Iranian-Russian Encounters: Empires and Revolutions Since 1800

Description

Over the past two hundred years, encounters between Iran and Russia have been both rich and complex. This book explores the myriad dimensions of the Iranian-Russian encounter during a dramatic period which saw both Iran and Russia subject to revolutionary upheavals and transformed from multinational dynastic empires typical of the nineteenth century to modernizing, authoritarian states typical of the twentieth. The collection provides a fresh perspective on traditional preoccupations of international relations: wars and diplomacy, the hostility of opposing nationalisms, the Russian imperial menace in the nineteenth century and the Soviet threat in the twentieth. Going beyond the traditional, this book examines subaltern as well as elite relations and combines a cultural, social and intellectual dimension with the political and diplomatic. In doing so the book seeks to construct a new discourse which contests the notion of an implacable enmity between Iran and Russia Bringing together leading scholars in the field, this book demonstrates extensive use of family archives, Iranian, Russian and Caucasian travelogues and memoirs, and newly available archives in both Iran and the countries of the former Soviet Union. Providing essential background to current international tensions, this book will be of particular use to students and scholars with an interest in the Middle East and Russia. Cover Title Copyright Page Contents List of illustrations Notes on contributors Acknowledgements Note on transliteration Introduction: Iranian–Russian encounters: empires and revolutions since 1800 1 The impact of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union on Qajar and Pahlavi Iran: notes toward a revisionist historiography Part I: Romanovs and Qajars 2 From confidence to apprehension: early Iranian interaction with Russia 3 Khosrow Mirza's mission to St Petersburg in 1829 4 Russian land acquisition in Iran from 1828 to 1911 5 How the Russians hosted the entrepreneur who gave them abellyache: new revelations on Malek al-ŁTojjar and the Russian role in Sherkat-Łe 'Omumi and the Astara Road 6 Deserters, converts, Cossacks and revolutionaries: Russians in Iranian military service, 1800–1920 Part II: Revolutionary Russia and Iran; revolutionary Iran and Russia 7 The question of the Iranian Ijtima 'iyun-i Amiyun Party 8 Georgian sources on the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1905–1911: Sergo Gamdlishvili's memoirs of the Gilan resistance 9 Constitutionalists and Cossacks: the Constitutional movement and Russian intervention in Tabriz, 1907–1911 Part III: Pahlavi Iran and the Soviet Union 10 Duping the British and outwitting the Russians? Iran's foreign policy, the 'Bolshevik threat', and the genesis of the Soviet–Iranian Treaty of 1921 11 The Comintern, the Soviet Union and labour militancy in interwar Iran 12 Iranian–Russian cinematic encounters 13 The impact of Soviet contact on Iranian theatre: Abdolhosein Nushin and the Tudeh Party Part IV: The Islamic Republic and post-Soviet Russia 14 Iran, Russia and Tajikistan's civil war 15 Iran and Russia: a tactical entente Index