Soviet Strategic Interests in the Middle East

Abstract

Generations of Russian rulers have long been interested in the Middle East, in particular the areas situated along their southern border. From the second half of the seventeenth century to the latter part of the nineteenth century, they expanded southward and eastward across penetrable and indeterminate frontiers, impelled by a variable combination of strategic, political, ideological, and economic motives. By the early twentieth century, after a succession of wars with an infirm Ottoman Turkey and Persia and an accord with Britain on Afghanistan, the basic parameters of Russia’s Muslim possessions were established. An even greater expansion of the empire had been frustrated by British power, which prevented Russia from gaining control of the Turkish Straits, acquiring a foothold on the Arabian Gulf, or advancing south of the Oxus River.