Tamara A. Konyashkina

Using Reza Khan’s travel diary about his campaign in Khuzestan, the article examines how the future shah justified his claim to the Iranian throne. It analyzes the diary’s political purpose and the use of Iranian cultural tradition to construct the image of a modern ruler.

The article examines a stage of geopolitical rivalry in Central Eurasia in connection with the centenary of the Moscow treaties of 1921.

Based on the study of the original memoir source “My Biography” by A. Mostoufi, verified by the testimonies of foreign observers, the article examines one of the minor social groups of Iran’s urban population in the second half of the 19th century and the first third of the 20th century. As an integral part of the Iranian city, this group is often viewed by researchers as amorphous and marginal, lacking stable characteristics that would define its homogeneity and permanence, which is also reflected in the contradictory meanings of the lexeme luti. Having analyzed the features of luti as a distinct group actor with its own moral, behavioral, and professional characteristics, the authors conclude that its officially low social status directly contradicts the significance it possessed in the socio-cultural life of the urban community. A wide range of role functions secured this group social prestige in the eyes of both the local patriciate and the democratic part of the urban population.

The article investigates the biography and academic legacy of the famous Russian representative of classical Oriental studies Boris V. Miller (1877–1956). His life along with his scholarly and pedagogical activities reflected turning points in the history of linguistic, folkloristic, historical and ethnographic studies of the Iranian-speaking peoples of the Caucasus — Talysh, Kurds and Tats at the end of the 19th — first half of the 20th century. Professor B.V. Miller is remembered in the history of Oriental studies in Russia as a talented and highly motivated scholar who made a significant contribution to the development of Iranian studies, and as one of the founders of Iranian studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University.

The process of studying modern Iranian literature has just begun. This article is the first attempt in Russian and foreign Iranian philology to systematize and analyze a representative block of modern women’s prose works. The scale of this phenomenon, which got a special impetus for development in the republican period, deserves to be in the focus of research, taking into consideration both the vector of development of Iranian literature and its non-literary role as an important social factor. The main features of women’s prose are the expansion of the thematic range and expressive means used by the authors. The stylistic diversity of women’s prose (social realism, fiction, magical realism) is combined with the similarity of its topic — the denial of the woman’s image in its traditional interpretation.