The fifth quarterly seminar "China and the World. Traditions and Modernity" was organized by the Department of China of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Scientific Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences on Problems of Oriental Studies. In addition to the staff of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, ISAA MSU, and graduate students took part in its work.

The seminar was dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the" great terror " of 1937-1938, when Stalin's punitive machine dealt a severe blow to all segments of society. At this time, in particular, the best representatives of Russian Oriental studies were destroyed, entire scientific directions ceased to exist, and scientific continuity was almost stopped.

The seminar was opened by the Director of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, corresponding member. RAS V. M. Alpatov. His report was devoted to a statistical analysis of the repression of Chinese scholars during the years of the"great Terror". He noted that studying the history of repressions is extremely difficult, as the archives are still closed. In the 1990s, V. M. Alpatov managed to do a lot in this area due to the somewhat greater accessibility of some archives, and especially the help of his colleague and co - author, F. D. Ashnin, who, as a front-line soldier and veteran of the border troops, had an advantage in accessing archival files. Without it, you wouldn't be able to see many of your personal files.¹

V. M. Alpatov dealt relatively little with repressed Sinologists; the main publication on this topic is the well-known book by Y. V. Vasilkov and M. Yu.Sorokin2. However, according to the speaker, the "Biobibliographical Dictionary" is not without drawbacks it contains many valuable documents, but there are also a lot of omissions, a significant amount of information was obtained by the compilers from eyewitness accounts, and this is an unreliable source. For example, two people who did not know each other confidently told about one of the defendants that he was shot by the Germans in While archival documents show that he was actually repressed in March 1938, oral narratives are very difficult to interpret among the relatives and colleagues of the victims, fanciful versions of their arrest and death often revolved, far from reality. The authors also have some methodological mistakes - for example, when analyzing the reasons for arrests, they pay great attention to public studies, but a careful study of the materials shows that in the 1920s, almost all Oriental scientists were subjected to such public criticism. However, it is difficult to establish a direct relationship between the fact of processing and the arrest. Many of those who were particularly fiercely criticized were not arrested. In general, the immediate reasons for the arrest and execution are often difficult to understand logically - for example, the director of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Academician A. N. Samoilovich, was arrested and convicted as a Japanese spy, and not at all for having links with pan-Turkists, which would be more logical if we take into account his scientific specialty.

In the total number of repressed Orientalists, it is sometimes difficult to single out Sinologists, for example, E. D. Polivanov was one of the authors of the Chinese grammar3, but it is certainly difficult to call him a Sinologist. It is the same with N. I. Konrad, many of whose best works are written about China, but his main area of interest was still Japanese studies. All this makes accurate calculations difficult.

Until the mid-1930s, Sinologists were hardly repressed. The situation changed dramatically in 1935, with almost half of the arrests of Chinese scientists occurring in 1935-1936. and the second half-for 1937-1938, after which Sinologists were almost never arrested (with the exception of V. M. Velgus and V. M. Stein, who suffered during the "Leningrad case" in 1949-1950). In the rating of "lethality" of Oriental specialties, Sinology is significantly higher than in the previous year.

¹ In collaboration with F. D. Ashnin, V. M. Alpatov prepared two books: Ashnin F. D., Alpatov V. M. The Case of Slavists: The 30s, Moscow, 1994; Ashnin F. D., Alpatov V. M., Nasilov D. M. Repressed Turkology, Moscow, 2002.

² Vasilkov Ya. V., Sorokin M. Yu. People and destinies. Biobibliographical dictionary of Orientalists-victims of political terror in the Soviet period (1917-1991). SPb., 2003. For the electronic version of the dictionary, see: http://memory.pvost.org/pagcs/indcx2.html.

³ A. I. Ivanov, E. D. Polivanov. Grammar of the Modern Chinese Language (Proceedings of the Narimanov Institute of Oriental Studies, vol. XV), Moscow, 1930.

it lagged behind Japanese and Korean studies, which suffered the greatest losses. So, at the Far Eastern University, employees of the Japanese department were shot almost without exception, and the Chinese department "got off" with several arrests, which in the worst case ended with the expulsion of those arrested from Vladivostok.

