Many figures within Putin’s establishment share a common feature in their backgrounds: they hold degrees in Asian and African Studies and have working experience in Asia and Africa. For instance, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov specialized in the history of Turkey, while oil oligarch Igor Sechin worked as a translator in Mozambique. The late Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the right-wing populist LDPR party, began his career as a Turkologist. Additionally, a television pundit, Vladimir Solovyov, defended his PhD thesis on the Japanese economy. We should also mention Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose first diplomatic appointment was Sri Lanka. This list goes on and on.

Having a background dealing with Asian and African countries among the Russian elite is widespread now, yet this was not always the case. In the early 1950s, pursuing a higher education in Asian and African Studies was quite challenging, and there were very few experts specializing in these places across the USSR. At that time, the notion of a strong connection between Russia and the Third World—evident today in Vladimir Putin’s official speeches—was largely absent. However, the situation changed. When did this change occur? Why did it happen? And how did it unfold?

In this text, I explore the origins of the knowledge infrastructure in Asian and African Studies in the USSR. I argue that their intellectual traits—particularly anti-colonial ethos—were formed through the USSR’s cooperation with the Third World in the 1950s and 1960s. This turning point spawned much of the expertise on Asian and African states and societies that still exists in Russia today.

I follow Randall Collins’s analytical model of intellectual change, which he lays out as a three-stage process.¹First, changing societal conditions outside of academia require new forms of applied knowledge. Second, a new knowledge infrastructure, supported by interest groups, emerges as a response to these changes. This infrastructure is usually implemented within formal institutions and organizations. Third, networks of specialists work to solve intellectual puzzles, occupying the resulting organizational niches. Consequently, these specialists may deviate from the interests of their sponsors and patrons and even influence political decisions of state authorities.

In analyzing the three stages of development of Asian and African Studies in the USSR, I will start by outlining the challenges the Soviets faced in the international arena in the mid-1950s. I will then discuss the establishment of new centers of research and education on Asia and Africa from the late 1950s to the 1960s. Finally, I will explore new intellectual developments among Soviet experts on the Third World during the era of decolonization.

From Yalta to Bandung

Vladislav Zubok describes Stalin’s foreign policy at the beginning of the Cold War as driven by a combination of imperial and revolutionary principles.² On the one hand, he and his Politburo continued to acknowledge the interests of its Second World War allies, namely the United States and the British Empire. Despite the increasing tensions with them, Stalin viewed the capitalist great powers as the only significant players in world politics. On the other hand, he believed in the proletariat’s revolutionary potential. However, he thought working-class movements were only mature and organized enough for revolution in industrialized Europe; he believed that the rest of the world was still in the stages of feudalism or underdeveloped capitalism, which made establishing socialism there impossible in the foreseeable future.
Both principles effectively excluded Asia and Africa from the USSR’s sphere of interest, except its border regions in Central and East Asia. Even in these areas, Soviet high officials preferred to avoid cooperating with communist revolutionary parties, believing that their time had yet to come. In Iran, the USSR supported an unpopular party of Azeri nationalists in 1946, rejecting the local communist party’s attempts to collaborate with the socialist great power.³ In China, the USSR initially recognized the US-allied Kuomintang regime. It was not until 1948 that it became evident that the Kuomintang was too weak to maintain power, and the USSR reluctantly shifted its support to the communists.⁴ Also, the Kremlin shrugged off the bloody Malayan guerrilla war against Britain.⁵

In navigating relationships with the most influential Western actors, there was little need for expertise on their former or present colonial territories. Stalin addressed most international issues primarily through the Central Committee without consulting diplomats or advisors. Even the dawn of the collapse of colonialism, which arguably began with India’s independence in 1947 and Indonesia’s in 1949, did not prompt Stalin to rethink his views on the future role of the Third World, let alone show interest in promotion of Soviet research and educational centers dedicated to studying Asia and Africa.

