Merav Mack’s recent work on the connections between the Arab Orthodox Christian communities sheds important light on the complex attitudes toward communism among members of the Arab Orthodox community. I work to situate her work within its historical context by contrasting contemporary reactions to the 1917 revolution in published reports from inside and outside the Arab Orthodox community. I place special emphasis on the reactions from within the Orthodox community by comparing post-1917 discussions of revolutionary Russia with those that predate the 1917 revolution. The variety of reactions present in these reports illustrates the complicated consequences of the formation of the Soviet Union in the Arab world for both Orthodox Christians and emerging communist and socialist movements. The Orthodox Christian communities in the Arab world had the strongest ties to Russia in 1917, and were most interested in what was happening there. At the same time, the religious nature of their connections shaped their reactions to the rise of the Bolsheviks to power. In their publications, we find the most sustained interest in Bolshevik ideology from 1905 onwards. I take examples of Orthodox attitudes toward the rise of Bolshevism from articles in prominent Orthodox publications such as al-Manar, al-Nafa’is al-‘asriyyah, al-Ikhaa’, and publications of individuals connected to the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (IOPS) in the Levant. It is not surprising to find that the leading Orthodox voices of the day, those Arab Christians most closely associated with the IOPS schools and institutions, criticized the Russian revolutionaries at every opportunity. Non-Orthodox publications from the same cities, on the other hand, contain a wide variety of reactions to the Bolshevik Revolution. While few Arab intellectuals were quick to embrace the ideology outright, the pieces published on the Bolshevik Revolution show a wide variety attitudes toward the emerging political movement. The prominent Egyptian journal al-Hilal, for example, begins publishing a variety of articles connected to the revolution in the 1917-1918 volume, including a translation of an article written by Vladimir Lenin explaining the tenets of Bolshevism. Putting these non-Orthodox pieces next to the extensive coverage produced by the Arab Orthodox community (both before and after 1917) highlights a unique aspect of the special relationship the Arab Orthodox community and Russian society.

Upon graduating from al-Azhar, Shaykh Muhammad ‘Ayyad al-Tantawi (1810-1861) joined the ranks of teachers and manuscript-verifiers employed by Muhammad ‘Ali in Cairo. In 1840, and upon the request of the Russian Consul to Egypt, Muhammad ‘Ali agreed to dispatch the shaykh to St. Petersburg to teach Arabic at the Institute of Oriental Languages at St. Petersburg University. Al-Tantawi wrote a fascinating account entitled Tuhfat al-adhkiya’ bi-akhhar bilad al-Rusiya [The Precious Gift of the Sharp-Witted in the News about the Russian Land] based on the first ten years of his stay in Russia (1840-1850). The account provides detailed information about Tsarist Russia, the history of the empire, its culture, and the habits of the people. Although the account appeared in Print in 1930, it did not receive the scholarly attention it merits. In this paper, I will bridge this gap by shedding light on al-Tantawi’s education and his close ties with European Orientalists (e.g., Georg August Wallin and Edward Lane) while he was in Egypt. I will also examine the account and the information he shares with his readers about the Russians and their habits. The account stands out for two reasons. First, al-Tantawi does not look down upon Russian culture or express reservations about living in a country where people observe a religion different from his. Bearing in mind that the Ottomans and the Russians were engaged in a series of wars since the sixteenth century, the positive portrayal of the Russians stands out, particularly when it is compared with the well-known account written by Rifa‘a al-Tahtawi about the French (1831). Second, al-Tantawi’s ability to fully appreciate the cultural differences that existed between the Russians and the Ottomans/Egyptians is a testimony that not all Muslim travelers viewed the world through a binary lens (i.e., us/them, or Muslims/non-Muslims) as some scholars contend (cf. Bernard Lewis). Unlike al-Tahtawi, who was sometimes wary of the French, al-Tantawi was fully immersed in Russian culture. His role as a teacher of Arabic to foreign students and his long stay in Russia helped him appreciate better the culture of his host country. My analysis demonstrates that although Egyptians and Ottomans understood that France posed as much threat to their country as Russia did, they considered revolutionary French culture and secularism a more serious threat to their way of life. In contrast, Russians and Muslims shared similar values, namely, high regard for religion and a class-based society.

In recent historiography, scholars have argued that the Russians used Orthodoxy in their attempts to bring the Christian population to their side and thereby subvert Ottoman rule. While that may have been true in the Balkans, there is no evidence that such an approach was adopted in regard to the Arab Orthodox community. This paper will examine the Arabic writings of Orthodox authors from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. These writing show deep admiration for the “Maskob,” as the Russians were called, and appear in poetry, travel accounts, and geographical descriptions. The paper will show that insofar as Arab writers were concerned, the commonality of Orthodoxy with the Russians did not lead to political alienation from Ottoman rule. Nor did the Russians view the Orthodox Arabs as a potential fifth column. Actually, and in the middle of the eighteenth century, it was Muslim leaders such as Dhahir al-Umar, eager to secede from the Ottomans, who turned to Queen Catherine for military and naval assistance.

This paper introduces a previously-overlooked group of primary sources which, engaging with one of the panel’s guiding premises (that “Soviet cultural diplomacy build on a long history of Arab curiosity about and travel to Russia”), asserting that Iraqi activists were free to articulate some of their own political priorities in the USSR. In addition to describing late Hashemite Iraq’s public affairs for Soviet readers, these materials suggest a new and potentially fertile direction of analysis that promises to augment the qawmi/watani binary. While article 51 of Iraq’s penal code (1938) specified seven years’ imprisonment for propagation of communism, anarchism, or immorality (and a 1948 amendment added “Zionism” to this list), more stringent regulations required all non-governmental organizations to re-register with the Ministry of the Interior; members of organizations, “whether direct or … under the screen of any name, such as the Partisans of Peace, the Democratic Youth, and so forth” were threatened with seven years’ imprisonment (Decree 16, 22 August 1954); decrees 17 and 18 further authorized the cabinet to revoke the citizenship of any person convicted under article 51. The immediate effects of these new laws are well-documented in the periodical press, as well as documents from Soviet archives. The Ministry of the Interior uncovered a number of communist cells; the government of Iraq published lists of more than 100 names of arrested persons; and Iraqi activists were forced into exile. Subsequently, Iraqi activists documented their experiences of a crucial Cold War period in Russian-language publications for Soviet readers.