This book examines the Russian/Soviet intellectual tradition of Oriental and Islamic studies, which comprised a rich body of knowledge especially on Central Asia and the Caucasus. The Soviet Oriental tradition was deeply linked to politics – probably even more than other European ‘Orientalisms’. It breaks new ground by providing Western and post-Soviet insider views especially on the features that set Soviet Oriental studies apart from what we know about its Western counterparts: for example, the involvement of scholars in state-supported anti-Islamic agitation; the early and strong integration of ‘Orientals’ into the scientific institutions; the spread of Oriental scholarship over the ‘Oriental’ republics of the USSR and its role in the Marxist reinterpretation of the histories of these areas. The authors demonstrate the declared emancipating agenda of Soviet scholarship, with its rhetoric of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism, made Oriental studies a formidable tool for Soviet foreign policy towards the Muslim World; and just like in the West, the Iranian Revolution and the mujahidin resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan necessitated a thorough redefinition of Soviet Islamic studies in the early 1980s. Overall, the book provides a comprehensive analysis of Soviet Oriental studies, exploring different aspects of writing on Islam and Muslim history, societies, and literatures. It also shows how the legacy of Soviet Oriental studies is still alive, especially in terms of interpretative frameworks and methodology; after 1991, Soviet views on Islam have contributed significantly to nation-building in the various post-Soviet and Russian ‘Muslim’ republics.

This collection of articles by leading Russian Orientalists, from different universities and research institutes of Russia, covers a wide range of research fields: politics and power, history, economics and society, language, philosophy and culture. The Russian authors base their works on rare sources. They examine here ancient and medieval history and culture of Oriental societies including articles on Indian mythology, kalam in Islam, classical Indonesian concepts of monarchy, Caucasus in the Abbasid period etc. There will also be a focus on modern Asian and African societies with articles on agriculture in India, monarchy in Cambodia, kleptocracy in Africa, Chinese migration to Siberia etc.). Furthermore in this volume, cultural vocabularies and sacred texts will be analysed. The volume will be useful for all academics and students interested in Asia and Africa.

Empire and Belonging in the Eurasian Borderlands engages with the evolving historiography around the concept of belonging in the Russian and Ottoman empires. The contributors to this book argue that the popular notion that empires do not care about belonging is simplistic and wrong. Chapters address numerous and varied dimensions of belonging in multiethnic territories of the Ottoman Empire, Imperial Russia, and the Soviet Union, from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. They illustrate both the mutability and the durability of imperial belonging in Eurasian borderlands. Contributors to this volume pay attention to state authorities but also to the voices and experiences of teachers, linguists, humanitarian officials, refugees, deportees, soldiers, nomads, and those left behind. Through those voices the authors interrogate the mutual shaping of empire and nation, noting the persistence and frequency of coercive measures that imposed belonging or denied it to specific populations deemed inconvenient or incapable of fitting in. The collective conclusion that editors Krista A. Goff and Lewis H. Siegelbaum provide is that nations must take ownership of their behaviors, irrespective of whether they emerged from disintegrating empires or enjoyed autonomy and power within them.

In Soviet Archaeology: Trends, Schools, and History, Russian archaeologist Leo S. Klejn looks at the peculiar phenomenon that is Soviet archaeology and how it differs to Western archaeology and the archaeology of pre-revolutionary Russia. Klejn shows that Soviet archaeology was not a monolithic block as Soviet ideologists attempted to represent it, but rather it was divided into competing schools and trends and, even under the veil of Marxist ideology,was often closely related to the movements occurring in western archaeology. As an archaeologist working during the turmoil of the Soviet government's rule over Russia, Klejn's scholarly account is laid out in ajournalistic manner, tracing the history of archaeology in Russian from 1917 to beyond 1991, as well as recounting the lives and fates of leading Soviet archaeologists in vivid descriptions with accompanying photographs.

Orientalism as a concept was first applied to Western colonial views of the East. Subsequently, different types of orientalism were discovered but the premise was that these took their lead from Western-style orientalism, applying it in different circumstances. This book, on the other hand, argues that the diffusion of interpretations and techniques in orientalism was not uni-directional, and that the different orientologies – Western, Soviet and oriental orientologies – were interlocked, in such a way that a change in any one of them affected the others; that the different orientologies did not develop in isolation from each other; and that, importantly, those being orientalised were active, not passive, players in shaping how the views of themselves were developed.