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Abstract
By bringing to bear previously unstudied Soviet archival documents and conducting firsthand interviews with former diplomats, the article traces the ways in which the Soviet Union sought out opportunities to reinvigorate deteriorated Soviet‒Iranian ties through cultural organizations and events in Iran during the decades following World War II. A variety of Soviet cultural representatives—from wrestlers to classical musicians to scholars of Iranian literature—were marshaled for this effort, which bore unexpected fruit considering the modest expectations of the Soviet leadership, ideological differences between the two countries, and increasingly dominant US cultural projection. The connections between cultural ties and state goals, Iranian perceptions of Russia, and the Soviet/Russian sympathies of some members of the shah’s government are among sub-themes examined.
Notes
1 Ivanov, Ocherki istorii Irana, 407‒46; Orlov, Vneshnyaya politika Irana; Blake, The U.S.‒Soviet Confrontation in Iran.
2 Komissarov, Sadek Hedayat: zhizn’ i tvorchestvo, 147. In 1938, Majid Āhi was removed as minister of transportation and jailed for a time as a suspected Russophile. “ĀHI, MAJID,” Encyclopaedia Iranica. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ahi-majid-1
3 McFarland, “The Crisis in Iran,” 158.
4 Barghoorn, The Soviet Cultural Offensive, 1‒2.
5 Department of State Transcript, “Working Group on Special Materials for Arab and Other Moslem Countries” [Attached to Cover Memorandum Dated April 2, 1952; Includes Attachment], April 1, 1952, 1; National Archives. Record Group 59. Records of the Department of State. Decimal Files, 1950‒1954. Accessed on February 12, 2018. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB78/propaganda%20058.pdf
6 Often referred to by its Russian acronym IOKS (Iranskoe obschestvo kul’turnoi svyazi s Sovetskim Soyuzom).
7 State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), F. R-9518, op. 1, d. 502, 4; Avdeev, Dom na Vesal-е Shirazi, 53; Interview with Grant Voskanyan by the authors, October 2016.
8 Gheissari, Iranian Intellectuals, 71–3.
9 Pickett, “Soviet Civilization through a Persian Lens,” 816‒17; from the 1950s onward, Soviet orientalists repeatedly studied the works of Sādegh Hedāyat (1903–51), whose views were in many ways compatible with Soviet ideology. See, for example: Keshelava, Khudozhestvennaya proza Sadeka Khedayata. The major contribution to the study of Hedāyat’s prose at the time came from the renowned Russian scholar of Iran and fellow at the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies, Daniil Komissarov, who was a personal friend of Hedāyat’s: Komissarov, Sadek Khedayat: zhizn’ i tvorchestvo; Komissarov, Sadek Khedayat: zhizn' posle smerti; “Obituary of Daniil Samuilovich Komissarov: ‘In Memoriam,’” Vostok (Oriens), no. 5 (2008), 218.
10 On the propaganda and espionage work of VOKS regarding Germany, see Nevezhin, “Sovetskaya politika i kulturniye svyazi s Germaniyey”; on the activities of VOKS in Iran during and after World War II see Pickett, “Soviet Civilization through a Persian Lens.”
11 Different sources provide different founding dates for the Iran‒America Society, ranging rather widely from the 1930s to the early 1950s. The Society began publishing its periodical in 1946 according to Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, 3. The University of Virginia library has issues from 1947 to 1948.
