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The Persistence of Persian Literature in the Soviet Union
The courses on the “Luxurious Literature of Persia” have been taught in many educational institutions of Imperial Russia since the middle of the 19th century. In the first decades of the 20th century, Agafangel Krymsky’s lectures on the “History of Persia, Its Literature, and Dervish Theosophy” were published in parts (1903–1906, revised 1914–1917); this prominent book well represents how Persian Literature has been approached and taught at the edge of the October Revolution. During the Soviet period, we witness significant stage-by-stage changes in the educational process, corresponding at each stage to a specific political, ideological, and cultural context; Iranology, like all other humanities, was imbued with Marxist-Leninist ideology and doomed to “waver along with the Party line.”
In this article the formation of the “history of Persian literature” educational narrative at pre-WWII, post-WWII and late Soviet time is under discussion. We give an overview of the main textbooks and manuals, which in turn were granted official status and considered mandatory for curricula on Iranian studies programs. Our aim is to highlight at least several cases when the domestic ideological agenda (such as exporting the October revolution, nation-building in the USSR, the Soviet Union’s support for the anti-imperialist movements) shaped the mainstream in academic Persian studies and accordingly affected the content of university courses on Persian Literature.
In book