For example, N. T. Fedorenko spent some time in prison in 1935, but was eventually released, and this episode did not affect his career. Of course, it is difficult to completely exclude the randomness factor, but in general, repressed Sinologists can be divided into four categories (a separate group should include scientists from among Chinese immigrants, the percentage of repressed among whom is very high).

The first and second categories are not always easy to distinguish. The first category includes illegal intelligence agents, employees of the Comintern. They were mostly good experts in China, which they had visited a lot, but there were almost no major scientists among them. The second category includes Sino-Marxists. Unlike the first group, there were no specialists of pre - revolutionary training among them- they were young people who advocated the use of Marxist methodology in the study of China. Many of them were part of the entourage of Karl Radek, who headed the Communist Workers ' University of China. Sun Yat-sen (KUTK) in Moscow, and suffered mainly because of this proximity. The wave of repressions among Sinologists in 1935-1936, noted above, is probably explained by the arrests of this second category. However, many Marxist Sinologists were also engaged in intelligence at one time, in particular, the largest of the Far Eastern Sinologists, K. A. Harnsky.

The third category, which is relatively small, includes scientists who held a high position, which greatly increased the risk of arrest. For example, in Vladivostok, where Sinologists were largely unaffected, the dean of the Faculty of Oriental Studies and the secretary of the party committee were arrested - precisely because of their positions, and not "in their specialty".

The fourth category includes Sinologists who suffered as part of the" case of the Institute of Oriental Studies in Leningrad", the most important in the history of repression against Orientalists. It is worth noting that, as elsewhere, the percentage of victims among Orientalists - party members was higher than among non-party members. A lot of things were decided by the place of work - for example, the employees of the N. Y. Marr Institute of Language and Thinking were almost not affected. The Leningrad Institute of Oriental Studies was much less fortunate, as many of its employees were accused of spying for Japan. At that time, almost all the Mongolists, Japonists, Koreans, and most Sinologists who worked at the Institute were repressed. The most vulnerable, of course, was N. A. Nevsky, who recently returned from Japan, accused of organizing a spy network, but many were arrested before him. The case of Y. K. Shchutsky was conducted separately - he was accused of links with anthroposophists and Templars.

In general, the repressions against Sinologists have not yet been studied sufficiently, and the proposed classification can only be considered as a working one. Unfortunately, as mentioned at the beginning of the report, the current situation is not favorable for research in this area.

The report was received with great interest and many questions were asked. Sergey Dmitriev (Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences) asked what, in the opinion of the speaker, were the immediate reasons that initiated the "case of the Institute of Oriental Studies" - denunciations or an initiative from above? often missing from investigative documents. There were probably denunciations, but it seems that the prospect of uncovering an extensive network of Japanese spies led by a prominent scientist and academician, Samoilovich, which was tempting for the NKVD, should have played a big role." A. R. Vyatkin (Institute of Chinese Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences) objected to the thesis about the low involvement of Sinologists in repressions - in his family archive there is a picture of the group in which R. V. Vyatkin studied - by the end of his studies, he was the only one who was not arrested.

The report of A. I. Kobzev (IB RAS) was devoted to the" case " of one of the brightest Russian Sinologists - Yu. K. Shchutsky. The first reliable information about the tragic biography of the brilliant Russian sinologist Yu. K. Shchutsky (1897-1938) was published only in the last perestroika years of the USSR. Prior to this, the reference and synological literature even incorrectly and variously indicated the year of his death: 1941 and 1946, which was generated by misinformation of the competent authorities, who first hid the execution with the euphemism "ten years without the right to correspond", and then, apparently striving for plausibility, in the" thaw " certificate of death. post-mortem rehabilitation in 1958 "extended" his life until 1946. After the collapse of the USSR

and the publication in 2003 of the main materials of the investigative case of Yu. K. Shchutsky clarified all the details of his arrest and conviction on the most phantasmagorical of possible charges of belonging to the "leading core" of the "anarcho-mystical organization the Order of the Templars".

