In January 1829, an angry mob in Tehran murdered Russian poet and diplomat Alexander Griboedov, author of the verse comedy and architect of the Russian annexation of the north Caucasus from Persia after the Russo-Persian War. A century later, the Russian formalist writer Yury Tynianov wrote a historical novel about the event entitled . In this wide-ranging study, Anna Aydinyan posits that conceptualizes Orientalism fifty years before Edward Said coined the term. She argues that Tynianov parodied historical works on the Caucasus in his novel in order to critique the ways in which exoticizing the East enabled imperialism and colonization. Analysing literary and non-literary texts on Russia’s relationship with Iran, along with the economic and cultural development of Transcaucasia after the Russo-Persian War, studies Russian culture within the framework of comparative colonialisms and examines the twentieth-century Russian reconsideration of the country’s imperial past.