Window on Eurasia

Iranians Love Russians with an Almost Irrational Love’

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 3, 2006 – Iranians “love Russians almost irrationally,”
according to a Moscow journalist who travelled to several cities there.
But many of the residents of that country know little about their
northern neighbor, and the images of it they now get on television are
increasingly contradictory.

Last week, the Moscow newspaper “Gazeta” published a long article
by Nadezhda Kevorkova about her visit to Isfahan, Qum, Tehran and other
Iranian cities, in which she devoted particular attention to the
attitudes Iranians have toward Russia and Russians
[http://www.gzt.ru/society/2006/06/29/210706.html].

She reported that Iranians now have two very different images of Russia
that many of them are unable to combine. Domestic Iranian television
continues to show upbeat films from and about the Soviet period, but
satellite television shows many of the Russian Federation’s current
difficulties.

As a result, Kevorkova said, Iranians are very interested in learning
about their northern neighbor from Russian visitors, almost all of whom
are men, as to which of these images is correct and which is false,
even though they find it hard to believe some things about Russia, including
the near total closure of mosques in Soviet times.

One reason why Russians currently enjoy an especially positive image
among many Iranians, Kevorkova continued, is that Russians are not
fighting on the side of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, something that
has caused most to forget Soviet assistance to Saddam Hussein during
his war with Iran 15 years ago.

The Iranians she encountered, Kevorkova wrote, were especially eager to
tell her that many ourside Iran have misunderstand what is going on
with the ethnic Azeris who live there, a group whom Iranians insisted are
well integrated into Iranian society regardless of what the Russian or
other international media have suggested.

Many Iranians said that the Azeri protests against the publication of a
cartoon showing a cockroach speaking Azeri Turkish had been “provoked
from outside.” And they told Kevorkova that “it is strange” that
Russians and others do not know that “our spiritual leader Khameniei
is an [ethnic] Azerbaijani.”

Kevorkova made three other comments of interest. First, she said that
the success of Akhminezhad, the outspoken president of Iran who has
called for the destruction of Israel, was rooted less in Islam than in
the fact that many Iranians viewed him as more secular than his opponent.

The current Iranian president, Kevorkova said Iranians had told her,
was popular precisely because he is neither “a mulla who speaks with a
load voice” nor “an ayatollah who speaks in a way that can be
scarcely heard.” Instead, she said, he is viewed as someone
“simple” and “direct” and thus an improvement on the past.

Second, Kevorkova noted, while many “simple” Iranians continue to
be under the sway of the ideas of Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian
intelligentsia is “fed up” with him and the rule fo the mullahs,
and their protest “is expressed chiefly through the theater and a certain
freeness of dress.”

Several Iranian intellectuals told her that “in the theater it is
impossible to control everything” and therefore, theater has become
“the most oppositionist” part of Iranian life. Normally, they
added, theaters are full, but just now there is no audience. The reason?
Iranians like many people around the world are watching World Cup soccer.

And third, she added, the number of foreigners in Iran, including
Americans and people from the Russian Federation, is much higher than
many outsiders think. Most of them are studying Islam, Persian and
Arabic, and they plan to return to their own countries to spread to the
faith.

Kevorkova provided the following key detail: The American students,
including women, openly provided their names, but the female students
from Russia “asked that they not be photographed and changed their
names” – a measure of both differences in national cultures and the
level of the tolerance they expect on their return home.

In addition, the Moscow writer concluded with the following piece of
typical but instructive travel writing. “Samovars,” she says,
“were brought to Iran by Cossacks who served as body guards of the
shahs. Many Russians fled from the Russian tsar” to Iran in the last
century – particularly the Old Believers.

“Their children are willingly taken for military service” in their
new place of residence. Ethnic Russians, Kevorkova added, “have
preserved their faith,” as have the Armenians, but Georgians who have
moved to Iran, she suggested, “have adopted Islam,” the religion of
their new neighbors.