This excellent book is a welcome addition to the growing body of works dedicated to the relationship between Russia and Iran in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drawing upon the Foucauldian concept of power/knowledge, Denis Volkov analyzes the extent and nature of the impact of Orientologists, including “pure” academics and “scholarly trained experts” (10), on Russian state policy towards Iran. The author skillfully traces the dynamics of the relationship between academic knowledge of Iran and the execution of state power through three chronological periods based on political events in both Russia and Iran: late imperial (1863–1917) and early Soviet periods (divided into 1917–21 and 1921–41 sub-periods). Volkov examines the production of scholarly knowledge in four main domains: academic scholarship, the military, the diplomatic service, and the Russian Orthodox Church's missionary activities, with the latter only applying to the late imperial period. All these domains were interconnected at the institutional and individual levels. The author mentions the broader context of Russia's Persianate studies, including modern Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Central Asia, although the factual focus of the book is on Iranian studies.

The author came to the conclusion that in the late imperial period, academic scholars mainly exercised indirect influence on Russian policy towards Iran at an individual level, through training practical experts in the three other domains. It was Russia's western foreign policy that for the most part defined late imperial Russia's policy toward Iran. During the early Soviet period, Volkov argues, a “gradual demise of the classical school of Persian studies” took place (146), as information gathering shifted to political and economic areas, with a strong emphasis on trade. Meanwhile, ancien regime scholars were being more and more marginalized, and a new ideologically-driven generation was taking their place, producing research of rather low quality. According to the book, during the early Soviet period, the link between Iranology and Soviet foreign policy became direct and reciprocal. At the same time, Volkov points out the continuity between both periods, when the emphasis on Iranian studies, characteristic of the late imperial period, turned into a dramatic increase in political, military, economic, and cultural focus during the two decades after 1917. Volkov concludes that if during the late imperial period Russian discourse of Iran was characterized by “the trivial European Orientalist civilizing mission. . ., the protection of Russian interests versus Western powers. . . and the promotion of all things Russian, including its own scholarship,” during the early Soviet period, it was “the proliferation of revolution” in Iran followed by the “grooming of Persians for social conversion, with the same condescending approach as before 1917,” combined with the promotion of all things Soviet (229–30).

The book draws on extensive archival research in eleven archives in Russia and Georgia, combined with deep knowledge of Russian and English-language scholarship on Russian Orientalism, Russia's Iranian studies, and the history of the relationship between Russia and Iran in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The organization of the book reflects the author's reliance on Michel Foucault's concepts of power, knowledge, and discourse, as well as the author's reasoned balancing of theory and practice, and of institutions’ and individuals’ narratives. The first chapter is dedicated to Foucauldian notions and their applicability to the Russian case. The second and third chapters analyze organizational set-ups during the late imperial and early Soviet periods respectively, and mention a number of representatives of Orientology. The third chapter includes two distinctive parts, the first dealing with the period between 1917 and 1921, and the second between 1921 and 1941. Both chapters are organized on the domains of scholarly knowledge mentioned above. Chapters 4 and 5 present case studies of well-known and representative Orientologists from the same two main periods, illustrating the points made in the previous chapters.

The book is well written and clearly organized; it includes a number of images and is appended with bibliographical notes on the most important Orientologists. Its title, however, is slightly misleading: it does not include any dates, although using the moniker “Persia” instead of “Iran” implies that the time period under consideration ended prior to 1935.

Volkov makes a valuable contribution to the study of aspects of Russian imperial and Soviet history, the relationship between Russia and Iran, and Oriental studies in Russia and the early Soviet Union. It would be fascinating to expand this research beyond 1941 and examine the dynamics of Russian Oriental studies during the rest of the Soviet period.