The new leaders of the USSR after Stalin’s death in 1953 saw the world differently. Among the members of the Central Committee, not only Nikita Khrushchev but also Anastas Mikoyan, Dmitry Shepilov, and Nuritdin Mukhitdinov saw the collapse of the European empires as an excellent opportunity to build alliances with new Third World regimes that were sympathetic to socialism. At the 20^th Party Congress in 1956, all four mentioned the importance of new states and movements for the Soviet Union and complained about the lack of Soviet personnel to understand what was happening in areas undergoing decolonization.⁶

Of course, it was not only the internal Soviet rethinking of the Third World that played a role. The most important event in international politics preceding the 20^th Congress was the Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955. The alliance that began to form between the conference host, India, and Egypt promised revolutionary changes in a world that the West had ruled for centuries. Other regional leaders positioning themselves as socialist and anti-imperialists, such as Ghana and Burma, helped form the Non-Aligned Movement a few years later. This group of new states was something to be reckoned with in the UN. Without this “disruption,” the Soviet leadership would most likely have continued Stalin’s policy of maintaining the colonial status quo.

The Soviet government initially wanted to participate in the Asian-African Conference as an observer. However, the Soviet delegation was not allowed there due to India’s leadership's desire not to scare off less radical regimes.⁷ However, the first prime minister of China, Zhou Enlai, managed to attend the conference. At the time, competition with China for influence over the new Asian and African states additionally spurred the leadership of the Soviet Communist Party to finance projects to support anti-colonial actors.⁸

Shortly after the Bandung Conference, Mikoyan delivered a speech at the 20^th Party Congress, where he directly addressed the growing importance of Asian and African Studies for the USSR: “The East has awakened, but the Institute of Oriental Studies is still asleep!” Many senior party members got the hint that effective diplomacy, economic exchange, and military cooperation with post-colonial societies were unachievable without the support of an academic infrastructure dedicated to studying and guiding these regions. Mukhitdinov promptly offered to organize an international congress on Oriental Studies in Tashkent to evaluate the current academic workforce inside the Soviet Union and to follow the intellectual achievements of foreign partners.⁹

Notably, many figures active in those initiatives, such as Mukhitdinov, as well as Bobojan Gafirov and Anushavan Arzumanyan, who will be discussed further, represented Soviet minority groups. They not only recognized the importance of increasing the number of Soviet scholars but also deeply sympathized with the liberation movement globally. Therefore, they advocated the promotion of their own kin, as well as individuals from Jewish, Korean, and other ethnic backgrounds. Leveraging the language skills and social connections within various diasporas proved necessary for the discipline’s expansion. Additionally, party officials were motivated to cultivate a positive image in the international arena of Soviet experts on Asia and Africa as a multiethnic community that itself had been liberated from colonial subjugation.¹⁰

Efforts to create valuable expertise on Asia and Africa involved a complex interplay of motivations within the Communist Party leadership. However, mistrust existed among members representing different republics and ministries. For instance, the Armenians traditionally conflicted with the Azerbaijanis, while the Uzbeks sought to dominate the Tajiks. Meanwhile, the Soviet Foreign Ministry had a problematic relationship with the army and the KGB because of policy disagreements. On top of that, there were rivalries among various patronage networks in Moscow. For example, Arzumanyan was Mikoyan’s son-in-law, while Gafurov was Mikhail Suslov’s favorite. Competing interests across different groups of patrons led to divisions that obstructed the full recognition of Asian and African Studies within the Communist Party and the academic community. Nonetheless, this competition may have contributed to multifaceted changes in the understanding of the Third World in the USSR.

