Red Mecca: A Palestinian Navigates the Soviet Union
Tuesday, March 17, 2026 3:45 pm – 5:15 pm CET/GMT+1Online (Zoom)
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.
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