Soviet and Russian Scholarship on Iran

Abstract

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 II 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.