Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T12:12:17.715Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rupture or Continuity? The Organizational Set-up of Russian and Soviet Oriental Studies before and after 1917

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Denis V. Volkov
Denis V. Volkov*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester, UK
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The article presents a systematic appraisal of the essential Russian- and English-language scholarship on Russian Oriental studies and particularly on Russia's Iranology. However, the main target of this article is to trace the discursive continuities and epistemological shifts which have existed in late imperial, Soviet and, partially, post-Soviet Russia's Oriental studies since the end of the nineteenth century. Drawing on the sources of the main Russian political, military and academic archives, the article offers an assessment of the question of rupture or continuity, which is based on a synthesis of the above-mentioned scholarship from an entirely new angle. Dealing with the seemingly overwhelming watershed of 1917, an analysis is provided that transcends the unhelpful continuity/change dichotomy, putting forward a new interpretation, which is informed by the Foucauldian conceptualization of the productive nature of the power/knowledge nexus.

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. 695 - 712
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

Agaev, Semen. Sovetskoe iranovedenie 20-kh godov [Soviet Iranian studies in the 1920s]. Moscow: Nauka, 1977.Google Scholar
Andreeva, Elena. Russia and Iran in the Great Game: Travelogues and Orientalism. New York: Routledge, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartol'd, Vasilii. “Istoriia izucheniia Vostoka v Evrope i Rossii.” In vol. 9 of Collected Works, 199–484. Moscow: Nauka, 1977.Google Scholar
Bartol'd, Vasilii. “Po povodu proekta S. F. Ol'denburga.” In vol. 9 of Collected Works, 492–5. Moscow: Nauka, 1977.Google Scholar
Bartol'd, Vasilii. “Vostok i russkaia nauka.” In vol. 9 of Collected Works, 534–45. Moscow: Nauka, 1977.Google Scholar
Baskhanov, Mikhail. Russkie voennye vostokovedy. Moscow: Vostochnaia literature RAN, 2005.Google Scholar
Baziiants, Ashot “Iz istorii Sovetskogo vostokovedeniia v 1917–1922 gg.” In Stanovlenie sovetskogo vostokovedeniia [The formation of Soviet Oriental studies], edited by Baziiants, Ashot. Moscow: Nauka, 1983.Google Scholar
Dunaeva, Elena. “Russo-Iranian Political Relations in the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century.” Iranian Studies 46, no. 3 (2013): 443–469. doi: 10.1080/00210862.2012.758503CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engelstein, Laura. “Combined Underdevelopment: Discipline and the Law in Imperial and Soviet Russia.” In Foucault and the Writing of History, edited by Goldstein, Jan. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences. London: Routledge, 1989.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. “Power.” In Power, edited by Faubion, James D., 113–40. New York: New Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. “Prison Talk.” In Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, edited by Gordon, C.. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1980.Google Scholar
Fragner, Bert G., and Matthee, Rudi, “Islamic-Iranian Studies and Studies concerning Iran in the Islamic Period in German-Speaking Countries: Federal Republic of Germany, German Democratic Republic, Austria, and Switzerland.” Iranian Studies 20, no. 2/4 (1987): 53–98. doi: 10.1080/00210868708701697CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Genis, Vladimir. Nevernye slugi rezhima: Pervye sovetskie nevozvrashetsy, 1920–1933 [The disloyal servants of the regime. The first Soviet defectors, 1920–1933]. Moscow: Avtorskoe izdanie, 2009.Google Scholar
Genis, Vladimir. Krasnaia Persiia. Bol'sheviki v Giliane. 1920–1921 [Red Persia. The Bolsheviks in Gilan. 1920–1921]. Moscow: MNPI, 2000.Google Scholar
Genis, Vladimir. Vitse-Konsul Vvedenskii. Sluzhba v Persii i Bukharskom khanstve. 1906–1920 [Vice-Consul Vvedensky. Service in Persia and the Bukhara Khanate. 1906–1920]. Moscow: Sotsial'no-politicheskaia MYSL’, 2003.Google Scholar
Geraci, Robert. Window on the East: National and Imperial Identities in Late Tsarist Russia. New York: Cornell University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Hirsch, Francine. Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union. New York: Cornell University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Kemper, Michael. “Integrating Soviet Oriental Studies.” In The Heritage of Soviet Oriental Studies, edited by Kemper, Michael and Conermann, Stephan, 1–26. London: Routledge, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khalid, Adeeb. “Russian History and the Debate over Orientalism.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 1, no. 4 (Fall 2000): 691–699. doi: 10.1353/kri.2008.0032CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knight, Nathaniel. “Grigor'ev in Orenburg, 1851–1862: Russian Orientalism in the Service of Empire?” Slavic Review 59, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 74–100. doi: 10.2307/2696905CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knight, Nathaniel. “On Russian Orientalism: A Response to Adeeb Khalid.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 1, no. 4 (Fall 2000): 701–715. doi: 10.1353/kri.2008.0053CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kononov, Andrei. Vostokovedenie v Leningradskom Universitete [Oriental studies at Leningrad University]. Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo Leningradskogo Universiteta, 1960.Google Scholar
