Diplomat, Businessman, Traveler, Spy

In 1974, John Le Carré published the first novel in his Karla trilogy, entitled Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In the novel, the professions in a traditional British children's rhyme are used as code names for British spies engaged in cold war drama with the Soviet Union.

I thought about Le Carré this past weekend. We had come to the end of the international symposium I was hosting, devoted to diplomatic and cultural relations between Russia and Iran in the 1820s. After two days of intense conversations, it was time to sum up.

An immensely rich topic, full of intrigue and complicated relationships, "official versions" of tragic events that simply don't ring true, and long-lasting ramifications for varieties of peoples -- from Persians and Russians to Armenians and Georgians, not to mention the English. I had invited twelve scholars from seven countries to come to Ohio State and speak about the period. We had art historians and diplomatic historians, literary scholars and regular historians, experts on the Russian Orient, the Persian court, the Georgian nobility, and the history of Armenia. We had it all. One of our participants -- as often happens -- even implicated the British, claiming conspiracy and competition in the Persian episode of the "Great Game."

But as we were summing up, I was reminded of that old Soviet joke, also known -- as so many great Russian jokes are -- as a vocabulary exercise for students of the Russian language. When speaking of a Soviet intelligence officer, in Russian we use the term "razvedchik," literally the person who seeks knowledge in foreign or unknown lands. However, an intelligence officer from the other side -- any other side at all -- is not a razvedchik, but a "shpion." A spy.

In exploring Russo-Persian relations of the early part of the 19th century, we run up against just such definition problems. Who was Griboedov? And who were his counterparts: the British brothers Henry and George Willock, John MacDonald, John McNeil? What was the role of those who accompanied the young Persian prince Khosrow Mirza when he traveled to Russia? Was Khosrow Mirza merely an emissary or an envoy? or did he have other roles to play? Were his traveling companions seeking also to learn and share the topography of Russia, to dig up useful information about its economy, its political and social structure? What did that make them -- travelers? diplomats? spies?

We know that in addition to participating in negotiations to end the Russo-Persian War of 1826-28, Griboedov had also been working on a project to found a "Transcaucasian Trading Company" on the model of the Russian-American Company or the East India Company. (One of our workshop participants, Anna Aydinyan, published an article about the project several years ago.)

Traditionally we talk about the "poet-diplomat" Alexander Griboedov. But in theory we could use all kinds of different labels to try to get at his activities. The boundary between diplomacy and spycraft is permeable, and perhaps one of the reasons why Griboedov and Turkmenchai continue to be hot buttons for the Iranians.

I learned just what a hot button this word is while planning our Russo-Persian Workshop (see program here). Having hired a designer to make our own event visually memorable, I had originally hoped to use an image on the event poster and program that depicted an even more memorable event:  the signing of an extremely punitive peace treaty known as the Treaty of Turkmanchai at which two of our main players, poet / ambassador Alexander Griboedov and prince Khosrow Mirza, actually met in physical space.

In history Khosrow Mirza became connected to Griboedov primarily because it was he who was chosen to carry his grandfather Fath-Ali-Shah's apology to Tsar Nikolai I after the murder of the Russian ambassador. Several months after the treaty had been signed, in January of 1829, Griboedov's mission in Tehran was famously stormed, and all inhabitants killed. The main reason usually cited for this catastrophe was that Griboedov was in Tehran enforcing the Turkmanchai treaty.

To this day, apparently, when Iranians feel that they are being cheated in a deal of any kind, they cry out "Vai, vai, Turkmanchai!" History may be over, but it isn't forgotten.

There were two lithographs produced of the signing of that treaty, by Russian artist Vladimir Moshkov, and it seemed to us logical to use them as the basis of our promotional materials. In the first image, we see a number of Iranian and Russian diplomats, dignitaries, and military figures, including the young Khosrow Mirza (depicted as smaller than all the other figures, perhaps to denote his tender age, and located at the center of the image). The 16-year-old prince has come to watch as his father, Crown Prince Abbas Mirza, signs the treaty with his Russian counterpart, General Ivan Paskiewicz. Both are depicted seated at the table. In fixing Khosrow's presence at this humiliating event, Moshkov was acting as a war journalist attached to Paskiewicz's army. He could not have known Griboedov's fate, or the role Khosrow would play in the drama just one year later.

In another image we see the two dignitaries shaking hands -- and in the group of Russians off to the right, wearing white trousers, the future ambassador, Alexander Griboedov.

We used portions of both of these images in our poster and program, and my designer showcased the images to represent the idea of "Russo-Persian diplomacy." But in late October of this year, as the symposium approached, I received a panicked email from my co-organizer who had posted news of our symposium to her facebook page. "We must remove that image," she insisted. "Turkmanchai is like a red flag to the Iranians."

Order of the Lion and the Sun,
First Class

In the end, we redesigned all our materials, and the outward face of our workshop is now a stylistically rendered version of the Order of the Lion and the Sun, the medal the Iranian government, starting in 1808 during the Qajar period, awarded to foreigners who had "rendered service to Persia."

That medal, and the idea of "rendering service," seems even more ironic than the concept of Russo-Persian peace (especially given the territorial struggles of the era). Among the medal's recipients were General Ermolov -- no friend of the Persians, he was known as the bloody conqueror of the Caucasus. Ivan Paskewicz, his successor and commander when the Russians forced the Persian defeat in 1828, also was awarded this medal, as was Alexander Griboedov himself.

Other recipients included British diplomat Henry Willock, the doctor to the shah's court John McNeil, and John Malcolm, who in addition to being a former soldier and one-time Governor of Bombay also served as head of the East India Company. Among others, H. Willock and McNeil have been implicated in scheming to undermine the Russians in 1829 and may very well have had something to do with Griboedov's death.

Diplomats, Businessmen, Travelers, Spies. A spectrum of cultural interactions between rivals -- and the makings of a great novel of intrigue and espionage.