Oases of New Thinking

Asian Studies in the Stalin era was conducted by a small community based at the Institute of Oriental Studies (Institut vostokovedeniya; IOS) in Leningrad and a few regional academic centers in Central Asia that were intellectually oriented toward the former imperial capital. Their scholarly interests were mainly the Ancient history of the Middle East, the history of national republics, and the anthropology of nomadism.¹¹ African Studies was virtually nonexistent except for a few enthusiastic anthropologists and linguists.¹² The creation of a branch of IOS in Moscow in 1950 failed to result in a major expansion of the institute. Rather, that move pursued the goal of more political control over scholarship. Thus, the task of the post-Stalin reformers was to create new entities and increase the number of researchers.

Bobojan Gafurov, the secretary of the Communist Party of Tajikistan, was picked to head IOS in 1956. He energetically invested all his connections and resources within party organs to rebuild IOS. He hired both unconventional intellectuals who teetered on the edge of dissidence and former employees of state security agencies with experience working abroad. Once a quiet academic backwater, IOS had been transformed into a massive research center with branches in two of the largest cities in the USSR.

The academic division of labor between the Moscow and Leningrad branches became more formalized: Moscow’s priority was to produce relevant expertise on contemporary relations between states and societies abroad, while Leningrad concentrated on more traditional studies of the history and languages ​​of Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Under this setup, the Moscow branch’s staff was significantly expanded to include specialists in economics, international relations, and political science (the last two fields had existed in the USSR as part of modern history). Funding was prioritized for regions lacking sufficient expertise, particularly critical areas like the Middle East.¹³

The organizational changes also touched Soviet republics. By that time, the Institute of Oriental Studies in Tashkent had already been established, having evolved from a center dedicated to studying ancient manuscripts in 1950. Meanwhile, at the behest of Gafurov, two new branches were opened, in Baku in 1958 and Tbilisi in 1960. In addition, the center for studying Mongolia and Tibet in Ulan-Ude (the capital of the autonomous Buryat Republic within the Russian SFSR) was overhauled in 1958. The establishment of these regional centers was complemented by educational programs in Oriental Studies that were launched at nearby universities, with local scholars employed. All four institutes—in Tashkent, Baku, Tbilisi, and Ulan-Ude—were formally under the authority of their respective republican-level academies of sciences. Nevertheless, the administration in Moscow under Gafurov’s leadership informally coordinated their research activities.¹⁴

The Institute of World Economy and International Relations (Institut mirovoy ekonomiki i mezhdunarodnykh otnosheniy; IMEMO) was established in 1956, pushed for by the ambitious political economist Anushavan Arzumanyan. It aimed to become the leading Soviet “think tank” on the global economy and provide Soviet ministries with analysis on international industry, trade, and diplomacy. Its core cadres consisted of old-guard Bolshevik intellectuals who had survived the purges of the 1930s, together with young social researchers eager to move beyond Stalin’s autarkic approach of “socialism in one country.”¹⁵

Although the agenda of IMEMO is not typically associated with the Third World, IMEMO represented a significant break with the network of institutions focused solely on studying “the East.” From its inception, it included departments specializing in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and East Asia. One of its most critical subjects of study was the economy of the British Empire, particularly that of its former colonies, such as the newly independent states of South Africa and the Indian subcontinent. The strength of IMEMO, less known for its language training ​​and local knowledge, laid in its ability to analyze decolonization in the context of the global capitalist system.¹⁶

Masha Kirasirova highlights that the two primary think tanks in Moscow were rivals when it came to expertise on Asia and Africa. Their differing approaches can be attributed to their integration into distinct spheres of Soviet and international politics. The Institute of Oriental Studies focused on communist, socialist, and left-nationalist movements in the Third World, guided by the International Department of the CPSU. Its partners also included non-state actors such as professional associations and trade unions. In contrast, IMEMO provided support to state ministries regarding trade, military affairs, and educational exchanges. Consequently, IOS adhered closely to the official party line and Marxist-Leninist ideology. Meanwhile, IMEMO took a more pragmatic and moderate approach in its advisory role.¹⁷

