By Chaitali B. Roy

in the Soviet Union, their initiation was not easy. But despite hiccups, the students who were motivated more by an interest in getting a useful education than by ideology benefitted from the Soviet government ’s ambitions to expand its influence in the international arena. After the Second World War, in the context of decolonization and formation of a new bi-polar world order, the Soviet Union joined the struggle for developing countries by supporting socialist regimes in Asia and Africa. One such method of support was educating students in Soviet universities.

The first batch of Arab students landed in the Soviet Union in 1959, said Dr Nefedova. “The students were from Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, Yemen, Kuwait, Sudan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria.” Visuals of rare finds including registration cards of the first Arab students from 1959-61 with interesting details flashed on the screen. “The new environment was challenging for the students,” said Dr Nefedova. “The issues faced by the generation of the sixties graduates was different from the ones faced by the seventies.”

Art and culture as a medium of communication and ‘creating mutual awareness’ was accepted in the Soviet Union. In the mid-fifties, a delegation of Soviet artists visited countries in the Middle East. A student exchange programme followed the gradual exchange of fine arts and arts programme. In 1957, Arab art was shown for the first time in the Soviet Union, as part of a youth festival, said Dr Nefedova. Artists from Lebanon, Syria, United Arab Republic (UAE), and Iraq visited the Soviet Union to show their work. “Arab artists of the pre-1950s were in the majority self-taught amateurs. Throughout the 1950s, many European governments and the Soviet Union created dedicated programmes to attract scholars from the Arab world. The competition over the spheres of influence was quite fierce,” observed Dr Nefedova. “By 1957, a programme for international art students was developed by the Soviet Union.”

Motivated not by any particular political sympathies, Arab students travelled to the Soviet Union for higher education. “Various prominent art institutions in the Soviet Union participated in the exchange programme. Foreign students could join a Soviet institute with a full scholarship grant from the Minister of Higher Education.” One of the requirements of the course was learning Russian in a year, which the students did while pursuing their regular studies. Dr Nefedova highlighted the art programmes of two leading Soviet Institutes Vasily Surikov Moscow State Art Institute and the Moscow State Stroganov Academy of Industrial and Applied Arts, but it was interesting to see the extent of influence of the old Soviet bloc with institutions such as the Tbilisi State Academy of Art, Uzbekistan State Institute of Art, Yerevan Insitute of Theatre and Fine Arts and Ukrainian Art Institute featuring in the list.

“Between 1949 and 1991, five hundred thousand international students graduated from the USSR,” said Dr Nefedova. Students from Lebanon (Nazem Irani), Iraq (Mahmoud Sabri), Bahrain (Mansour Rajab), Syria (Milad Chaib), Saudi Arabia (Abdul Sattar Al Mussa) sought admission in Moscow. “Mansour Rajab from Bahrain was the first student from the Gulf,” she informed. Thuraya Al Baqsami, a pioneering artist from Kuwait, featured high in the list “Thuraya Al Baqsami was the first female Arab art student in the USSR. She graduated in 1981 with an art project titled ‘Tales of Alladin’,” Dr Nefedova said. Al-Baqsami who was present in the audience received her Masters in Illustrations from the Surikov Institute in Moscow.

Most of the art students from the Middle East had no prior knowledge of their subjects when they entered university, and consequently, fared badly, initially. The Soviet students, however, were much better prepared. While drawing comparisons between local and international students, Dr Nefedova mentioned issues of discipline, the psychological orientation of students from different cultures and language barriers. It took some years for the Soviet Union to stabilize the programme.

Dr Nefedova also went on to discuss the reasons that motivated the Arab students to join a Soviet Institute. “Especially in the sixties and seventies, among those who joined, some young people were either member of the Communist party or had ideological leanings. Moreover, most of the international students loved Russia and its culture. They enjoyed its rich heritage and wanted to bring this back to their own country.”