12 Interview with Gennady Avdeev by the authors, December 2017.
13 Interview with Voskanyan by the authors, December 2017.
14 GARF, F. R-9518, op. 1, d. 502, 4‒9.
15 Avdeev, “Dom na Vesal-е Shirazi,” 53.
16 Payām-e no, Tehran, 2, no. 7, hordād o tir, 1320/1941 [?].
17 Interview with Avdeev by the authors, December 2017.
18 Interview with Voskanyan by the authors, October 2016.
19 Pickett, “Soviet Civilization through a Persian Lens,” 808.
20 Chaliand, A People Without a Country, 125.
21 Ansari, Modern Iran Since 1921, 93.
22 Gheissari, Iranian Intellectuals, 72–3.
23 National Archives, Document 96: Dispatch from US Embassy in Iran to the Department of State, May 29, 1953, 1‒3.
24 Alvandi, “Flirting with Neutrality.”
25 Interview with Gennady Avdeev by the authors, December 2017.
26 Pickett, “Soviet Civilization through a Persian Lens,” 808.
27 The Russian word used here, krysha, meaning literally “roof,” is also used for individuals or organizations that provide unofficial protection against government organs or criminal groups.
28 The Fourth Head Directorate of the Ministry of Health of the USSR served top party members and offered the best medical care in the USSR.
29 Interview with Avdeev by the authors, November 2016. Jahānbāni had a sober sense of the difficulties posed by the two countries’ complex history. While many Soviet‒Iranian interactions recorded in archives and periodicals have a stilted and overly official ring, the scholar Jahāngir Dorri has preserved a frank exchange involving Jahānbāni in Latvia: “In Riga, the delegation [led by Jahānbāni as head of the Cultural Society] was received by the Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of Latvia, whose surname I have forgotten. At the banquet in honor of the guests, his speech was more or less the following: Iran and the Soviet Union are neighbors. Throughout all of history there has always been friendship and mutual understanding between our two countries. And in all this time, between our two countries there have been neither wars nor conflicts. In response, the head of the Iranian delegation said, ‘Between Russia and Persia over the course of many centuries there have been almost continuous wars and countless conflicts. I cannot remember one decade when Persia did not attack Russia and plunder her cities and villages, or Russia did not devastate Iranian cities and make away with their treasures … Let us hope that now, thanks to the wise policies of our countries’ leaders, relations between Iran and the Soviet Union will develop along neighborly and even friendly lines … As far as relations between Iran and Latvia, well, as a matter of fact, between our two countries there have been neither wars nor conflicts. So I propose a toast to the friendship of our two countries.’” Dorri, Moi put’ v iranistiku, 72‒3.
30 GARF. F. R-9518, op. 1, d. 502, 2, 3.
31 Pravda, September 2, 1952, 4.
32 Interview with Voskanyan by the authors, October 2016.
33 Kalinovsky, “The Soviet Union and Mosaddeq,” 404; Mahdiyān, Istoriya mezhgosudarstvennykh otnoshenii Irana i Rossii, 74.
34 Interview with L. Bruce Laingen, who served as a US foreign service officer in Iran in 1953‒55. The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project at the Library of Congress, 1992. https://cdn.loc.gov/service/mss/mfdip/2004/2004lai01/2004lai01.pdf
35 GARF. F. R-9518, op. 1, d. 502, 1‒224: Correspondence between the Soviet embassy in Iran, ministries and other Soviet organs and organizations responsible for cultural ties with Iran, June 27, 1957‒December 25, 1964; GARF. F. R-9518, op. 1, d. 1081, 1‒142: Transcripts of conversations with social and political figures about Iran and correspondence with the Soviet embassy in Iran and Soviet central organs responsible for cultural cooperation, January 3‒December 18, 1967.
36 Izvestiya, May 24, 1953, 3.
37 The agreement was ratified in 1954: Pravda, April 26, 1955, 1; “easing political tensions”: Izvestiya, March 1, 1957, 3.
38 Barghoorn, The Soviet Cultural Offensive, 180.
39 Kirasirova, “‘Sons of Muslims’ in Moscow,” 116‒17, 121.
40 Abdul-Razak, “But What Would They Think Of Us?,” 822.
41 Ibid., 834, note 84; PRO, BW49/3, PER25/1; Shakespeare scholar and British Council representative in many countries Derek Traversi was posted to Iran in 1955‒59. Obituary online at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/sep/15/guardianobituaries.books
42 Borjiān, “The Rise and Fall,” 546‒7; “British Council,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, IV/5, 455‒6. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/british-council-activities-in-iran-1942-79; Torfeh and Sreberny, “BBC Persian Service”; Sreberny and Torfeh, Persian Service.
