Hostname: page-component-788cddb947-tr9hg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-13T19:44:06.970Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Observing Iran from Baku: Iranian Studies in Soviet and Post-Soviet Azerbaijan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2022

Abstract

Azerbaijani national identity emerged in post-Persian Russian-ruled East Caucasia at the end of the nineteenth century, and was finally forged during the early Soviet period. After the fiasco of the short-lived independence period of 1918–20, Azerbaijan became Soviet. Soviet power then instrumentalized Azerbaijan for political and ideological penetration into Iran by galvanizing local separatist movements. Azerbaijani Iranology was shaped within Soviet oriental studies and put into service of Azerbaijani nation-building. Exiled Iranian communists found asylum in Baku, joined local research institutions, wrote the first Persian academic and school textbooks, and contributed to the translation of classic Persian poetry into Azerbaijani. Soviet Azerbaijani Iranologists were sent as translators to the Soviet missions to Iran and Afghanistan. After Azerbaijan regained independence in 1991, its Iranological infrastructure was represented by several departments at the National Academy of Sciences and the Iranian Studies Program at Baku State University. While the number of Persian classes at schools during the last three decades diminished, a new generation of post-Soviet Iranologists—those who studied in Iran—emerged. While Soviet Azerbaijani Iranologists never created a solid bilingual dictionary of Persian, several Persian–Azerbaijani and Azerbaijani–Persian dictionaries were published in the 2010s. Post-Soviet Azerbaijani Iranology is still trying to find its place within humanities in the transitional nation.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Iranian Studies. Originally published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I would very much like to thank my colleagues Denis V. Volkov (Moscow) and Lana Ravandi-Fadai (Moscow) for interesting insights into Soviet Russian Iranology. Many thanks to colleagues in Baku for numerous discussions on Azerbaijani Iranology during the lockdown evenings. My special thanks are also due to the two anonymous reviewers and the editors of Iranian Studies for their helpful comments.

My position at the University of Bonn between 2019 and 2020 was generously financed by the Max Weber Foundation. I would very much like to thank Professor Hans van Ess (Munich) and Dr. Harald Rosenbach (Bonn) for this support.