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Looking at Each Other: Iran and Russia in the 17th through Early 20th Centuries

This panel will explore some encounters that took place between Iranians and Russians in the 17th, 19th and early 20th centuries with the emphasis on mutual perceptions.  Since the time of Peter the Great (ruled 1689-1725), Russia had pursued expansionist designs against Iran, culminating in the 19th and early 20th centuries with two victorious wars, the annexation of land and aggressive interference into Iran’s internal affairs.  Mutual perceptions of Russians and Iranians reflect these changes in the balance of power – from Iranians looking down on the Russians in the early modern period, to the Russians developing a peculiar Russian version of “Orientalist” superiority towards their southern neighbor. 
 
Two papers on the panel will discuss Iranians’ perception of the Russians – in the 17th and the 19th centuries respectively.  If in the 17th century the Iranians could afford to treat a Russian mission in a humiliating way, by the 19th century they were reduced to debating Russia’s military superiority in the context of losing territories to them after two wars in the first half of the century.
 
One paper will examine manifestations of the Russian attitude of superiority that dominated their dealings with Iranians in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As active participants in the Great Game, the Russians were collecting information and searching for favors and concessions from the Iranian rulers.  At the same time, various Russian officials contributed to creating a stereotyped image of Iran among the Russian educated audience –  while others tried to “civilize” the Iranian rulers and to demonstrate to them Russia’s overwhelming imperial power.   
 
All three papers are based mainly on primary sources, with a heavy use of archival materials. 
(Panel convenor Elena Andreeva)