43 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, 14, 19.
44 Izvestiya, September 17, 1950, 4.
45 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, 21‒2.
46 “If the Department is considering the production of films of more obvious propaganda type … if this film were done in the style of Disney using his technique with the familiar Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Pluto, and so forth, the reception would be further enhanced. The Embassy wonders if, in light of the increasing tempo of the cold war, Mr. Disney as a patriotic duty could be interested in preparing such a film that could be used to defend democracy where the communist system is being touted loudly. The Iranian people like clever satire and the Disney style is known and liked here”: United States Embassy in Tehran to the Department of State, “MOTION PICTURES—The Film TWO CITIES,” January 18, 1950, 1. National Archives. Record Group 59. Records of the Department of State. Decimal Files, 1950‒54. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB78/propaganda%20004.pdf; the power of Mickey was so great that the British also wanted to use him: Abdul-Razak, “But What Would They Think Of Us?,” 821.
47 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, 20.
48 Interview with Gennady Avdeev by the authors, December 2017.
49 Report “On Fulfilling the Plans for Cultural Cooperation with Foreign Countries in the Sphere of Artistic Exchanges Through GosConcert” prepared in January of 1963 by the State Committee on Cultural Ties with Foreign Countries under the Council of Ministers of the USSR and sent to the Minister of Culture of the USSR, Yekaterina Furtseva,” GARF, F. R-9518, op. 1, d. 22, 85.
50 Barghoorn, The Soviet Cultural Offensive, 207.
51 National Archives, Document 96: Dispatch from US Embassy in Iran to the Department of State, May 29, 1953, 4.
52 A title of great distinction.
53 Also known as Pogos Lisitsian.
54 Pravda, January 10, 1957, 4.
55 The younger sister of Emil’ Gilel's.
56 GARF. F. R-9518, оp. 1, d. 502, 11‒12. Later, official complaints were made about the failure to adequately publicize Soviet performances. See the report “On Fulfilling the Plans for Cultural Cooperation … ”, GARF, F. R-9518, оp. 1, d. 22, 90.
57 GARF. F. R-9518, оp. 1, d. 502, 11‒12.
58 Ibid., 12‒13; Kogan’s son described the gift of gold watches and other details of the meeting in a conversation with the authors in October 2016.
59 GARF. F. R-9518, оp. 1, d. 502, 13.
60 Ibid., 12.
61 It is an indication of Kogan’s enduring status that in 2014 in honor of his ninetieth birthday, a bust of him was placed in the foyer of the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. (Zalyubovin, Igor, “Konservatoriya uvekovechila pamyat’ vidayushegosya skripacha Leonida Kogana” [The conservatory honors the memory of the outstanding violinist Leonid Kogan], Moskva Vechernyaya, December 12, 2014, 3.)
62 GARF. F. R-9518, оp. 1, d. 502, 11.
63 Tomoff, Virtuosi Abroad, 12. Chapter 3 covers the conception of the Tchaikovsky Competition in detail.
64 Tomoff, Virtuosi Abroad, 92.
65 Ibid., 91‒2.
66 He migrated to the United States in the 1970s.
67 GARF. F. R-9518, оp. 1, d. 502, 108.
68 Ibid., 108.
69 Ibid., 13.
70 Ibid., 195.
71 Ibid., 196.
72 Barghoorn, The Soviet Cultural Offensive, 13.
73 Feyzulayev, “Uchastiye Sovetskogo Azerbaydzhana,” 177. The Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan played an especially important role in the cultural politics of the USSR in Iran. See Gasymly, Azerbaydzhan v mezhdunarodnykh kul’turnykh svyazyakh; Gasanly, SSSR‒Iran.
