Red Mecca: A Palestinian Navigates the Soviet Union

How did early Stalinist Moscow look from an Arab and post-Ottoman perspective? This presentation follows Najati Sidqi (1905-1979), who studied at the Soviet Union’s Communist University for the Toilers of the East as part of a Comintern effort to “Arabize” the Palestinian Communist Party. From dorm arguments to meetings with ordinary Russians, Sidqi’s academic and extracurricular adventures reveal some paradoxes of late-1920s Soviet domestic and foreign policy.

Zoom link

Margaret Litvin is associate professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at Boston University, USA. Her book Red Mecca: The Life and Afterlives of the Arab-Soviet Romance is forthcoming from Princeton University Press. She has recently co-translated Najati Sidqi’s memoir of his Communist years. 

---

For more information, e-mail [email protected].

Time: 3:45 pm – 5:15 pm CET/GMT+1

Location: Online (Zoom)

Subscribe: Save this Event: Subscribe / .ics File