On November 12-14, 2014, the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences hosted the Third International Scientific Conference "Archival Oriental Studies". The idea of holding such conferences periodically belongs to Vitaly Ivanovich Sheremet (1940-2012), who for many years headed the archival publications sector of the Department of Oriental History of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the magazine "Eastern Archive"published by the sector. Colleagues in the sector and the department's management supported this proposal, based on the fact that Russian Oriental Studies has a huge fund of archival materials on various branches of orientalism, on many countries and peoples of the East. These materials include official documents (such as diplomatic reports), reviews and notes from Orientalists, personal diaries, memoirs, maps, letters, photographs, and sketches. Without this vast heritage, it is impossible to imagine any Oriental studies, be it philosophy, history, economics, politics or culture of the countries of the East.

Identifying and collecting archival materials is a time-consuming process. These materials sometimes vary in nature, degree of reliability, safety and readability. Repositories and archival collections and collections where Oriental archival materials can be found are often even unpredictable, and therefore archival research can be equated with a scientific expedition, and the discovery of a document previously unknown to science can be equated with the discovery of a new historical monument.

In Russian Oriental studies, the collection, scientific processing and publication of written sources, including archival ones, has traditionally been one of the priority areas. The growing interest in research and publication of archival rarities is associated not only with purely scientific, academic tasks. Today, practical Oriental studies are actively developing, which is caused both by the strengthening of the role of the Eastern countries in the world economy and politics, and by the emergence of independent Central Asian and Transcaucasian states that were formerly part of the USSR on the southern borders of Russia.

Materials of interest to Orientalists are somehow identified only in a small number of state and departmental archives. As for other archives, the documents on the countries of the East stored there are usually not allocated to separate funds, are described superficially and incompletely, but are studied fragmentally. It is safe to say that further identification of materials in these archives, primarily regional ones, which are practically unknown to Orientalists, promises many valuable finds. So the identification and description of Oriental collections in Russian archives, both central and local, is a big and important task for the long term. At some distance, we can see systematic, purposeful work in the relevant archives of the near and far abroad.

In this regard, a broad cooperation of Orientalists and professional archivists, archive workers becomes relevant. One of the forms of such cooperation is a periodical scientific publication - the magazine "Eastern Archive", another is regular meetings of orientalists at specialized scientific conferences.

The first International scientific conference "Archival Oriental Studies" was held in Moscow on June 21-23, 2008. Its participants, including many regular contributors to the Eastern Archive, agreed to hold such conferences every three years. The second conference was held on November 16-18, 2011. The third one was dedicated to the memory of V. I. Sheremet.

Applications for participation in the conference were submitted by 67 researchers from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Ufa, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Chita, Vladivostok, Elista, Makhachkala, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Lipetsk and Rostov-on-Don, as well as from Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Poland. Unfortunately, not all nonresident orientalists who submitted their abstracts were able to come to Moscow. By the beginning of the conference, a special collection*was published.

The plenary session was opened by the Deputy Chairman of the organizing committee, zav. Department of Oriental History D. D. Vasiliev. T. N. Zagorodnikova (Institute of Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences) made a speech at the plenary session and devoted her report to the issues of cooperation and collaboration in archival research. Usually, scientists are ready to share their best practices, but relations with archives develop in different ways. T. N. Zagorodnikova cited the Moscow Art Theater Museum as a negative example, and the Russian Museum as a positive one.

The conference sessions were not divided into sections. However, each meeting, as a rule, was devoted to one issue or a specific region.

Most of the reports were related to the First World War, which was celebrated in 2014 as the centenary of its outbreak. Naturally, the conference participants turned to its "Eastern dimension". T. A. Filippova (IB RAS) presented the results of studying the image of the Turk in Russian satirical journalism of the First World War era. This historical "enemy from the East" was the main object of deconstruction of specific wartime phobias in the report. D. D. Vasiliev (IB RAS) spoke about the trips of Russian scientists to the Caucasian Front during the First World War. He showed some photos taken during scientific expeditions in Eastern Anatolia. A. T. Sibgatullina (IB RAS) devoted her report to the events in Turkey held to mark the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War. This includes publishing new documents, research work, organizing conferences and symposiums, searching for burial sites of Ottoman prisoners of war in Russia, and preparing documentaries. Tunkay Ogun (Mughla Sitki Koman University, Ankara, Turkey) presented the conference participants with the results of a study on the supply of Ottoman troops on the Caucasian Front during the First World War. In his opinion, the Turkish archives show that the supply of the army was insufficient. V. G. Buchert (Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences) made a report on preparations for the capture of Istanbul during the First World War. Since control of the city inevitably put the ecclesiastical issue on the agenda, the Russian authorities turned to Academician F. I. Uspensky for advice. He prepared a note in which he expressed his opinion on the Ecumenical Patriarch and the Cathedral of St. Sophia turned into a mosque by the Turks.

T. A. Anikeyeva (IB RAS) spoke about the reflection of the First World War in Turkish literature. Many prose works are devoted to it, but it is especially widely represented in poetry and folklore. L. V. Zelenina (IB RAS) turned to the publications of two English publications before the outbreak of the First World War, devoted to the south of Russia from the Caspian Sea to the Altai. These were the travel notes of the writer and traveler Stephen Graham. G. V. Goryachkin (ISAA MSU) reported on the state of Russian property in Palestine after the end of the war. According to former tsarist diplomats who visited the Holy Land during this period, part of the real estate belonging to Russia was destroyed in the course of military operations, while the other part was occupied by the British occupation forces. The report of V. V. Poznahirev (Smolny Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences) was devoted to the problem of the stay of prisoners of war and "civilian prisoners" of the Ottoman Empire in Russia in 1914-1918. education, St. Petersburg). After studying a large number of archival documents, he came to the conclusion that, in general, the interned Turks were not in a worse position compared to their European allies. Belyakov (IB RAS) spoke about the fate of Russian servicemen released by the British from Turkish captivity and placed in transit camps in Egypt in 1918-1920. While waiting for repatriation, some of them started self-education.

