“Sons of Muslims” in Moscow: Soviet Central Asian Mediators to the Foreign East, 1955–1962

Central Asia and the Caucasus), and created opportunities for Soviet "eastern" peoples to become managers and intermediaries in the so-called new eastern politics abroad.It was in the mid-to late-1950s that Soviet Central Asian and Caucasian politicians started to host more Asian and later African delegations in Tashkent, Dushanbe, and Baku.Some Central Asian Party elites were even transferred to Moscow, and later into the Soviet foreign service, to act as representatives and arbiters of Soviet foreign policy to the Middle East.More broadly, this internal reorganization reflected changes in assumptions about who in the USSR had the knowledge and authority to make meaningful decisions about Soviet foreign policy in "the east."This essay explores the emergence of this "new Eastern politics" -as it was referred to in the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s -and how it developed during the thaw in late 1950s and early 1960s.Cold War observers of this phenomenon overwhelmingly focused on the increased public diplomacy by Soviet religious organizations such as the Dukhovnoe upravlenie musul'man Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana (SADUM) (Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan), 1 and interpreted the larger role of Central Asians through the framework of Islam -arguing that the Soviet Union was using "Soviet Muslims" to show the foreign Muslim world that Soviet and Muslim ways of life were compatible. 2 While this dimension of Soviet propaganda was important, there are a number of reasons why it does not capture the full complexity of this process.First, the post-World War II international context -including decolonization, organization of the nonaligned movement, and what at the time was referred to as "the Cold War" -drove the Soviet Union to seek alliances with the Afro-Asian solidarity movement.Soviet efforts to join this movement were hindered, in part, by accusations that they had colonized Central Asia, were behaving as an imperial power, and that Soviet Central Asian peoples were "imprisoned" and not independent.The Soviet answer to such accusations led to a large-scale redistribution of influence and responsibilities for work with foreign countries among Soviet Central Asian and Caucasian peoples; it also brought about the replication of Union-wide institutions on 1 SADUM reported to the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults, which was part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. 2 Ivar Spector.The Soviet Union and the Muslim World 1917-1958.Seattle, 1958; Yaacov Ro'i.The Role of Islam and the Soviet Muslims in Soviet Arab Policy // Asian and African Studies.