On the cover of Rossen Djagalov's debut monograph, a Bolshevik brandishes a bayonet in one hand, and with the other, throws leaflets to the proletarians of Central Asia. He stomps upon bug-eyed colonizers and feudal lords desperately protecting their loot. The image derives from a 1920s Soviet propaganda poster and encapsulates the book's research trajectory: the multifaceted bridge between the Second and Third Worlds—specifically, between the Soviet Union and the liberated democracies emerging in Asia and Africa. Indeed, the book seeks to explicitly challenge the “decontextualizing force” (p. 4) of postcolonial studies, especially in Anglo-American universities, which ignore the myriad ways in which the Soviet Union, like the cover's Bolshevik, aided the developing literary and cinematic cultures of the Third World.

Supported by astonishing numbers of archival documents and a shrewd understanding of geopolitics, Djagalov argues that the USSR presented itself as the iconic liberator for Third World nations, especially in Asia and Africa. Cities such as Tashkent, Uzbekistan, became “contact zones” (p. 145), touted to global literary and cinematic upstarts as exemplars of Eastern socialist promise. As a result, cultural producers in regions as disparate as Mongolia, India, Senegal, and Palestine yearned for Soviet recognition, audiences, and platforms. However important the Soviet contributions were to the Third World, though, these tended to vary based on the political moment (for instance, such internationalism was greatly suppressed during Stalinism). Likewise, the rigidity of Soviet Marxism meant that the USSR, even at its best, tended to deny agency to Third-Worldist forces, “insisting on guiding, teaching, and leading them a little too much” (p. 13).

Yet crucial connections were formed between the Third World and the USSR, aligning its own East—the Caucasian and Central Asian republics—with the Global East and South. The joining of Azerbaijan with Indonesia, and Georgia with Egypt, might seem polemical, but this connection is one of Djagalov's most interesting and convincing arguments. In fact, Djagalov rejects the dichotomy of “the West” and “the rest” by offering the Second World, neither strictly East nor West, as a web of networks buttressing the spirit of internationalism. This is no small feat, especially given how little-discussed Soviet arts are in elite institutions worldwide. As such, Djagalov lifts the Cold War veil from comparative literature, providing a new cartography of transnational influence.

The vast scope of From Internationalism to Postcolonialism allows Djagalov to make sense of a big picture that is otherwise obscured by the more myopic analysis of individual filmic and literary auteurs. For instance, Djagalov notes the sheer number of Asian and African socialist politicians who also doubled as writers, poets, and social critics (p. 42), thus interweaving literature and politics in a far more harmonious manner than what is seen in the West. Relatedly, a hidden argument in the book points to a conflict that persists in modern-day academia: between those who favored strong connections between literature and politics, and those which sought to maintain the independence of art from politics. The tendency to favor the latter over the former in the Anglo-American academy has caused a dearth of scholarship, to which Djagalov's book offers an enthusiastic rebuttal.

The first few chapters of the book, which delve into literature, are breathlessly detailed and cast an extremely large net; one has the sense that there is so much left to say about each subject. Yet the most engaging moments of From Internationalism to Postcolonialism are those of extreme specificity: for instance, in a chapter on the socialist solidarity documentary, Djagalov compares the intertwining careers of the Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens, the universally beloved French auteur Chris Marker, and the far less well-known Soviet documentarian Roman Karmen. The reader, even if unfamiliar with the many names depicted, will see clear connections between old favorites and new discoveries.

Indeed, Djagalov's project is a fundamentally comparatist one; while its archival documents are mostly in Russian, its scope is global, and its knowledge of cultural figures outside of the Soviet bloc deeply impressive. As a result, the Djagalov aligns with Masha Salazkina, whose work he cites throughout, in tracing the transnational exchanges between the Soviet Union and the Third World, especially in Latin America. Similarly, Joshua Malitsky analyzes the connection between the USSR and Cuba through documentary form and history. Unfortunately, however, such truly comparative scholarship remains rare. This provides the reason for Djagalov's expansive geographic ambition. As he concludes, “This has just been the beginning” (p. 226). The book serves less as a stand-alone text than an injunction to continue the scholarship where Djagalov leaves off—a temporal-geographical mapping of confluences that can, and will, inspire the reader-scholar pick a thread and run with it. As such, it will prove an endless source of inspiration and information for scholars working in Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, and everything in between, uniting media for, and of, leftist culture worldwide.