On October 4, 2013, the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences hosted an open scientific seminar "Colonial Taiwan: Results and Prospects of Studying in Russia", organized and conducted jointly by the staff of the Center for Taiwanese Studies, the Center for Japanese Studies, the Department of China of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Takuseku University of Japan. In addition to employees of these institutions, the meeting was also attended by invited colleagues-Sinologists from the Institute of Chinese Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The purpose of the seminar was to discuss the results and prospects of the now one-year scientific cooperation between the Institute of Information Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Takuseku University.

The seminar participants listened to the reports of the Head of the Center for Taiwan Studies V. TS Golovachev, Professor of Takuseku University V. E. Molodyakov and post-graduate student of the Department of China of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences V. A. Perminova. The speakers ' presentations were followed by a discussion of their stated topics, the main points of which are briefly presented in this review.

E. V. Molodyakova, Deputy Director of the Institute and Head of the Center for Japanese Studies of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, opened the meeting by acting as its chairman and shared with her colleagues her thoughts on the ongoing international project. In particular, E. V. Molodyakova noted that the open scientific meeting on "Colonial Taiwan: results and prospects of Studying in Russia" is the first public event organized by the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the framework of a joint project with Takuseku University on the island's history in the colonial period. A year ago, Takushoku University held a similar event in Tokyo, but with a different agenda. It is assumed that in the future, Taiwanese colleagues will also join the project.

According to E. V. Molodyakova, a special feature of the project is that both Sinologists and Japanese people participate in it. There is an opinion that Taiwan is nothing more than a province of China, and not one of the main ones, so its study should belong entirely to the field of sinology. But this opinion is not entirely correct. Although Sinologists should play the first fiddle in exploring the island, it should be remembered that Taiwan (Formosa) remained the object of intense competition of Western colonial powers for a long time, and then for half a century (1895-1945) it was a Japanese colony.

Without the participation of Japanese people in the study of Taiwan can not do. But, surprisingly, until recently, they hardly touched on the history of colonial Taiwan, as if the island was not a Japanese colony. The reasons for this lack of attention are not very clear. Perhaps, at first, after the war, it was influenced by big politics that prevented the study of Taiwan as a territory with an "uncertain status". And then the near-scientific conjuncture changed again in an unfavorable way. According to E. V. Molodyakova, the history of the Japanese colonial Empire and colonial policy is not sufficiently studied in Russia today. There are valuable works on Korea and Manchuria, but Taiwan still remains a terra incognita, except for the valuable book "Taiwan and its History (XIX century)" published in 1978 by Fanny Alexandrovna Toder, which also examines the beginning of the Japanese colonial period. Just this "white spot" should be eliminated by joint efforts of the project participants.

Before the revolution, and after it until the Second World War, Taiwan remained in the field of view of domestic orientalists, analysts, travelers and journalists. In different years, it was visited and written about by such famous scientists as D. M. Pozdneev and S. P. Eliseev, N. I. Vavilov and N. A. Nevsky. Less well-known today, Terentyev, Ibis and Moltrecht have left valuable accounts of their travels. This topic was covered by the first report "Russian travelers and Scientists in Taiwan", which was presented by one of the initiators of the project of the Institute of Information Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences V. TS.Golovachev.

According to the speaker, prior to the 1860s, information about Taiwan (Formosa)reached Russia they were secondary, random, and unsystematic in nature. Information about the island came to Russia almost exclusively from Western missionaries who had been active in China and Taiwan since the early 17th century. Very rare secondary news about the island came from Russian missionaries who had settled in Beijing since 1718.

It was only after China signed a series of unequal treaties with Western powers, which opened China's borders to foreigners at the turn of the 1860s, that the Russians were able to

free to visit and explore the island. But even after that, it remained an overseas backwater for Russians for a long time. The scientific study of Taiwan in Russia was greatly hindered by its remoteness, lack of information, scientific forces and state interest. Until the late 1920s, field research was conducted spontaneously, sporadically, mainly due to the personal enthusiasm of individual Russian scientists and travelers. And then they appeared there only 60 years later, in the 1990s.