The Institute of Chinese Studies (Institut kitaevedeniya; ICS) also opened in 1956, and it had perhaps the strangest track record of all the Soviet think tanks focused on Asia or Africa. The institute was established during a period of close relations between Moscow and Beijing, although tensions were beginning to grow. In fact, one of the goals of the ICS was to assist China with Soviet economic and technological aid. The gradual cessation of Soviet aid to China, coupled with harsh criticism of the Great Leap Forward by Soviet diplomats and advisors, led to a complete breakdown of relations between the two states in 1961. Before that, in 1960, the Chinese government sent an official note to the USSR demanding the closure of ICS, which it regarded as a neocolonialist undertaking.¹⁸

The USSR responded by dissolving ICS and transferring its employees to the Institute of the Peoples of Asia (the renamed IOS—more on this below). However, in 1965, at the behest of Stepan Chervonenko, the USSR ambassador to China, and economist Lev Del’yusin, some China experts were gathered into a secret group under the direct supervision of the International Department of the Soviet Communist Party. A year later, the former ICS was reestablished as the Institute of the Far East (Institut Dal’nego Vostoka; IFS). Besides sinologists, this new center included researchers studying Japan, Vietnam, North Korea, and South Korea, among other East Asian countries. Joining the economists and political scientists on staff were many philosophers, who were responsible for critiquing the official ideologies of regimes in Asia, whether they were capitalist or socialist.¹⁹

The last institution to be established, yet by no means the least important, was the Institute of Africa (Institut Afriki; IA). At the time of the collapse of the British and French empires, the Soviet leadership had less knowledge about sub-Saharan Africa than about other Third World countries. There was a shortage of embassy staff, besides fewer serious researchers focused on African economics and politics.²⁰

Khrushchev first put forward the idea of a research center dedicated to the comprehensive study of post-colonial societies in Africa during the visit to the Soviet Union of the renowned pan-Africanist and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois in 1957. Du Bois had recently renounced his U.S. citizenship in favor of Ghana and unofficially represented African social and political movements internationally. This gave him the unique legitimacy to criticize the Soviet leadership for failing to pay enough attention to African countries. The Institute of Africa was established two years later, and Du Bois was invited back to the USSR to participate in the opening celebrations.²¹

Despite facing challenges such as a shortage of qualified staff and a relatively small budget compared to other Soviet think tanks, IA developed rapidly. It was initially led by anthropologist Ivan Potekhin, who was succeeded in 1964 by Vasily Solodovnikov. Solodovnikov had been a specialist on the U.S. economy and served as the deputy representative of the USSR to the UN. He was chosen by Arzumanyan for his extensive connections both domestically and internationally.²² From the beginning, the institute studied and translated the works of pan-Africanist intellectuals—not only Du Bois but also Kwame Nkrumah and Leopold Senghor. Nkrumah even visited IA when he came to the USSR.²³

One of Gafurov’s broad policies was eliminating the orientalizing markers inherited from the Russian Empire, which started after the Bandung Conference. In 1960, IOS began to be called the Institute of the Peoples of Asia (Institut narodov Azii; INA). In 1961, the two flagship journals of the field were retitled as The Peoples of Asia and Africa (Narody Azii i Afriki) ​​and Asia and Africa Today (Azia i Afrika segodnya). That renaming was not only political but also meant that the mental geography of leading institutes had expanded so much that the term “the East” became virtually useless for designating the specialization of experts and scholars. However, in the 1970s, some names of institutes and departments were reinstated, and the oscillation between the two names of the discipline continues to this day.

To summarize, Soviet institutions focused on scholarship and expertise on Asia and Africa formed a complex ecosystem in the 1950s–1960s. The traditional study of languages and history was complemented by the fields of economics and political science, although funding for traditional training remained intact. Specialization in the Arab countries and China held a higher status within the “hierarchy,” yet other countries came to be studied more thoroughly than before. While some research units were open to international contacts, others were kept almost entirely secret. This environment created numerous niches, allowing Soviet experts of all stripes, from sympathizers of leftist international political movements to staunch Stalinists, to find jobs in academia.

