"The Eastern International": Modes of Soviet-Arab Exchanges from the Interwar Period to the Cold War (Research Brief)

From the Stalin-era international education projects, established to train members of Middle Eastern communist parties, to the expanded system of education, tourism, and other forms of international cultural exchanges during the Cold War, my research shows that Central Asia played an important role in Soviet diplomacy with the “foreign east.” Using archives of the Comintern, the Komsomol, Orientalism institutes, and other institutions, I try to show just how much collaborative work went into creating “Soviet reality,” and into showing it to foreigners. The influx of foreign visitors to all parts of the USSR, in turn, shaped the definition of what it meant to be a “Soviet person.” These changes were reflected in the goals and practices of a public diplomacy that shaped generations of intellectual engagement with the idea of the Soviet Union across Eurasia.

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Masha Kirasirova, of New York University, was a 2010-11 Individual Advanced Research Opportunities (IARO) fellow.