The island's international importance increased dramatically in the early 1870s, when it attracted the attention of Japan. The Japanese military expedition to Formosa in 1874 was the first test of strength for the future colonial empire. This expedition inevitably attracted the attention of Western and Russian diplomats. In those years, Russian military sailors actively joined the collection of information about Taiwan, whose reports contained the most valuable, sometimes unique information about the island "first-hand". In particular, of great interest is the "Letter to the editor of the Pictorial Review from Nagasaki" sent in 1874 by Ensign P. I. Ibis (1852-1877) of the Russian Navy, which contained a detailed description of the entire course of the Japanese military campaign.

Studying the events of 1874 inspired P. Ibis to a real scientific feat - in the winter of 1875, two months after the end of the Japanese expedition, he soloed an expedition to the island. Ibis 'article" Excursion to Formosa", published in 1876 in Russian in the journal "Marine Collection", and then published in 1877 in German in the magazine "Globe", was the first systematic review of history and politics in Taiwan, performed by a Russian author. As for the data personally obtained by the Ibis, their scientific significance is enormous and requires further study.

In the 20 years since the events of 1874, the Chinese authorities have implemented a number of state transformations to strengthen effective governance and their sovereignty over the island. But this important period has not found a noticeable reflection in the works of Russian scientists.

A new reason for the surge of world attention to Formosa was the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-1895, after which the island was captured by Japan. The course of the war, the conclusion of the Shimonoseki Peace Treaty, the creation of the" Taiwan Republic", the occupation and annexation of the island by the Japanese were regularly covered in the Russian press. Most of the magazine articles of those years were cursory and general in nature. But in a number of essays, the reasons for Japan's colonial claims were precisely named. In the first year after the capture of Formosa, short articles still appeared in the Russian press announcing the anti-Japanese actions of the natives. But after 1896, the topic of Japanese administration of the island again fell out of the attention of the Russian press and became the subject of growing interest only before the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.

If after the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-1895, Russians could still condescendingly assume that Japan's successes "give it the right to become one of the European states," then Russia's defeat during the Russo-Japanese War dramatically changed their attitude towards Japan and its colonial experience. The war shattered the myth of the superiority of Europeans over Asians and forced the Russians not only to accept Japan's imperial ambitions, but also to think about the secrets of its victories. The colonial experience of Japan, which proved to be "better than all Europeans", began to be perceived by some experts as a role model in the development of the Far Eastern outskirts of Russia and as a criterion for assessing the prospects of Japan itself in the development of new colonies (Sakhalin, Korea, etc.). This approach was clearly evident in the Russian press of those years. At the same time, Russian experts, especially those who personally visited Formosa and could see the difference between official reports and reality, were far from blindly idealizing the results of colonial administration on the island.

Despite the strict access regime, some Russians managed to get into the depths of the island. This was partly helped by the fact that by the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, shortly after the end of the Russo-Japanese War, an unprecedented change had taken place in Russian Oriental studies - a new generation of Russians had emerged who lived, studied and worked in Japan. Entry to Taiwan was facilitated by the presence of a residence permit in the mother country, a certain amount of trust on the part of the colonial authorities, as well as the absence of a language and cultural barrier in communicating with the Japanese. There were very few such people, and their visits to the island were sporadic and short-lived. But they also made a significant contribution to the study of Taiwan. One of the representatives of this generation was the Japanese S. G. Yeliseyev, who visited Taiwan in the winter of 1912-1913. S. G. Eliseev published an account of his trip and other general information about Taiwan in 1915 in a special report for the Society of Oriental Studies in Petrograd. About the existence of this 31-page

The report, the original handwritten copy of which is kept in the archive of the Institute of Internal Affairs of the Russian Academy of Sciences, was recalled in the 1990s by M. F. Chigrinsky.

Access to Japanese official statistics, reports, and journalism has opened a new page in Russians ' acquaintance with Taiwan. Having correctly assessed the informational value of these sources, they started translating them and publishing them in Russian-language periodicals. Such translations provided a better understanding of the island, its inhabitants, and the Japanese colonial policy. However, the First World War, the revolution and the civil War diverted the attention of Russians from Formosa for a long time. It was only in 1927 that the island was further explored by H. A. Nevsky, whose work put a forced end to the Russian pre-revolutionary tradition of field research in Taiwan. Since the late 1920s, the island's pictorial survey has long given way to descriptions of " the liberation efforts of native workers "and" the young working class of Formosa... terrorized by the Japanese occupiers." In the USSR, the class Marxist approach to the study of "Formosa under the rule of Japanese imperialism" prevailed, which was already conducted in the revolutionary interests, under the strict control of the state.