‘Cadres Decide Everything’

Expanding existing mass educational programs and establishing new ones on Asia and Africa was a major goal for the research institutes. Timur Atnashev notes that reorganizing the Soviet social and human sciences after Stalin meant delegating more autonomy to intellectuals, experts, and scholars who felt empowered relative to poorly educated apparatchiks.²⁴ Studying Asia and Africa in the USSR led to experts having more influence over the government, as many young diplomats and advisers studied “the East” under the institutes’ staff.

Historically, Soviet science and education were fragmented: the ministries of education of the USSR and the Soviet republics managed universities, while the academies of sciences governed research institutes. Their roles within the planned economy were distinct. However, reorganizing studies of the Third World required collaboration. Universities provided research institutes with trained graduates, and in turn, institutes trained teaching staff for the universities. The result was effectively a single hiring market, with professionals seeking jobs in education, research, or both.

In 1954, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations created the Oriental Department (Vostochniy fakul’tet), which took over courses in Asian languages. In 1956, the Oriental Languages ​​Department (Fakul’tet vostochnykh yazykov) was opened at Moscow State University. Both universities also offered students majoring in economics, philosophy, and history the opportunity to specialize in Asian and African countries. Along with the center for Oriental history and languages at Leningrad State University, which had been inherited from the imperial period, graduates of these three educational programs were well represented among the experts and scholars at the research institutes of the Academy of Sciences.

Party bosses also recognized the importance of educating individuals from allied Third World countries as a form of soft power. To this end, two universities specifically for international students were established. The Institute of Friendship of Peoples (Institut druzhby narodov), which opened in 1960, focused on teaching professions like engineering or medicine, while the Institute of Social Sciences (Instititut obsh’estvennykh nauk), which opened a year later, educated foreign political activists and politicians.²⁵ Although these institutions were sometimes inaccessible for Soviet citizens, both played a vital role as informal partners for research institutes seeking qualified personnel capable of teaching in languages other than Russian. They further strengthened connections between the community of experts on Asia and Africa and the emerging political and civil elites of those countries.

High-ranking experts on Asia and Africa began to participate frequently in diplomatic missions. They did not act as officials of the Soviet state but as representatives of civil society; this unofficial position allowed them to communicate with Third World leaders on issues that were too sensitive for official delegations. For example, Gafurov had contacts with Yasser Arafat and Saud, the king of Saudi Arabia. Solodovnikov met with Ahmed bin Bella and Che Guevara.²⁶

The Asia and Africa expert community was closely linked to the International Department of the Central Committee, which was set up in 1956 in response to the Hungarian Revolution. All international interaction with left-wing parties went through this body.²⁷ This further strengthened the authority of research centers and universities in party circles, although it politicized the expertise provided.

Despite the continuing divide between education and research, there was considerable overlap in personnel across institutions with different functions. In addition, introducing new educational programs enabled specialized training in Asian and African languages, economics, and history for large cohorts of students born in the 1930s and later. This group became the socio-demographic core of the reorganized Soviet expert community on Asia and Africa, staffing not only universities and research institutes but also the diplomatic corps, intelligence, the military, and the party apparatus. Overall, the impact of Soviet scholarship on Asian and African societies began to cross disciplinary and international boundaries thanks to formal professional associations and informal networks.

Back to Marx and Lenin

Intellectually, it was important for the diverse community of scholars of Asia and Africa to move away from Stalin’s Marxism-Leninism orthodoxy. Although Marx and Lenin were widely published, they were seriously read only by a few intellectuals who had gone through Stalinist repression and the Second World War.²⁸ Most members of the intelligentsia were familiar with Marx and Lenin only through excerpts and quotes from the official short course on the Bolshevik Party and other similar simplified anthologies.²⁹ Legitimizing their discipline through concepts from the socialist tradition, scholars of Asia and Africa led the way in rediscovering Marx and Lenin during the Thaw.