The second thematic block of the conference consisted of reviews of materials and documents from various archives.

A. A. Kornilov (Lobachevsky Nizhny Novgorod State University) presented a report on the collection of documents of the British Colonial Office in the Assad Library in Damascus. He considered the issues of origin, acquisition, description and source value

* III International Scientific Conference "Archival Oriental Studies". Moscow, November 12-14, 2014. Moscow: IV RAS, 2014. 144 p.

collections. The report of N. V. Sukhov (IB RAS) was an overview of the archives of Russian emigration in Morocco, where the author worked for several years as a representative of Rossotrudnichestvo. The report of A. V. Antoshin (Ural Federal University, Yekaterinburg) was also devoted to Russian emigrants in Morocco. Yu. A. Averyanov (IV RAS) gave a general description of the Ottoman documents in the archive of the Russian Panteleimon Monastery on Mount Athos. yes). Arapov (MSU) studied archival materials of the Central Asian Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b). A. E. Lokshin (Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) reviewed documentary materials on the history of relations between the USSR and the Jewish community of Palestine (Yishuv) and the State of Israel, stored in the Moscow archives.

The third thematic block of the conference was devoted to the history of Russian Oriental studies. R. M. Valeev (Volga Federal University, Kazan) presented an overview of Mirza A. K. Kazembek's unpublished letters to Academician H. D. Frenu. I. V. Lukoyanov (St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) devoted a report to the writer, journalist, and sinologist-orientalist To S. N. Syromyatnikov, and to I. S. Maslikov (Novosibirsk) spoke about the little-known works of B. A. Dorn, about scientific instruments of the past, in particular astrolabes. S. Marakhonova (IVR RAS, St. Petersburg) told about the work of the Harvard Japanese scholar S. Eliseev.

Further work of the conference was carried out in regional blocks. The first of them is the Middle East and North Africa. N. A. Zherlshchyna (Institute of Africa of the Russian Academy of Sciences) and I. Y. Smirnova (Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) discussed the Soviet press coverage of the Bizerte crisis in Tunisia in 1961-1962 and the Church and diplomatic presence of Great Britain in the Holy Land on the eve of the Crimean War. L. A. Gerd (St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) analyzed archival materials about the activities of Archimandrite Antonin (Kapustin) in the Christian East in the 1850s. K. A. Vakh (Indrik Publishing House, Moscow) made a report on the history of the opening of the Russian consulate in Jerusalem.

The next group of reports was devoted to Central Asia. A.D. Vasiliev (IV RAS) examined the materials of the RAS Archive on the reform of the writing system of the Turkic peoples of the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s. T. V. Kotyukova (IVI RAS) presented an overview of E. N. Malitskaya's memoirs about her father, the first elected head of the Tashkent self-government N. G. Malitsky, and R. Y. Pochekaev (Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg) highlighted the policy of the Russian authorities on the "emancipation" of women in Kazakhstan and Central Asia in the late XIX - early XX centuries.

Two reports were devoted to Afghanistan. N. N. Lisitsyna (Moscow State University named after M. A. Sholokhov) noted that the official publication in Russia of documents on the demarcation of borders in Afghanistan in 1885 was censored. A. A. Kartashov (Center, FSB Archive) described the regime of Nadir Shah (1929-1933), based on the documents CA of the FSB.

One report was devoted to India and Vietnam by L. A. Chereshnev (Lipetsk State Pedagogical University). un-t), based on documents from the National Archives of India, analyzed the problem of integration of the principality of Hyderabad in the second half of 1947 and 1948. A. A. Sokolov (IB RAS) made a report on the Soviet military mission in Saigon in 1946-1947. Declassified documents from the State Archive of the Russian Federation in 2012 supplemented the data previously known from French sources and made it possible to present the activities of the Soviet mission more objectively, although they left some questions open.

The last section included reports on the Far East. M. V. Yanova (Kalmyk State University, Elista) focused on the actual problems of modern Altaistics and Mongolian studies. V. V. Dosovitskaya (Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences) analyzed Japan's plans in Manchuria on the eve of World War II. V. S. Khristoforov (Center, FSB Archive) presented an overview of documents on the history of Mongolia stored in the FSB archives V. A. Koroleva (Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography of the Peoples of the Far East to the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladivostok) analyzed the perception of music and theater of the East by domestic and foreign researchers of the late XIX - early XX centuries. N. F. Leshchenko (IB RAS) - Sakhalin Island in the reports of E. V. Putyatin, and A. S. Kadyrbaev (IB RAS) - the history of Russian America and the reasons for its sale to the United States.

As you can see, the topics of the reports presented at the conference were very diverse. But they all had a common core - reliance on archival documents. At the final meeting, it was decided to hold the next meeting in November 2017. Priority topics are also suggested: "The October Revolution in Russia and the Countries of the East" and "The History of Russian Oriental Studies in connection with the 200th anniversary of the Institute of Oriental Studies celebrated in 2018".

Permanent link to this publication: