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The Rise of Red Orientalism and the Fall of the Red Orientalists
 
PIIS086919080007731-1-1
DOI10.31857/S086919080007731-1
Publication type Article
Status Published
Authors
Touraj Atabaki 
Occupation: Senior Researcher
Affiliation: International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam
Address: Russian Federation,
Lana M. Ravandi-Fadai
Occupation: Senior Researcher; Associate Professor
Affiliation:
Institute of Oriental Studies
Russian State University for the Humanities
Address: Moscow, Russia
Journal nameVostok. Afro-Aziatskie obshchestva: istoriia i sovremennost
EditionIssue 6
Pages189-206
Abstract

Following the Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks refashioned the study of the Orient according to the Marxist teleological paradigm of social and political development. A new school engaged in studying the socio-political setting of the East took shape as an alternative to classical, manuscript- and archeology-based Orientalism. This Red Orientalism was infused with idealism, often tendentious, and unabashedly tied to the Soviet government and particularly the Comintern, but by founding universities and research institutions such as the Moscow (Narimanov) Institute of Oriental Studies, Institute of “Red Professorship,” and Communist University of Toilers of the East (KUTV) with curriculums that included social sciences as well as modern languages, this new school of thought broke new ground by expanding the study of the East beyond the frontiers of established academic traditions and institutions. Red Orientalism, like the communist project of which it was a part, viewed itself as an agent of facilitated self-empowerment and encouraged Eastern individuals to participate, offering free education in the Soviet Union. The present article examines the birth and initial phase (up until the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s) of this radically different Soviet form of scholarship, particularly through the lives and careers of two Iranian Comintern activists, Avetis Sultanzadeh and Abulqasim Zarreh, who in their work at KUTV and the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow contributed to the crafting of a new understanding of Iran’s past and present that influenced Soviet policy toward Iran.

KeywordsOrientalism, Oriental Studies, Comintern, Iran, Iranian Communist Party, Sultanzade, KUTV
Received11.12.2019
Publication date16.12.2019
Number of characters60555
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Table of contents

The Bolsheviks Re-engage and Re-envision the East
A New Breed of Scholars: Oriental Orientalists
Sultanzadeh
Zarreh
* * *
* * *
1 All schools of thought are the product of their time and place, but Red Orientalism is even more so, being almost indistinguishable from the political and ideological environment in which in it appeared. Edward Said’s description of Western Orientalism as “a discourse that is by no means in direct, corresponding relationship with political power in the raw, but rather is produced and exists in an uneven exchange with various kinds of power” [Said, 1994, p. 12.] has little to do with Red Orientalism, which was openly in a “corresponding relationship with political power in the raw.” If the political agenda shared with that power was at times disfiguring, it also generated innovations and correctives to traditional Orientalism.
2 The Soviet Union came into being at the end of the final crest of the Colonial Epoch, and much of the Bolsheviks’ programme was a reaction to colonialism, both Western and Russian. The vast territories of the Russian Empire comprised a challenging ethnic and religious quilt ripe for social re-invention. In a series of essays in 1913–1914, [Ленин, 1973(1–3)] Lenin set out a vision of absolute equality for ethnic and cultural groups that extended far beyond non-discriminatory policies and the right to education and legal dealings in minority languages: all ethnicities and peoples, he argued, had the right not only to autonomous rule within a federated state but to secede from the state. These principles were reiterated in one of the first documents issued by the new Soviet authorities just days after the October Revolution: “The Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia,” [Декларация прав народов России, 1957, с. 19–20] bearing the signatures of Lenin and Stalin, and later enshrined in the Soviet constitution.
3