74 Interview with Voskanyan, October 2016.
75 Ibid. Behbudov had toured successfully in other eastern countries before coming to Iran, in particular India, where he performed songs in Urdu to audiences’ delight (Barghoorn, The Soviet Cultural Offensive, 207).
76 GARF. F. R-9518, оp. 1, d. 502, 108.
77 Ibid., 108.
78 Ibid., 159.
79 On Soviet and Russian Iranian studies, see Atkin, “Soviet and Russian Scholarship on Iran”; Kulagina, Iranistika v Rossii i iranisty.
80 The Institute of Eastern Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences was founded in 2007 on the basis of the St. Petersburg branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which from 1956 to 1991 had been the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
81 Saʿid Nafisi, who from 1936 taught as a professor at the University of Tehran, was a well-known Iranian writer and author of works on philology and literary criticism who also published in the journal Narody Azii i Afriki [The peoples of Asia and Africa] (now named Vostok (Oriens). Afro-Aziatskiye obshestva: istoriya i sovremennost') (Nafisi, “Khafiz i Jahan Malik Khatun”). Beginning in the 1930s, he actively promoted Russian literature in Iran, became an organizer and member of the board of directors of the Cultural Society, and oversaw the Cultural Society journal payām-е no (Klyashtorina, “Rossiya–Iran,” 43). In the Soviet Union, he was considered a “progressive writer.” As a foreign guest, he participated in the Second All-Union Congress of Writers in December of 1954. In 1960, a Russian translation appeared of his novella Nimeh rāh-e behesht: Na polputi v ray (Halfway to Paradise). Nafisi’s work also became a popular subject of Soviet research and literary criticism (Giunashvili, Khudozhestvennaya proza Saida Nafisi; Giunashvili, Poeziya Saida Nafisi; Giunashvili, Tvorcheskii put' Saida Nafisi; Giunashvili, “Iranskiy demokrat-gumanist Said Nafisi”). For more detailed Soviet and Russian views of the writer, see Komissarov, “Nafisi”; Dorri, “Zapiski vostokoveda.”
82 GARF. F. R-9518, оp. 1, d. 502, 183.
83 Ibid., 183‒4.
84 Gvosdev, “Publishing and Book Distribution.” On Soviet policy toward Iraq, see Mossaki, “Mezhbibliotechnoye sotrudnichestvo i knigoobmen.”
85 Whitby, “Soviet Libraries Today.”
86 In 1958, the Cultural Society was reformed as the Union of Soviet Friendship Associations. For more detail about the stages of development of this organization that “actively influenced the strengthening of friendship and cooperation” between the socialist republics and other countries, see Pankov and Saakov, “Mezhdunarodnoye dvizheniye”; Saakov, “Dvizheniye obshestvennosti.”
87 GARF. F. R-9518, оp. 1, d. 502, 184.
88 Ibid., 185.
89 Arabadzhyan, Iran. Ocherki noveishei istorii, 409‒13; Blake, The US–Soviet Confrontation in Iran; Alvandi, “The Shah’s Détente with Khrushchev.”
90 Gasymly, Azerbaydzhan v mezhdunarodnykh kul’turnyh svyazyakh, 226.
91 Ivanova, “Solntse selo nizhe eli”; Afanasyev, “Stanovleniye sovetskogo vostokovedeniya,” 139; Volkov, “Individuals, Institutions and Discourses.”
92 Aliyev, Rustam Musa Ogly (1929‒94) graduated in 1951 with honors from Leningrad State University, defending his doctoral dissertation as a philologist at the same university in 1954 with “A Critical Text of Saʿdi’s Gulistān.” From 1955 to 1971, he worked in the department of Eastern Textology at the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow, eventually heading the department. From 1971, he was director of the Arabic Manuscripts Department of the Azerbaijani Academy of Sciences, and from 1980, director of the Nizāmi Studies Department at the Nizāmi Institute of Literature.
