(120-day) lifting of U.N. sanctions on civilian goods. This meant that most of the Russian oil production agreements that had been signed with the Iraqi government remained in limbo, although Moscow did profit from the agreements made under the U.N.-approved “oil-for-food” program.
When the George W. Bush administration came to office, it initially sought to toughen sanctions against Iraq, especially on “dual-use” items with military capability, such as heavy trucks (which could carry missiles). Russia opposed the U.S. policy, seeking instead to weaken the sanctions. The situation changed, however, after September 11, 2001, when there was a marked increase in U.S.-Russian cooperation, and the two countries worked together to work out a mutually acceptable list of goods to be sanctioned. Russia, however, ran into problems when the U.S. attacked Iraq in March 2003. Russia condemned the attack, and U.S.-Russian relations deteriorated as a result, although there was a rapprochement at the end of the war when Russia supported the U.S.-sponsored UN Security Council resolution 1483 that confirmed U.S. control of Iraq. See also: IRAN, RELATIONS WITH; PERSIAN GULF WAR; UNITED STATES, RELATIONS WITH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Freedman, Robert O. (2001). Russian Policy Toward the Middle East Since the Collapse of the Soviet Union: The Yeltsin Legacy and the Challenge for Putin (The Donald W. Treadgold Papers in Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies, no. 33). Seattle: Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington. Nizamedden, Talal. (1999). Russia and the Middle East. New York: St. Martin’s. Rumer, Eugene. (2000). Dangerous Drift: Russia’s Middle East Policy. Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Shaffer, Brenda. (2001). Partners in Need: The Strategic Relationship of Russia and Iran. Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Vassiliev, Alexei. (1993). Russian Policy in the Middle East: From Messiasism to Pragmatism. Reading, UK: Ithaca Press.
“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” With these words on March 5, 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill marked out the beginning of the Cold War and a division of Europe that would last nearly forty-five years. Churchill’s metaphorical iron curtain brought an end to the uncomfortable Soviet-Anglo-American alliance against Nazi Germany and began the process of physically dividing Europe into two spheres of influence. In his speech Churchill recognized the “valiant Russian people” and Josef Stalin’s role in the destruction of Hitler’s military, but then asserted that Soviet influence and control had descended across Eastern Europe, thereby threatening the safety and security of the entire continent through “fifth columns” and “indefinite expansion of [Soviet] power and doctrines.” In even more provocative language Churchill equated Stalin with Adolph Hitler by telling his American audience that the Anglo-American alliance must act swiftly to prevent another catastrophe, this time communist instead of fascist, from befalling Europe.
In response, Stalin also equated Churchill with Hitler. Stalin rebuked Churchill for using odious Nazi racial theory in his suggestion that the nations of the English-speaking world must unite against this new threat. For Stalin this smacked of racial domination of the rest of the world. He noted that Soviet casualties (which he grossly under-counted) far outweighed the deaths of the other allies combined and that therefore Europe owed a debt to the USSR, not to the United States as Churchill claimed, for saving the continent from Hitler. Stalin explained his intentions in occupying what would become known as the Eastern Bloc: After such devastating losses, was it not logical, he asked, to try to find peaceful governments on the Soviet border? Stalin conceded Churchill’s point that communist parties were growing, but argued that this
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was due to the failures of the West, not Soviet occupation. The people for whom Churchill had such disdain, according to Stalin, were moving toward leftist parties because the communists throughout Europe were some of the first and fiercest foes of fascism. Moreover, he noted that this was precisely why British citizens voted Churchill out of power in favor of the Labor Party.
By linking the other to Hitler, both men sought to demonize their one-time ally and convince their audiences that a new war against an equal evil was on the horizon. This set the tone for the rest of the Cold War as the western powers established the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, and NATO, to which the USSR responded in quick succession. The chief battleground was divided Germany and Berlin. Any escalation by one side was quickly met by the other, as both sides operated on mistaken assumptions that a war for world dominance (or at least regional dominance) was at hand. In short, the “Iron Curtain” speech, the real title of which was “Sinews of Peace,” created a metaphorical division of Europe that soon became a reality. This division only began to erode in 1989 with the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. See also: COLD WAR; GERMANY, RELATIONS WITH; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH; WORLD WAR II
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alperovitz, Gar. (1965). Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam; The Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power. New York: Simon and Schuster. Gaddis, John Lewis. (1997). We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kort, Michael. (1998). The Columbia Guide to the Cold War. New York: Columbia University Press. McCauley, Martin. (1995). The Origins of the Cold War, 1941- 1949. New York: Longman.
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From the beginning, Rus and its successors have interacted with Muslims as neighbors, rulers, and subjects. Long-distance trade in silver from Muslim lands provided the impetus for the establishment of the first Rus principalities, and Islam arrived in the lands of Rus before Christianity. The rulers of the Volga Bulghar state converted to Islam at the turn of the tenth century, several decades before Vladimir’s conversion to Christianity in 988 C.E. The Bulghar state was destroyed between 1236 and 1237 by the Mongols, who then went on to subjugate the principalities of Rus. The conversion to Islam in 1327 of ?zbek Khan, the ruler of the Golden Horde, meant that political overlordship of the lands of Rus was in the hands of Muslims for over a century. As the power relationship between Muscovy and the Golden Horde began to shift, Muscovite princes found themselves actively involved in its succession struggles. In 1552 Ivan IV conquered Kazan, the most prominent of the successor states of the Golden Horde, and began a long process of territorial expansion, which brought a diverse group of Muslims under Russian rule by the end of the nineteenth century.
THE TSARIST STATE AND ITS MUSLIM POPULATION
Muscovy acquired its first Muslim subjects as early as 1392, when the so-called Mishar Tatars, who inhabited what is now Nizhny Novgorod province, entered the service of Muscovite princes. The khans of Kasymov, a dynasty that lost out in the succession struggles of the Golden Horde, came under Muscovite protection in the mid-fifteenth century and became a privileged service elite. Nevertheless, the conquest of Kazan was a turning point, for it opened up the steppe to gradual Muscovite expansion. Over the next two centuries Muscovy acquired numerous Muslim subjects as it asserted suzerainty over the Bashkir and Kazakh steppes. In 1783 Catherine II annexed Crimea, the last of the successors of the Golden Horde, and late-eighteenth-century expansion brought Russia to the Caucasus. While the annexation of the Transcau-casian principalities (including present-day Azerbaijan) was accomplished with relative ease, the conquest of the Caucasus consumed Russian energies for the first half of the nineteenth century. The final subjugation of Caucasian tribes was complete only with the capture of their military and spiritual leader, Shamil, in 1859. Finally, in the last major territorial expansion of its history, Russia subjugated the Central Asian khanates of Khiva, Bukhara, and Kokand in a series of military campaigns between 1864 and 1876. Kokand was abolished entirely, and large parts of the territory of Khiva and Bukhara were also annexed to form the province of Turkestan. The remaining territories of Khiva and Bukhara were turned into Russian proISLAM
Muslims pray at Moscow’s principal mosque, March 5, 2001. © REUTERS NEWMEDIA INC./CORBIS tectorates in which traditional rulers enjoyed wide-ranging autonomy in internal affairs, but where external economic and political relations were under the control of Russia. The conquest of Central Asia dramatically increased the size of the empire’s Muslim population, which stood at more than fourteen million at the time of the
