Доклады Международного конгресса ИИСАА. Т. 1

II. Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asia / Ближний Восток, Кавказ и Центральная Азия Доклады Международного конгресса по источниковедению и историографии стран Азии и Африки. Т. 1. 2020 97 In treating the historical polemical accounts on Ismailism, Ivanow also encountered contemporary attacks and hostility from institutions and individ- uals, who for a variety of reasons were trying to block his path as well as that of Ismaili studies. He goes as far as to name the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as alleging a connection between Ismaili studies, the theories of Communism, and as financing ‘academic publications’ and talks on the ‘Order of Assassins’. 1 Obviously, there was not such a connection between the Ismailis and Communism. Probably, the CIA concluded this purely as a result of Iva- now’s Russian nationality. Since he came from St Petersburg, the capital of Tsarist Russia and the hub of Socialist-Revolu- tionary Party of the time, the CIA was aware of Ivanow’s sojourn in British India and viewed him as a possible spy and Russian agent. However, as they could not find any evidence of his asso- ciation with the Okhranka secret service intelligence, or its successor organizations, namely the Soviet Union’s Vserossiyaskaya ChrezvychaynayaKomissiya (VChК/Cheka), or the later Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bez- pasnosti (KGB), the CIAtried to discredit his work for the Ismaili community in India. However, it was not just the CIA that was causing him a headache. Ivanow also expressed his dismay and frustration with the academic council of the Mumbai branch of the Royal Asiatic Society for rejecting the publication of Ismaili literature on the grounds of a potential threat coming from the Ismaili “assassins” and that the works, if published, might provoke riots. Ivanow wondered how the most educated people in India were capable of feeding and believing such lies. 2 What he feared most, as he wrote, was that “a lie, however ridiculously absurd it may be, by constant repetition become most unassailable truth”. 3 It seems that thus scare-mongering only served to deepen Ivanow’s desire to uncover historical truths. 1 Ivanow W. Autobiography. P. 88–89. 2 Ivanow W. Autobiography. P. 91–93. 3 Ivanow W. Ibn Al-Qaddah. P. i. W. Iwanov. Ibn al-Qadah (The Alleged Founder of Ismailism)