The Bolsheviks Re-engage and Re-envision the East
4 Internal contradictions and the exigencies of governance and war – the protracted Russian Civil War and later the approach of World War Two – would temper and in some cases blunt these ideals, which showed cracks early on. In September of 1920, Grigori Zinoviev was addressing the Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku in his capacity as Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. As he called for the right of peoples to self-determination and for a jihad in West and East Asia against British imperialism, the real contradictions of revolution and self-determination were playing out half a continent away in Central Asia, where the Red Army, in concert with the “Young Bukharian” modernising revolutionaries, was opening the breach in the fortress city of Bukhara, ejecting its absolute ruler, Emir Said Mir Mohammed Alim Khan, who fled “headlong across the Oxus to Afghanistan, dropping favourite dancing boy after favourite dancing boy in his flight” [Maclean, 1991, p. 149], but also bringing to an end the emirate’s short-lived independence and Tsarist-era semi-protectorate status. The storming of the city caused great damage, but the emir had barely been put to flight when Orientalist Vasily Bartol’d set off on an expedition to Bukhara to review its architectural monuments and implement measures for their preservation [Становление советского востоковедения, 1983, p. 109–110]. Bukhara-ye sharif (Noble Bukhara) was already being put under glass.
5 If in the early days of the revolution, the Bolsheviks’ main mission was to cement their precipitate victory by exporting the revolution beyond the urban centres of St. Petersburg and Moscow and throughout the remainder of Russia and the former empire, which required first and foremost agitators and soldiers; soon the goal was to sustain governance and rebuild. The need for agitators gave way to the need for regional experts. There were also the more mundane matters of delineating administrative boundaries, building diplomatic infrastructure, and establishing trade, cultural and other ties. To better understand the Soviet East as well as neighbouring Eastern countries, the Bolsheviks launched new training institutes and “refitted” Orientalist academic institutions held over from the Tsarist regime.
6 Moscow quickly usurped the former capital St. Petersburg’s role as the center for Oriental studies in the country. The Comintern, the international body governing non-Soviet Communist parties, was located in the new capital and additionally functioned as an Orientalist think tank. The idea of founding an Oriental studies institute in Moscow was expressed in a letter by the writer Maxim Gorky (1868–1936) to Lenin, [Новый Восток, 1922, с. 458] who responded by forwarding the letter, with his own signed resolution attached, to the People’s Commissariat of Ethnic Policy, calling on them to begin work on opening such an institute. Thus a Central Institute for Living Eastern Languages was created in Moscow on the foundation of pre-existing Orientalist institutions in Leningrad. When it quickly became clear that knowledge of Eastern languages would not be enough, the institute altered its curriculum to include a range of special disciplines: law, pedagogy and economics. In 1921, a decision was made “on the merging of all Moscow Orientalist educational institutions into one institute for higher education” which would be the Narimanov Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies1. Moscow’s century-old Lazarev Institute (founded in 1815 by a wealthy Armenian family descended from immigrants from outside of Isfahan, Iran – their original surname was Lazaryan) and the newly formed Central Institute for Living Eastern Languages merged to become the influential Moscow Institute for Oriental Studies2. 1. Московский Институт Востоковедения (МИВ), sometimes also known as Институт Востоковедения имени Н. Н. Нариманова.

2. 1921 also saw the founding of the All Russian Scholarly Association of Orientalists (Всероссийская научная ассоциация востоковедения (ВНАВ)), and The Institute of the Red Professoriate (Институт красной профессуры), where Iranian Orientalists Sultanzadeh, Zarre and Hesabi would teach. On February 11 of that year, the Council of People’s Commissars of the Russian Socialist Republic issued a directive “On the founding of Institutes for preparing a Red Professoriate: 1. To found in Moscow and Petrograd Institutes for preparing a red professoriate for teaching at higher schools of the Republic theoretical economics, historical materialism, the development of social forms, contemporary history and Soviet building 2. To gather a staff of 200 in the Moscow and 100 in the Petrograd Institute….” Because not enough staff could be found Petrograd, only the Moscow institute was actually opened. From 1924–1928, the institute produced 194 graduates. It was housed in the Strastnoi Convent in the center of Moscow, which also served as a dormitory for KUTV students and some remaining monks. The decree can be found in the periodical [Исторический архив, 1958, № 6, с. 86].

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