Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 53 h A Russian Post-Imperial Policy Paper on the Imperial Political Logic Concerning... sian-Afghan Border Line and Our Relationship with the Afghan Government (Zapiska vysshego rossiyskogo politicheskogo agenta v Bukhare P. P. Vveden- skogo, sostavlennaia po porucheniyu Turkestanskoy komissii RSFSR i datiro- vannaya 28.XII.1919 g.) provides a remarkable sample of such an endeavour. I discovered Vvedenskiy’s manuscript in 1998 in the private archive of A. V. Stanishevskiy 1 in Tashkent. His relatives allowed me to photocopy it for a fee. Pavel Petrovich Vvedenskiy (21.12.1880–15.09.1938) read the Middle Eastern Languages at the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages in Moscow and at the Training Section of the First (Asian) Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He served as a Russian diplomat in Iran until May 1915, when he was transferred to the Russian Political Agency in the Emirate of Bukhara where he was in charge of food supplies. He categorically rejected the Bolshevik takeover. For that he was arrested in December 1917 and trans- ferred to Tashkent. However, the Bolsheviks failed to file even politically mo- tivated charges against him and he was quickly released to return to Bukhara where in 1918 Vvedenskiy unsuccessfully tried to facilitate a peace deal be- tween invading Soviet troops and the Emir’s Government. That was followed by his appointment as Advisor to the Bukharan delegation negotiating peace with the Soviets in March 1918. In April 1919 he was kidnapped by the Soviets from the Bukhara cotton mill where he worked as a manager and moved to Tashkent being accused of anti-Soviet activities. No formal charges were properly served against him, not to mention duly substantiated by any hard evidence. The phantasmagorical So- viet reality did not stop there; while still in jail awaiting a proper investigation Vvedenskiy was requested by the RSFSR Turkestan Committee to compile a paper on the Russian-Afghan border demarcation. He was provided with 1 Lt Col Andrey Vladimirovich Stanishevskiy (penname Aziz Niallo) (1904–1993) was a pretty peculiar Soviet spy and counter-intelligence officer turned scholar and writer of Orientalist fic- tion. In 1925–1934 he served at the Soviet Political Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence Service (OGPU) being deployed in the Pamirs in 1928–1931 where he established contacts with local Ismaili religious leaders and collected Ismaili manuscripts. Despite his disability, during WWII he served in the Soviet Army in Central Asia and in 1947–1948 took part in the Soviet-Afghan bor- der demarcation along the river Panj. As a gentleman-scholar, though with no university degree, he was highly respected by many Soviet scholars of Afghanistan and Central Asia. (Abaeva T. Issledovaniya A. V. Stanishevskogo (Aziza Niallo) o Pamire // Strany i narody Vostoka . 16. 1975. P. 262–291; Yusufbekov Kh. Andrei Stanishevskiy. Ofitser i issledovatel’ Pamira. 26.11.2021. URL: https://vatnikstan.ru/history/andrej-stanishevskij (accessed: 14.05.2023). Asthe old Tashkent hands gossiped, he had liked to shroud himself in a clout of mystery by hint- ing at his secret adventures overseas, mystical knowledge and even paranormal abilities resulting from his lifelong exercise of yoga.