The Eastern International

In the first few years after the Russian Revolution, an ideological project coalesced to link the development of what Stalin demarcated as the internal "East"--primarily Central Asia and the Caucasus--with nation-building, the overthrow of colonialism, and progress toward socialism in the "foreign East"--the Third World. Support for anti-colonial movements abroad was part of the Communist Party platform and shaped Soviet foreign policy to varying degrees thereafter. The Eastern International explores how the concept of "the East" was used by the world's first communist state and its mediators to project, channel, and contest power across Eurasia. Masha Kirasirova traces how this policy was conceptualized and carried out by students, comrades, and activists--Arab, Jewish, and Central Asian. It drew on their personal motivations and gave them considerable access to state authority and agency to shape Soviet ideology, inform concrete decisions, and allocate resources. Contextualizing these Eastern mediators within a global frame, this book historicizes the circulation of peoples and ideas between the socialist and decolonizing world and reinscribes Soviet history into postcolonial studies and global history.

Masha Kirasirova is Assistant Professor of History at New York University Abu Dhabi. She is an editor of Russian-Arab Worlds: A Documentary History (OUP, 2023) and The Routledge Handbook of the Global Sixties Between Protest and Nation-Building.

Acknowledgments Introduction: The Eastern International in the Long Soviet Century Chapter 1: Anti-Colonial Dreams and the Territorialization of Soviet Power Chapter 2: A Bolshevik Laboratory for Revolution in the East Chapter 3: Arabization, Purges, and Terror Chapter 4: Muslim Tradition Forbids Reciting the Qur'an while Drunk Chapter 5: Decolonization and the Thaw Chapter 6: Scripting Central Asian Revolution for the Afro-Asian World Chapter 7: The Eastern International in an Age of Globalization Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index