Moscow-Lipetsk: Inform LLC, 2007. 382 p.

At present, Russian historiography is in the process of rethinking the history of international relations, an important component of which was the foreign policy of the Russian Empire - Soviet Russia - USSR. Thanks to the new source base, stable trends in the diplomatic struggle of the great powers in the East in the XX century are revealed. Given the specifics of Soviet foreign policy actions in the 1920s and 1930s, researchers pay close attention to studying the activities of the Comintern in various regions of the world.

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In this connection, the new book by Yu. N.Tikhonov pays considerable attention to the attempts of the Comintern to create an "Afghan corridor" for exporting the revolution to British India.

Various subjects of cooperation between Eastern nationalists and the Comintern in Afghanistan have been repeatedly covered by Russian and foreign scientists. Yu. N. Tikhonov chose the "Pashtun" direction in the Comintern's activities as the subject of his research, which for a long time in Russian historiography for a number of reasons was not given due attention. The novelty of the issue and the extensive documentary base allowed the author to fill in a significant gap in the history of Soviet-Afghan relations and the "Big Game" in Central Asia.

The concept of the monograph is based on an integrated approach: against the background of the struggle of Pashtun tribes against England and the political situation around Afghanistan, the attempts of the enemies of the British Empire to provoke a powerful armed uprising in India and Southern Afghanistan in order to bind a significant part of the British armed forces are traced. Coverage of the activities of Comintern structures provides a deeper understanding of the complexity of international relations in the Central Asian region.

Yu. N. Tikhonov's research is based on a thorough study of archival documents, many of which were first introduced into scientific circulation. The author used materials from the collections of the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation( WUA of the Russian Federation), the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), and the Russian State Military Archive (RGVA). Separately, we should mention the use of documents from the archives of the Soviet (archives of the Foreign Intelligence Service and the Federal Security Service) and British special services (recently declassified in England Fund of Indian Political Intelligence-IPR). Some of these sources are published in the appendix of the book, which significantly increased its value for historians.

The analysis of these materials allowed Yu. N. Tikhonov to clarify a number of points in the activities of the Turkestan Bureau of the ICCI and discover previously unknown "Afghan" episodes in the work of the Comintern. Thus, in my opinion, the author of the monograph managed to solve the difficult problem of separating the diplomatic and Comintern work of the first Soviet plenipotentiaries in Kabul, who were also representatives of the Comintern in Central Asia.

Thanks to valuable sources, the author was able to recreate the general scheme of the Comintern's illegal network in Turkestan, Afghanistan, and India. At the same time, he was able to critically assess the real results of Comintern activity in the "Afghan corridor". The attempt to export the socialist revolution to Asian countries was clearly a gamble, but thanks to the huge material resources provided by the Soviet leadership to the Comintern, it helped create a network of Comintern cells in the Pashtun tribal zone by the mid-1920s.

Yu. N. Tikhonov was able to cover in detail the activities of the so-called Kabul center of Indian nationalists, who collaborated with the Communist International on the basis of the "tribal platform", which involved the preparation of an anti-British armed uprising in the area of the Indo-Afghan border. If the beginning of the work of this "center "was sufficiently covered in historiography, then the last years of its activity remained a" white " spot.

For the first time in Russian historiography, the book highlights the attempts of the Comintern leadership to activate illegal work in Central Asian countries in 1925 and shows the close interaction of Comintern structures with the NKID and Soviet intelligence.

The problem chosen by the author (the role of Pashtun tribes in the rivalry of the great powers in Central Asia) did not allow him to continue studying the activities of the Comintern in Afghanistan and India after 1925. In the late 1920s and on the eve of World War II, the Comintern focused its attention on supporting the Indian Communist Party, and Moscow abandoned plans to organize an anti-British armed uprising.

The book's rich factual material provides food for thought. Thus, using the "Afghan" example, the monograph deals with the problem of cooperation with the Comintern of various Eastern religious brotherhoods and sects. The activity of the Comintern in this direction is poorly studied in Russian Oriental studies, although the development of this problem is very promising for researchers. From the contents of the book, it becomes obvious that the interaction of the Comintern and Indian Wahhabis in the struggle against England brought the Comintern the first significant results in British India.

In my opinion, the author should have paid more attention to the Comintern's attempts to create a "people's revolutionary party"in Afghanistan. The very fact of such "initiatives"

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it speaks volumes. Its study would allow us to more fully cover the policy of the USSR in the "Afghan corridor".

Separately, it should be noted that Yu. N. Tikhonov often uses the term "Afghan corridor" in his work, which he took from the NCID documents. The accuracy of this expression, which defines the essence of the policy of the Bolshevik leadership in relation to Afghanistan, makes it reasonable to introduce it into scientific circulation.

Yu. N. Tikhonov's monograph is a relevant and informative work, which, taking into account the achievements of domestic and foreign historiography, on the basis of new documents, makes a successful attempt to eliminate a number of" white spots " in the history of Soviet foreign policy and the activities of the Comintern in the Middle East. It deserves the attention of professional historians and a wide range of orientalists.

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