According to E. V. Molodyakova, it was difficult for Soviet citizens to visit colonial Taiwan, so analysts were based on second-hand information, which inevitably affected the quality of their work. They were no less influenced by party and Comintern orthodoxy, which dictated not only what to study, but also how to study, and even more so how to interpret. However, such well-known authors as T. S. Yurkevich, O. V. Pletner, M. I. Lukyanova, G. Gastov (also known as G. A. Astakhov, the "architect" of the Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact), and A. A. Abramovich wrote about colonial Taiwan in the 1920s and 1930s. Rosen and others, mostly killed during the Great Terror. The second report "Colonial Taiwan in Soviet Analytics of the 1920s-1930s" was devoted to this topic, which was made by Professor V. E. Molodyakov of Takuseku University.¹

As the speaker noted, the analytical works of Soviet authors of the 1920s and 1930s on colonial Taiwan were created in conditions where it was impossible to obtain information about the situation on the island "first-hand", but using Japanese and other foreign literature, as well as materials and data collected by them in Japan. Most of the publications in the open press were not only under strict ideological and censorship control, but also reflected the" general line " of the CPSU (b) and the Comintern in relation to Japan and the colonial countries. However, despite the limited sources and strict definition of theoretical propositions and conclusions, most of the works reviewed in the review show a good familiarity with the available information, and in some cases the ability to analyze it and draw conclusions, the value of which went beyond the service of agitprop.

According to V. Molodyakov, when further studying the topic, one should pay attention to the possible perception of these publications in the scientific, party, diplomatic and Comintern environment, as well as to the search for "closed" analytical materials about colonial Taiwan and to establish their connection with open press publications.

As you know, the change of power in Taiwan in 1945 was declared "liberation", although some residents of the island considered and consider it a "second colonization", replacing one "alien" power with another. This important and sensitive topic goes back to the history of the colonial period at one end, and to the present day at the other, which underlines its relevance. The results of her research and observations on this topic were shared by V. A. Perminova, a post-graduate student of the Department of China of the Institute of Internal Affairs of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who made a report on "The continuity of Taiwan's governance in the colonial and post-colonial period"².

V. A. Perminova compared the methods of Chinese and Japanese governance of Taiwan in order to determine in which areas and to what extent the Kuomintang government adopted Japanese management experience, as well as to compare the effectiveness of the policies of the Japanese and Chinese authorities.

As the speaker concludes, in general, Taiwan's governance policy, which was implemented in the first decades after 1945, largely followed the Japanese model of state-directed economic development. It was the success of Japanese colonial policy in Taiwan that was the reason that Japanese governance principles were not immediately replaced by ki-

¹ For more information, see: V. E. Molodyakov. Colonial Taiwan in Soviet Analytics of the 1920s-1930s. The article is being prepared for publication in the magazine Vostok (Oricns) - 2014, No. 3.

² For more information, see: V. A. Perminova. Continuity of Taiwan's governance models in the colonial and postcolonial periods. The article is being prepared for publication in the journal " Vostok (Oricns)" - 2014, No. 3.

Thai. But this model, in fact, was still exploitative. And in the early years of Chinese rule, the island's financial resources were siphoned off and its economic resources exploited even more than under the Japanese rule. In 1945-1949, the Chinese authorities practically did not invest in the development of Taiwan and used the island's economic resources exclusively in the interests of the mainland. It is precisely these colonial methods of managing the island (exploitation of resources and population, management by migrants from the mother country, etc.) that allow us to assume that the colonial administration of Taiwan ended not earlier than 1949, only after Chiang Kai-shek's defeat in the civil war, when the Kuomintang's power was limited only to Taiwan, i.e. when the "mother country" shifted to the " colony"The island's authorities were forced to start reviving agriculture, resume production of less capital-intensive but vital industries, and gradually turn Taiwan into one of the developed countries in the region.

After the presentation of the reports, they were discussed, which was actively attended by employees of the China Department of the Institute of Information Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yu. V. Chudodeev and AD. Dikarev, as well as colleagues from IDV RAS V. I. Trifonov and A. L. Verchenko. The participants of the meeting shared their thoughts on the issues raised, as well as presented some new materials on the topic under study.

The participants of the meeting expressed confidence in the need to continue the large and important collective work that has already been started. In particular, it was suggested that the seminar materials be published as separate articles, as well as a consolidated analytical review of Russian and Soviet studies on colonial Taiwan.

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