NOTES PERTAINING TO PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC.
Text of Note
Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-321-16159-5
DISSERTATION (THESIS) NOTE
Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree
Ph.D.
Discipline of degree
Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies
Body granting the degree
New York University
Text preceding or following the note
2014
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
This dissertation reconstructs interwar and cold war-era interactions between the Soviet Union and the Middle East, highlighting the non-Russian and non-European dimensions of Soviet political imagination and exchange. It situates Soviet history in a broader Eurasian context by examining how the category Vostok ('the East') structured the organization and operation of key Soviet bureaucracies responsible for transnational exchanges, especially ones focusing on the Arab world. Throughout the major shifts in Soviet domestic and international contexts from the early 1920s to the 'cold war,' these institutions tailored images and experiences of Sovietness for audiences in the 'foreign East' (Middle East, Africa, and Asia). In so doing, the Comintern, the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, the Soviet Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee, and other Afro-Asian organizations helped create new Soviet foundational narratives by re-writing and re-enacting early histories of republics of the Soviet East (Central Asia and Caucasus) in ways that legitimized the USSR as an anti-imperial and anti-colonial power.
TOPICAL NAME USED AS SUBJECT
Middle Eastern history; History; Russian history
UNCONTROLLED SUBJECT TERMS
Subject Term
Social sciences;Anti-imperialism;Central asia;Internationalism;Middle east;Orientalism;Soviet