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A Guarded Courtship: Soviet Cultural Diplomacy in Iran from the Late 1940s to the 1960s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Nodar Mossaki  and
Lana Ravandi-Fadai
Nodar Mossaki
Affiliation:
Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow)
Lana Ravandi-Fadai
Affiliation:
Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow)
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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.

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Iranian Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , May 2018 , pp. 427 - 454
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Association For Iranian Studies, Inc

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Footnotes

The authors would like to express special thanks to Kevin McNeer for his critical comments and translation.

This article was originally published with errors. This version has been corrected. Please see Corrigendum (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00210862.2018.1480335).

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A correction has been issued for this article:

Corrigendum