Iranian-Russian Encounters

"The collection begins by providing a fresh perspective on traditional preoccupations of international relations: wars and diplomacy, the hostility of opposing nationlisms, the Russian imperial menace in the nineteenth century and the Soviet threat in the twentieth. But it also, and most importantly, moves beyond these traditional preoccupations to examine subaltern as well as elite relations and to add cultural, social and intellectual dimensions to the political and diplomatic. In doing so, the book contests the notion of an implacable enmity between Iran and Russia and begins the construction of a new discourse, free from Russian/Soviet as well as Western Orientialism, from Cold War tropes and Islamophobia, within which the realities of the Iranian-Russian encounter might better be understood."--Back cover