Mark Andrew Saroyan (April 6, 1960 – July 21, 1994) was a professor of

Islamic Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

and

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

studies, focusing on

religion Religion is a range of social system, social-cultural systems, including designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics in religion, ethics, or ...

and

ethnicity An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they Collective consciousness, collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, ...

Central Asia Central Asia is a region of Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The countries as a group are also colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as all have names ending with the Persian language, Pers ...

and the

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region spanning Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, comprising parts of Southern Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The Caucasus Mountains, i ...

. Saroyan received his B.A. in history from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

. He later began studying Soviet politics at

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

in 1986. In 1990 he became one of the first doctorate students of Berkeley's Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies program. After his graduation, Saroyan was hired as an assistant professor of political science at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

. At the same time he was diagnosed with a fatal illness. Though he took his position at Harvard, due to his worsening state Saroyan returned to Berkeley in 1993. He died on July 21, 1994, at the age of 34. Saroyan was a unique voice in the field of Soviet studies, especially concerning

Islam in the Soviet Union After it was established on most of the territory of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union remained the world's largest country until it was dissolved in 1991. It covered a large part of Eastern Europe while also spanning the entirety of the C ...

. At a time when the field was focused on elite-politics within

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

proper, Saroyan emphasized

anthropological Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behaviour, wh ...

approaches among the other Soviet republics.Saroyan, 1. Unlike other contemporary scholars such as

Alexandre Bennigsen Alexandre Bennigsen () (20 March 1913 – 3 June 1988) was a scholar of Islam in the Soviet Union. Biography Count Bennigsen was born in an aristocratic family in St Petersburg in 1913. After the Bolshevik Revolution, his family left Russia ...

and

Hélène Carrère d'Encausse Hélène Carrère d'Encausse (; née Zourabichvili; 6 July 1929 – 5 August 2023) was a French political historian who specialised in Russian history. From 1999 until her death in 2023, she served as the Perpetual Secretary of the Académie Fra ...

who portrayed regional Islam as a static, anti-Soviet force, Saroyan examined the constantly shifting nature of the religion and its

elite In political and sociological theory, the elite (, from , to select or to sort out) are a small group of powerful or wealthy people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group. Defined by the ...

in an ever-evolving historical and sociopolitical context.Saroyan, 3. Going against prevailing Western views, Saroyan argued that Islam was not a threat to Soviet rule. More generally, he also argued against the theory, found in both Soviet and Western writings, that Islam, along with other religions, was an

anachronism An anachronism (from the Greek , 'against' and , 'time') is a chronological inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a juxtaposition of people, events, objects, language terms and customs from different time periods. The most common type ...

that would soon disappear from the region.Saroyan, 4. Besides religious issues, Saroyan examined ethnic issues in the former Soviet Union, especially

Armenia–Azerbaijan relations There are no diplomatic relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The two neighboring states had formal governmental relations between 1918 and 1921, during their brief independence from the collapsed Russian Empire, as the First Republic of Arm ...

and the

First Nagorno-Karabakh War The First Nagorno-Karabakh War was an ethnic conflict, ethnic and territorial conflict that took place from February 1988 to May 1994, in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan, between the majority ethnic Armenians of Nag ...

.Saroyan, 6. Saroyan was additionally involved in policy discussions, participating in conferences in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

, and

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

.Saroyan, 2. A skilled

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

, he spoke

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...

Azeri Azeri or Azeri Turk may refer to: * Azeri people, an ethnic group also known as Azerbaijanis * Citizens of Azerbaijan * Azeri language, the modern-day Turkic language * Old Azeri, an extinct Iranian language * Azeri Turk (journal), Academic jour ...

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

Turkish Turkish may refer to: * Something related to Turkey ** Turkish language *** Turkish alphabet ** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation *** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey *** Turkish communities in the former Ottoman Empire * The w ...

, and Uzbek.

Publications

*
Trouble in the Transcaucasus
'.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists The ''Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists'' is a nonprofit organization concerning science and global security issues resulting from accelerating technological advances that have negative consequences for humanity. The ''Bulletin'' publishes conte ...

. Mar 1989. Vol. 45, No. 2. pp. 16–20. *
Rethinking Islam in the Soviet Union
'. in. Susan Gross Solomon ed. Beyond Sovietology: essays in politics and history Armonk:

M.E. Sharpe M. E. Sharpe, Inc., an academic publisher, was founded by Myron Emanuel Sharpe in 1958 with the original purpose of publishing translations from Russian in the social sciences and humanities. These translations were published in a series of jou ...

, 1993. pp. 23–48 *Mark Saroyan, ''Beyond the Nation-State: Culture and Ethnic Politics in Soviet Transcaucasia'' in Ronald Suny ed. Nationalism and Social Change. University of Michigan Press, 1996).
The Armenian Protests: Is It Passion or Politics?
GAIA Research Series. 1997.

Notes

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Saroyan, Mark 1960 births 1994 deaths American people of Armenian descent Central Asian studies scholars University of California, Berkeley alumni Princeton University alumni Harvard University faculty Islam in the Soviet Union