Muriel Atkin

Soviet and Russian scholarship on Iran

Soviet scholarship on Iran is extensive and highly organized. Just in the year 1980, 119 articles and books pertaining to Iran were published in the Soviet Union. The publications dealt with such topics as history, literature, economics, and geology (and do not include journalistic coverage of current events). The scale of Soviet scholarship on Iran since World War H is so vast that it would be hopelessly cumbersome to try to review or even list all the books and articles. This essay will attempt to provide an overview of the history of Iranian scholarship in the Soviet Union and Imperial Russia, to describe how the study of Islamic Iran in the Soviet Union is organized and oriented, and to look at a few of the most interesting works of recent years.

Token Constitutionalism and Islamic Opposition in Tajikistan

Abstract Tajikistan is a predominantly Muslim country where the concept of having a constitution is not controversial, but the content of that constitution is. Roughly seventy years of Soviet rule over the territory that became independent Tajikistan at the end of 1991 introduced constitutions as a norm, although the rights the constitutions appeared to accord did not jibe with political reality. The years of Soviet rule also created an environment hostile to Islam, as a result of which some of Tajikistan’s inhabitants ceased to be believers, while many who continued to practice their faith knew little about it other than the rituals of everyday life. In the last years of the Soviet era and the two decades after the breakup of the USSR, Islam was caught up in the political as well as religious controversies that developed in Tajikistan during this upheaval. There was an upsurge of attention to Islam, in a religious sense for some, a cultural and nationalist sense for others, and as a bogeyman for yet others. The Islamic Rebirth Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), the only legal Islamic political party in post-Soviet Central Asia, along with the head of the religious establishment in the republic, the qadi, joined with secular groups advocating reforms that would promote political and economic change. The power struggle between neo-Soviet ruling elites and the opposition led to a civil war (1992-97) in which the neo-Soviets prevailed. Tajikistan’s post-Soviet constitution reflects the emphatic secularism of the neo-Soviets, despite the objections of the IRPT. The post-civil-war government has also enacted legislation reestablishing Soviet-style constraints on Islamic institutions and personnel and has used its power to thwart genuinely pluralistic politics. The IRPT as well as secular opposition parties have felt the effects of the rigged elections and harassment by the regime.

The Strange Death of Ibrahim Khalil Khan of Qarabagh

Ibrahim Khalil Khan, the octogenarian ruler of Qarabagh in the southern Caucasus, was shot by Russian soldiers on the night of June 14, 1806. In one sense, there is nothing mysterious about the khans death. Qarabaghi, Russian, and Iranian sources agree that he was killed for having sided with Iran against Russias attempt to take control of his khanate and all the lands between the High Caucasus and the Aras River.1 However, this explanation raises more important questions which have gone unanswered. For years Ibrahim Khalil had sided with Georgia and then Russia against Iran. What made him switch sides in time of war? Russia did not plan to supplant rule by khan in Qarabagh and did not kill every ruler it deposed. Why then did the Russians kill this khan? How was it possible for the execution of Russian policy to slip out of St. Petersburgs control?

Author–critic forum: the politics of peace building in Tajikistan

The ‘Author–Critic Forum’ format is a relatively recent addition to the journal. It consists of a standard review of a new book plus a number of shorter appraisals of it, and finally a response by the author to all these contributions. The choice of book is agreed upon by the editorship of the journal, the Editorial Board, and the International Advisory Board. Books are selected because they engage pressing and contested theoretical, empirical and/or methodological issues within the broad field of Central Asian studies. The purpose of the format is to provide a lively forum that will acquaint the readership of the journal with the range of arguments, debates and issues within a particular field. The book review editor invites rejoinders to the debate begun by this forum. Nick Megoran

Soviet Policies in the Middle East from World War Two to Gorbachev.

Acknowledgements Map Introduction 1. Soviet policy-making in the Middle East: from Stalin to Brezhnev 2. The immediate post-war period: Iran-Turkey-Palestine 3. The Soviet-Egyptian relationship 4. The Six-Day War, 1967 5. The inter-war period, 1967-1973 6. The Yom Kippur War, 1973 7. Settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict 8. The Palestinians and the PLO 9. The Lebanon War, 1982 10. The Soviet Union and Syria 11. The Soviet Union and Iraq 12. The Soviet Union and Iran 13. The Soviet attitude to Islam 14. Arab communism in the Middle East 15. Marxist South Yemen and the Arabian peninsula 16. The Soviet Union and Turkey 17. Gorbachevs Middle East policy Guide to further reading Bibliography Index.