93 GARF. F. R-9518, оp. 1, d. 502, 212.
94 Ibid., 205.
95 Rudaki, Stikhi (1964); Ferdowsi, Shah-name, vol. I‒II (1960, 1962). The subsequent volumes of the Shah-name were published after Aliyev left for Iran, thus bibliographical information on them is not included here. Aliyev compiled a report on his trip that provided information for this paper. Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat, vol. 1‒2 (1959); Omar Khayyam, Traktaty (1961); Saʿdi, Gulistan (1959); Amir Khosrow Dehlavi, Shirin i Khusrou (1961).
96 GARF. F. R-9518, оp. 1, d. 502, 207.
97 Ibid., 208.
98 Ibid., 209.
99 Ibid., 210.
100 Ibid., 222.
101 Gosudarstvennyi komitet po kul’turnym svyazyam s zarubyezhnymi stranami (GKKC)
102 GARF. F. R-9518, оp. 1, d. 502, 210‒11.
103 Ibid., 211.
104 GARF, F. R-9518, оp. 1, d. 22, 90.
105 GARF. F. R-9518, оp. 1, d. 502, 219.
106 Ibid., 213.
107 Ibid., 213.
108 Ibid., 214, 219.
109 Ibid., 221.
110 Ibid., 219, 221.
111 Ibid., 221.
112 An account of the trip of the Soviet delegation to the Worldwide Congress of Scholars of Iran was published in the journal Narody Azii i Afriki (Zand, “Pervyi Vsemirnyi kongress iranistov v Tegerane”). This article will address only those aspects of the Soviet delegation’s participation not covered in that account.
113 GARF. F. R-9518. op. 1. d. 1081, 4, 6.
114 The largest number of congress participants came from the US—thirteen (including two Americans permanently living and working in Iran), twelve from West Germany, eleven from the United Kingdom, eleven from the USSR, seven from Turkey and six each from France and India. Representatives of several other socialist countries were also present at the congress.
115 GARF. F. R-9518. op. 1. d. 1081, 6.
116 Ibid., 6.
117 Kemper, “Propaganda for the East,” 173.
118 GARF. F. R-9518. op. 1. d. 1081, 10.
119 Ibid., 11.
120 Kemper, “Propaganda for the East,” 199.
121 GARF. F. R-9518. op. 1. d. 1081, 9.
122 Ibid., 5, 11.
123 Ibid., 11‒12.
124 GARF. F. R-9518, оp. 1, d. 1081, 15‒18.
125 Rubinchik, “V filologicheskikh uchrezhdeniyakh Irana,” 223.
126 Chehābi, “A Political History of Football in Iran.”
127 Interview with Voskanyan by the authors, December 2017.
128 GARF, F. R-9518, оp. 1, d. 502, 100‒101.
129 Pravda, November 22, 1962, 8; Pravda, November 27, 1962, 4.
130 Zagrebel'ny, “Stanovleniye sovremennogo sporta v Irane.”
131 ʿAbbāsi, History of Wrestling in Iran, 484, 493.
132 Tehran Times, January 8, 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20120626091618/http://tehrantimes.com/sports/94301-iranians-honor-wrestling-legend-gholam-reza-takhti-
133 Ibid. But this version of Takhti’s loss is well known. Troinikov, “Titany bor’by XX-go Veka.”
134 Troinikov, “Titany bor’by XX-go Veka.”
135 Ibid.; Interview with Avdeev by the authors, December 2017.
137 Kalinovsky, “The Soviet Union and Mosaddeq,” 407‒8.
138 Barghoorn, “Soviet Cultural Effort,” 157, 158.
139 Interview with Phillip W. Pillsbury Jr., who served as the director of the Iran‒America Society in Iran in 1972‒74. The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project at the Library of Congress, 1994, 35. http://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Pillsbury,%20Phillip.toc.pdf
140 Interview with Avdeev by the authors, November 2016.
141 Ibid.
142 Mamedova, “Istoriya sovetsko-iranskikh otnoshenii,” 167.
143 Dorri, Moi put’ v iranistiku, 92.