Since 1955, the Institute of Marxism–Leninism published an expanded edition of Marx and Engels’ works, including those previously untranslated into Russian or unknown. Marx’s economic manuscripts of 1857–1859, also known as the Grundrisse, occupied a special place since it discussed the structure of Asian societies. Marx’s letters to fellow socialists and his essays about India and China, in which he explained his views on Asian history and economics, were also published, providing more fodder for the reformation in Oriental Studies. For example, his letter to the Russian Menshevik Vera Zasulich mentioned the possibility of a non-capitalist path to future communism.³⁰

The later writings of Marx contained many concepts that helped Soviet academics to pluralize Stalinist orthodoxy. For instance, the idea of the specific Asian form of property influenced scholars’ understanding of the nonlinearity of historical development in the West and the East. In addition, different economic development paths toward socialism came to be seen. The philosopher Mikhail Vitkin summarized and commented on Marx’s ideas about the development of Asian societies. His book became popular but was withdrawn from stores in the 1970s; however, it had a significant influence on Asian and African Studies.³¹

Another source of ideas for studying Africa and Asia was Lenin’s book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917). Although it had previously been freely published in the USSR, it nevertheless lost its place in academic discussions during Stalinism.³² Lenin’s views on capitalism as a global phenomenon, as well as the hypothesis that a global socialist movement could guide peoples from feudalism directly to socialism, were picked up by young Soviet experts sympathetic to anti-colonial movements. The Institute of World Economy and International Relations became the driving force for returning these ideas of Lenin to the social science mainstream in the USSR. They saw the anti-colonial mission of the USSR as helping societies that had just liberated themselves from European domination.

Economist Modest Rubinstein was one of the first academics to openly criticize the official position that the path to socialism was possible only via developed capitalism. He believed that by strengthening the public sector in the Third World, the state could embark on a path of socialist development, even if it lacked advanced means of production.³³ Rostislav Ulyanovsky, an expert on India and Gafurov’s deputy, followed in Rubinstein’s intellectual footsteps. He proposed the concept of “socialist orientation”. This concept, which gained popularity among the Soviet elite, suggested that political regimes could be regarded as friendly to the USSR if they started to adopt elements of a planned economy, even if their countries did not have a workers’ movement like those in Western Europe.³⁴

This first wave of ideas challenging Stalinist orthodoxy in the political economy of the Third World countries provoked an even more radical wave of revisionism. Nodari Simonia, a Sinologist, argued that countries with a socialist orientation have petty bourgeois nationalist movements.³⁵

Georgy Mirsky, an Arabist, went so far as to suggest the possibility of the army and intelligentsia being a full-fledged revolutionary group instead of any economic class.³⁶ Ulyanovsky, initially one of the main drivers of the new conceptualization of the Third World, was dissatisfied with the revisionism of the newer generation. Ironically, he began to employ political intrigues against young scholars, just as the Stalinists had used them before to disqualify him.³⁷

Regarding Soviet relations with the Third World, moving away from rigid Stalinist ideology was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it allowed the Soviet Union to consider broader movements and parties as legitimate political actors. The old-fashioned idea that the Third World had to follow a single path of development similar to that of Western Europe no longer dominated the thinking of party officials. Soviet experts used more nuanced models, recognizing that, alongside the class basis of leftist movements, factors such as nations, religions, and races also needed to be considered in politics. In theory, this was supposed to save young nations from the costs of forced collectivization and party repression.

On the other hand, new interpretations of Lenin and Marx led to a rise in pragmatism, which sometimes slipped into cynicism among Soviet experts starting in the 1960s. Unpopular regimes that relied solely on military force were often labeled “progressive,” even though their economic policies resulted in corruption and inefficiency. Many analysts focused on Asia and Africa gradually lost their strong political and moral convictions and prioritized narrow Soviet interests over genuine economic development for the Third World. This shift, in fact, represented a new, disguised form of colonialism.