unplanned results. They reveal the transnational networks of trade, pilgrimage, study, ethnic identity, and political affinity that state policies sometimes fostered and sometimes disrupted. Above all they give voice to some of the resourceful characters who have embodied and exploited Arab-Russian contacts: missionaries and diplomats, soldiers and refugees, students and party activists, scholars, and spies. A set of specially commissioned maps helps orient readers amid the expansion and collapse of empires, border changes, population transfers, and creation of new nation-states that occurred during the two centuries these sources cover.
Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Witness to a New Era: Sergei Pleshcheev's Diary of a Journey to Syria (1773)John Randolph2. Extraterritorial Entanglements: Russian Jewish Migrants in Ottoman Palestine (1830s-1850s)Eileen Kane3. Shi'i Worlds Interrupted: Waqf and Pilgrimage in Russia's South Caucasus (1863, 1874, 1876)Zeinab Azarbadegan4. An Egyptian Teacher Heads to St. Petersburg: al-Tantawi's Gift of the Wise in the Account of the Land of Russia (1840)Suha Kudsieh5. With the Tsar's Imprimatur: A Slave Sale Deed from Russia's North Caucasus (1864)Sergey Salushchev6. Population Transfer: Negotiating the Resettlement of Chechen Refugees in the Ottoman Empire (1865, 1870)Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky7. Russianizing Palestine: Vasilii Khitrovo's A Week in Palestine (1876) and the Charter of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (1889)Spencer Scoville8. Manufacturing Russian Peasants' Attachments to Jerusalem: IPPO Propaganda about the Holy Land (1894-1903)Elena Astafieva9. Orthodoxy across Borders: Maps of the Institutions of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine SocietyEileen Kane10. A Reluctant Native Intermediary: Shakirdzhan Ishaev's Journey to Mecca (1896)Eileen Kane11. Quarantine Politics and the Hajj: Dr. Zabolotnyi's Mission to the Red Sea (1897)Eileen Kane12. Saluting Russia's Islamic Modernists in the Cairo and Beirut Arabic Press (1899)Roy Bar Sadeh13. Russian and Soviet Oil Exports to the Persian Gulf (1903-33)Eileen Kane and Masha Kirasirova14. Memo to Stalin: Lev Karakhan's Argument for Establishing Diplomatic Ties with the Hejaz (1923)Masha Kirasirova15. Soviet Muslims at the Congress of the Muslim World in Mecca (1926)Norihiro Naganawa16. Arabic in the Soviet Caucasus: Nadhir al-Durgili's The Delight of Minds in the Biographies of Dagestani Scholars (1920s-30s)Vladimir Bobrovnikov17. From Syrian Communist to Soviet Orientalist: Taha Sawwaf in the Comintern Files (1935-53)Masha Kirasirova18. Wartime Schism in the Iraqi Communist Party: A Coded Letter to Moscow (1944)Elizabeth Bishop19. Armenian Immigration to the USSR from Arab Countries (1946-49)Ara Sanjian20. The Abandoned Comrades: Egyptian Communists' Pleas to the USSR (1953-54)Rami Ginat21. Revisiting Russia after Fifty Years: Mikhail Naimy's Beyond Moscow and Washington (1959)Maria Swanson22. From Nazareth to Moscow: Kulthum 'Awda Vasilieva's "Happy Life" in Russia (1927, 1937, 1965)Nicole Khayat and Maria Vologzhanina23. Statistics on Arab Students in the USSR (1959-1991)Constantin Katsakioris24. Should Dormitory Bathrooms Have Doors? Zakaria Turki's An Upper Egyptian Among the Russians (1967-72)Margaret Litvin25. A Communist Mourning Icon: Mahmoud Sabri, Iraqi Art Student in Moscow (1960)Suheyla Takesh26. Soviet Yerevan's Outreach to Armenians in Lebanon (1967-69)Ara Sanjian27. Lotus Magazine: Soviet-Funded Afro-Asian Literary Transnationalism (1969-70)Rossen Djagalov28. No Soviet Engineer to Walk in Front of an Egyptian One: Youssef Chahine's Two High Dam Films (1968 and 1970)Ala Younis29. Soviet Advisers in Egypt before, during, and after Their "Expulsion" (1972)Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez30. Ba'thists in Baku: Iraq-Syria Tensions Come to the USSR (1975-77)Etienne Forestier-Peyrat31. Two Soviet Responses to Frantz Fanon (1978-79)Philipp Casula32. Aeroflot Routes to Baghdad: Soviet-Iraqi Relations during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-81)Steven E. Harris33. Aleksandr Yakovlev's Memo about his Conversation with the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the Soviet Union (26 November 1990)Mark Kramer34. "The Intellectual is a Hybrid Creature": Khalil Al-Rez's The Russian Quarter (2019)Margaret LitvinContributorsSelected BibliographyIndex
