In my research I trace the development of academic orientology in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, focusing on the prestigious academic Institute for Oriental Studies (IVAN) in Moscow. I take the period of post-Stalinist thaw as a starting point, I show how this field of knowledge was activated for socialist struggle in the decolonizing world. Rather than viewing Soviet practices of knowledge production through a Cold War lense of superpower confrontation I aim to highlight the "Asian" dimension in this process, showing how Central Asian intermediaries embraced the international institutional infrastructure facilitating academic exchange and cooperation with the outside world as a platform where a particular "Asian" agenda of emancipation and internationalism could be advanced too.
Research for this thesis was conducted in the framework of the NWO-researchproject “The Legacy of Soviet Oriental Studies: Networks, Institutions, Discourses”, supervised by Michael Kemper (UvA) & Stéphane Dudoignon (l’École des hautes Études en Science Sociales, Paris).