Средний Восток

The article is devoted to the reflection of the officials of the Russian Foreign Ministry on the problem of accumulating “knowledge about the Orient”, bringing them into the system and implementing into political practice. The key source for the analysis was the two issues of the “Materials on the Study of the East” published on the eve and at the beginning of the Great War, the authors and editors of which sought to raise this problem and propose ways to solve it. The question is raised about the role of expert knowledge in determining the strategy of St.

This article examines the political and economic processes taking place in or related to the Middle East from the mid-30s to 1955. At the work, the author systematizes the prerequisites and reasons for the formation of CENTO, deduced on the basis of the facts set out in the work and the identified cause-and-effect relationships. The following methods were used in the work: abstraction in historical knowledge, cause-and-effect analysis of connections between historical events, historical-system analysis.