Rustam Minnikhanov, the Chairman of the Group of Strategic Vision "Russia - Islamic World" President of Tatarstan, presented Vitaly Naumkin, the Head of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a renowned Orientalist, member of the Group, with the international Primakov Prize for the book "Failed Partnership. Soviet Diplomacy in Saudi Arabia Between World Wars".
The ceremony took place in the framework of the meeting of the leadership of the GSV "Russia - Islamic World" with ambassadors of the OIC countries.
The publication, which is a monograph by the famous Orientalist, is devoted to the formation of Soviet-Saudi relations in the 1920s-1930s. This is the first study of such scope to be published in Russia.
The particular value of Naumkin's work, as reported earlier by the press service of the GSV "Russia-Islamic World", is that it does not focus exclusively on the problems of Saudi Arabia, but is a kind of encyclopedia of the relations between Moscow and the countries of the East. The scholar details little-known pages in the biographies of the most important actors, touching on events not only in Arabia, but also in civil war-ridden Central Asia, as well as in Turkey, Iran and the South Caucasus.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Dmitry Feoktistov / TASS