Chair
name: 
Jennifer Jenkins
Institutional Affiliation : 
University of Toronto
Academic Bio: 
Professor Jenkins works on nineteenth and twentieth century German cultural and political history, with an emphasis on nationalism, public culture and civil society. Her first book, Provincial Modernity: Local Culture and Liberal Politics in Fin-de-Siecle Hamburg (Cornell University Press, 2003) investigated the making of a modernist public culture in Imperial Germany. Her current projects include a study of architecture, urban planning and national culture in twentieth-century Germany and a project on Germany and the Middle East, particularly Iran, from 1890 to the present day. She holds a Canada Research Chair for Modern German History.
Discussant
Name: 
Firuz Kazemzadeh
Institutional Affiliation : 
Yale University
Academic Bio : 
Firuz Kazemzadeh was born and grew up in Moscow where his father served for many years on the staff of the Iranian Embassy. He received his college education in the United States, obtaining a B.A. (With Great Distinction, Phi Beta Kappa) and an M.A. from Stanford University in 1947 and a Ph.D. in Russian history from Harvard University in 1950. Having settled in the US, Kazemzadeh began his academic career as a research fellow in Slavic studies at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was subsequently a research fellow at the Russian Research Center and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard. In 1956 Kazemzadeh began teaching at Yale University where he was made Professor of History in 1968. He retired in 1992 and is now Professor Emeritus. He is the author of The Struggle for Transcaucasia, 1917-1921; Russia and Britain in Persia, 1864-1914: a Study in Imperialism, of chapters in several collective works such as the Cambridge History of Iran, and of numerous articles in various journals.
First Presenter
Name: 
Rudi Matthee
Institutional Affiliation : 
University of Delaware
Academic Bio : 
Rudolph (Rudi) Matthee is Unidel distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of Delaware. He teaches Middle Eastern history, with a research focus on early modern Iran and the Persian Gulf. He received his Ph.D. in 1991 from the University of California, Los Angeles. He wrote The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730 (Cambridge University Press, 1999); and The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500-1900 (Princeton University Press, 2005). He co-edited, with Beth Baron, Iran and Beyond: Essays in Honor of Nikki R. Keddie (2000); and co-edited, with Nikki Keddie, Iran and the Surrounding World, 1501-2001: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics (2002). He published numerous articles on aspects of Safavid and Qajar Iran. Professor Matthee is the President of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies, 2003-2005. Recipient of the 2006 Albert Hourani Book Prize, awarded by the Middle East Studies Association of North America, and winner of the Said Sirjani Book Prize, 2004-2005, awarded by the Association for Iranian Studies.
Concise Paper Title : 
Everyone an Orientalist: Russian-Iranian Relations in the Mid-Seventeenth Century
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
From the eighteenth century onward, Russians, the inhabitants of an expanding and increasingly assertive empire, came to look down on the inhabitants of the Muslim world as backward and primitive. What over time became a virulent Russian form of “Orientalism” was however preceded by equally denigrating views among Muslims, and in particular Iranians, vis-à-vis Russia and its people. Following long-standing stereotypes about people from northern, frosty and foggy climes, Iranians in the early modern period are known to have looked down on Russians as dim-witted, brutish and perpetually inebriated. My paper explores an aspect of these mutually negative perceptions by analyzing the diplomatic encounter between Romanov Russia and Safavid Iran in the mid-seventeenth century. Employing Persian, Russian, Dutch and French source material, it focuses on the hapless Russian mission that visited Isfahan in 1664 on behalf of Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich. The members of this mission were very poorly treated by the Iranian authorities, to the point where the delegates, allegedly drunk, were pulled off their horses and further humiliated by being forced to approach the shah on foot. The question I pose concerns the motives of Shah `Abbas II and his entourage in breaking with accepted diplomatic protocol. It seeks to complicate the notion that their violation of the code of hospitality was simply informed by existing stereotypes, and argues that Iranian suspicions about the real Russian motives beyond the alleged attempt to seek trade concessions played a role in their shabby reception of the Muscovite emissaries.
Second Presenter
Name: 
Maziar Behrooz
Institutional Affiliation : 
San Francisco State University
Academic Bio : 
Maziar Behrooz was born in 1959 in Tehran, Iran. He received his B.A degree in History-Government from Saint Mary College of California (1982), his M.A. in Modern History of Europe from San Francisco State University (1986), and his Ph.D. from University of California, Los Angeles. Behrooz is Associate Professor at the History Department of San Francisco State University. He has authored numerous articles and book chapters on Iran and is the author of two books on the history of Iranian Left movement. His first book is Rebels with a Cause (1999), which has been translated into Persian (2001) and Turkish (2006). His second book is Perspectives on the History of Rebels with a Cause in Iran published in Persian (2006).
Concise Paper Title : 
Contradictory Perceptions: Iranian Views of Russian Myth during the
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
This paper examines the two different and contradictory views of imperial Russia and its internal politics and military capabilities among Qajar Iran’s decision makers during 1825-1828. The two views had taken shape around Crown Prince Abbas Mirza and the court of Tabriz (Dar al-Saltaneh-ye Tabriz) and Fatah Ali Shah and the court of Tehran (Dar al-Khelafeh-ye Tehran). The two perceptions are examined in light of events leading to the second war between Iran and Russia in 1826. These included: 1) The unhappiness of both sides with the border settlement of 1813. Here, Iran’s grievance and continued dispute with Russia will be examined in light of Russian imperialist ambitions. 2) Two different views in Iran on the meaning and consequence of enthronement of a new Russian Tsar, Nicolas I, followed by the Decembrist Revolt in 1825. 3) Internal pressure exerted on the shah to avenge the loss of territory in 1813. Here the extent of influence of both the clerical circles and the Caucasian émigré community on Tehran and Tabriz will be examined. It will be argued that the crown prince and the court of Tabriz had come to a different assessment of Russian myth and were reluctant to initiate the conflict while the court of Tehran was more confident in the possibility of victory. But as the final decision on opening hostilities rested with the shah, the crown prince opened hostilities, though warily, with the hope of securing a better negotiating position against the Russians. In this context, the role of international diplomacy, particularly that of Britain in this conflict, will be examined carefully. The paper is based on Qajar sources as well as observations by foreign travelers and diplomats. Secondary sources related to the period are also examined carefully in light of their analysis and conclusions.
Thid Presenter
Name: 
Elena Andreeva
Institutional Affiliation : 
Virginia Military Institute
Academic Bio : 
Elena Andreeva received her B.A. and M.A. from Moscow State University and her Ph.D. from New York University. She is Associate Professor of History at Virginia Military Institute. Her research focuses on the interaction between East and West, Iranian history and culture in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and aspects of colonialism and imperialism in the Middle East and Asia. She has published articles on Persian and Dari literature, on Russian Orientalism, and on Russian travelers to Iran. She is the author of Russia and Iran in the Great Game: Travelogues and Orientalism (2007). Her current project examines “Orient” in Russian arts, including music, paintings and literature.
Concise Paper Title : 
Visual Representations of Iran in Russian Travelogues of the 19th and Early 20th Centuries
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
Among more than 200 books and articles published by Russians about Iran during the 19th and early 20th centuries, at least fifteen contain drawings and photographs of Iran. The most compelling images are found in the travelogues by Eliseev, Lomnitskii, “Misl’-Rustem,” Solovkin and Bezsonov. This paper examines the travelers’ perception of Iran and their creation of a “place-myth” (Rob Shields, Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity, 1991) -- a set of stereotypes characterizing a particular location. Iran was a target of the Great Game, with its northern and northeastern parts seen as a potential object for Russian conquest and colonization, as the travelogues make clear. The authors, mostly Russian military and civilian officials, were rationalizing and glorifying Russia’s involvement in Iran. Since drawings are always highly subjective and “the camera is never neutral” (John Tagg, The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories, 1988), the combination of their choice of subjects, the way they are portrayed and the captions reinforce the familiar set of Orientalist stereotypes. Iran as “Other” is depicted as primitive, exotic, strange and easily reduced to a certain category or type, such as ethnic types of people or their dwellings, architectural ruins, women in harems, or occupational categories including dervishes, musicians, prisoners, shop keepers, weavers or soldiers. The paper demonstrates the manifestation in visual images of “Russian Orientalism” -- an exaggerated version of the familiar Western European phenomenon that was rooted in Russia’s dual self-identity. It also draws parallels with the images of Central Asia from the same period and demonstrates that the Russian colonial discourse about Iran produced a somewhat harsher version of Orientalism – depicting Iran as a foreign “Orient,” still unconquered and therefore more threatening, and a place where Russians also had to compete with the British. The images, however, should not be dismissed as valuable artifacts. A historian or an ethnographer can extract useful information about clothing, architectural details and the Russian presence in the north, including Ashur-Adeh and Caspian fisheries (Solovkin), or little known Russian villages (Bezsonov). Research on Russian images of Iran seems to be limited to two wonderful books -- Images from the Endgame: Persia through a Russian Lens 1901-1914 on Alexander Iyas by John Tchalenko, and Sevruguin and the Persian Image: Photographs of Iran, 1870-1930, ed. by Frederick N. Bohrer on Antoin Sevruguin (who was not purely Russian). My presentation will include presentation of a number of images.
Fourth Presenter
Name: 
n/a
Academic Bio : 
n/a
Concise Paper Title : 
n/a
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
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