Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides archive-based studies on the development of Soviet projects of Orientology and Oriental archaeology, we zoom in on the US perspective on how Oriental studies were conducted in the USSR. In order to provide a case for direct comparison, we include an analysis of the development of Japanese studies in the United States, as well as a chapter on the political role of Oriental studies in Yugoslavia another Cold War socialist state with a sizable own 'Oriental' population, the Muslim Bosniaks. Masha Kirasirova's 'Orients Compared: US and Soviet Imaginaries of the Modern Middle East'. Kirasirova first elaborates the different historical trajectories of US and Russian Orientology before the Second World War, including the place of missionary writings on Islam and the Orient in both Russia and the US.