Kotkin, Stephen. Magnetic Mountain. Stalinism as a Civilization. London: University of California Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Krementsov, Nikolai. Stalinist Science. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Kulagina, Liudmila, ed. Iranistika v Rossii i iranisty [Iranology and Iranists in Russia]. Moscow: Kollektiv avtorov, 2001.Google Scholar
Kulagina, Liudmila, and Dunaeva, Elena. Granitsa Rossii s Iranom. Istoriia formirovaniia [The history of Russia's border with Iran]. Moscow: Institut vostokovedeniia, 1998.Google Scholar
Kuznetsova, Nina, and Kulagina, Liudmila, eds. Iz istorii sovetskogo vostokovedeniia. 1917–1967 [On the history of Soviet Oriental studies, 1917–1967]. Moscow: Nauka, 1970.Google Scholar
Likhachev, Dmitry. “On the Russian Intelligentsia.” Russian Social Science Review 36, no. 2 (March 1995): 83–95. doi: 10.2753/RSS1061-1428360283CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lunin, B. V. “Vostokovedenie v respublikakh Srednei Azii posle Velikoi Oktiabr'skoi Sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii.” In Stanovlenie sovetskogo vostokovedeniia, edited by Baziiants, Ashot, 85–130. Moscow: Nauka, 1983.Google Scholar
Mamedova, Nina, ed. Iran i vtoraiia mirovaia voina [Iran and the Second World War]. Moscow: Institut vostokovedeniia RAN, 2011.Google Scholar
Mamedova, Nina, and Sanaie, Mehdi, eds. Iran: Islam i vlast’ [Iran: Islam and power]. Moscow: Kul'turnoe predstavitel'stvo pri posol'stve IRI v RF, 2001.Google Scholar
Marshall, Alex. The Russian General Staff and Asia, 1800–1917. London: Routledge, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, Sara. Michel Foucault. London: Routledge, 2005.Google Scholar
Persits, Moisei. Zastenchivaia interventsiia. O sovetskom vtorzhenii v Iran i Bukharu v 1920–1921 [The timid intervention. The Soviet invasion of Iran and Bukhara in 1920–1921]. Moscow: Muravei-Gaid, 1996.Google Scholar
Rodionov, Mikhail. “Profiles under Pressure. Orientalists in Petrograd/Leningrad, 1918–1956.” In The Heritage of Soviet Oriental Studies, edited by Kemper, Michael and Conermann, Stephan, 47–57. London: Routledge, 2011.Google Scholar
Schimmelpenninck, David van der Oye. “The Imperial Roots of Soviet Orientology.” In The Heritage of Soviet Oriental Studies, edited Kemper, Michael, 29–46. London: Routledge, 2011.Google Scholar
Schimmelpenninck, David van der Oye. “Reforming Military Intelligence.” In Reforming the Tsar's Army: Military Innovation in Imperial Russia from Peter the Great to the Revolution, edited by Schimmelpenninck, David van der Oye and Menning, Bruce W., 133–50. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2004.Google Scholar
Schimmelpenninck, David van der Oye. Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration. London: Yale University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Simbirtsev, Igor. Spetssluzhby pervykh let SSSR, 1923–1939. Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2008.Google Scholar
Simons, Jon. Foucault and the Political. London: Routledge, 1995.Google Scholar
Todorova, Maria. “Does Russian Orientalism Have a Russian Soul? A Contribution to the Debate between Nathaniel Knight and Adeeb Khalid.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 1, no. 4 (Fall 2000): 717–727. doi: 10.1353/kri.2008.0087CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tolz, Vera. Russia's Own Orient: The Politics of Identity and Oriental Studies in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Periods. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vashurina, Z. P., and Shishkanov, A. I., “Rodoslovmaia voennykh perevodchikov.” Voennoe Obozrenie Nezavisimoi Gazety, May 19, 2000. Accessed November 15, 2011. http://nvo.ng.ru/notes/2000-05-19/8_interpreters.htmlGoogle Scholar
Vigasin, A. A., and Khokhlov, A. N., eds. Istoriia otechestvennogo vostokovedeniia s serediny XIX veka do 1917 goda. Moscow: Institut vostokovedeniia RAN, 1997.Google Scholar
Volkov, Denis V. “Individuals, Institutions and Discourses: Knowledge and Power in Russia's Iranian Studies of the Late Imperial, Soviet and Post-Soviet Periods.” Middle East—Topics and Arguments 4 (2015): 61–79.Google Scholar
Volkov, Denis V. “The Iranian Electric Power Industry after the Islamic Revolution: Nuclear Developments and Current Conditions.” New Middle Eastern Studies 2 (2012): 1–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Volkov, Denis V. “Persian Studies and the Military in Late Imperial Russia (1863–1917): State Power in the Service of Knowledge?” Iranian Studies 47/6 (2014): 915–932. doi: 10.1080/00210862.2013.836330CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Volkov, Denis V. “Struggling through the Politics of History: Researching Russia's Foreign Policy toward Persia in Russian and Georgian Archives.” BIPS Newsletter (May 2013).Google Scholar
Vucinich, Wayne S. “The Structure of Soviet Orientology: Fifty Years of Change and Accomplishment.” In Russia and Asia. Essays on the Influence of Russia on the Asian Peoples, edited by Vucinich, Wayne S., 52–134. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1972.Google Scholar
Werth, Paul. “New Discoveries: Islam and Its Containment.” Chap. 7. in At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission, Governance, and Confessional Politics in Russia's Volga-Kama Region, 1827–1905. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Zarkeshev, Father Superior Aleksandr. Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov’ v Persii-Irane (1597–2001) [The Russian Orthodox Church in Persia-Iran (1597–2001)]. St. Petersburg: Satis, 2002.Google Scholar