A comparison of the fates of two prominent Orientalists who opposed the defense of the doctoral dissertation of Yu. K. Shchutsky, his closest colleagues academicians V. M. Alekseev and N. I. Konrad clearly shows that the former, despite his "correct" origin, always took a detached and critical position in relation to the Soviet government, but was never arrested, and the second, although he actively cooperated with her, was arrested, beaten and tortured, sentenced to five years in correctional labor camps and spent more than three years in prison (from 29.07.1938 to 08.09.1941). It is noteworthy that the attack on V. M. Alekseev, which was carried out with the most powerful propaganda tools and full of the strongest expressions, took place against the background of the arrests and shootings of his closest students, simultaneously with the preparation of the arrest of N. I. Konrad. And yet he survived, and N. I. Konrad did not.

The workshop continued on December 24. E. F. Bayalieva (IB RAS) made a report "On the introduction of elements of the Mongolian law in the legal field of China (on the example of marriage law of the XIII century)". Among the changes that took place in China during the Yuan period, the dynamic development of Chinese legislation is particularly noticeable, which, while remaining generally in line with the development of traditional trends in Chinese law, was significantly influenced by foreign Mongols. As under the Liao and Jin, at first the Yuan rulers allowed the Mongols and other non-Chinese peoples to observe their customary rights, including, for example, Muslim law. For example, in 1268, a court official in Beijing (Dadu County) consulted with the mullah when deciding a marriage dispute for Muslims on the spot, and as a result, the divorce case for two residents of Beijing, a woman and a man, was decided according to Muslim law, and not according to Chinese law. By strengthening the unity of the multinational empire, such tactics, of course, introduced considerable confusion into the daily practice of law enforcement.

Sources indicate that by the 1270s, some Chinese had adopted many of the customs of the steppe peoples, such as levirate and the division of property between sons during the lifetime of their parents. Both customs are typical for the peoples of Central Asia, but not for China. However, Kublai was not going to wait for the Mongol customs to take root on their own, and tried to introduce the most important of them into the legal practice of the entire empire through special decrees.

In February 1271, Kublai Khan issued the highest decree, where new rules for marriage were announced to the people of the whole country. The decree limited the amount of consensual gifts, defined a ban on marriages with namesakes and polygamy, both of which were allowed in traditional Chinese law, but not in Mongolian. According to this decree, the widow received the right to return to her father's house or marry the deceased's brother, which corresponded to nomadic practice and contradicted Chinese traditions. These rules carefully protected Mongol privileges and took Mongols away from the obligation to observe Chinese marriage law, regardless of the gender of the couple.

Practical decisions on the ground often did not coincide with the decrees of the central government - there were conflicts between the centralized form of government, various forms of legal consciousness and popular methods of personal conflict resolution. These reasons led to endless wandering of cases in the courts. Despite the efforts of the authorities, the Mongols did not escape from Chinese cultural influence. As a result, further growth of Confucian tendencies in Yuan laws is observed, the victory of the Chinese tradition over the nomadic one.

M. E. Kuznetsova-Fetisova (Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) reported on the role of inscriptions on fortune-telling bones in constructing the chronology of the Bronze Age in China. The question of the chronology of the history of the first written dynasty of ancient China is still extremely confusing and far from being considered solved. Divination inscriptions are probably the only source that can shed light on the chronology of the later period of Shang history, and they also contain information about earlier times, but it is, of course, probably less reliable. Despite the fact that fortune-telling bones have been actively studied by scientists around the world for more than a hundred years, many questions concerning the paleography of personal names are still far from an indisputable solution. In addition, not all the inscriptions found were put into scientific circulation and taken into account by researchers.

Both days of the seminar were held in an atmosphere of great interest in the reports, most of which caused a lively discussion.

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On February 27, 2013, the sixth quarterly seminar "China and the World. Traditions and Modernity", organized by the Department of China of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Scientific Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences on Problems of Oriental Studies. The seminar was attended by 10 employees of the Institute of Information Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a representative of ISAL MSU, and graduate students.

D. A. Khudyakov (IB RAS, Higher School of Economics) made a presentation on the Buddhist sutras in Tangut, paying special attention to the Lotus Sutra. Buddhist monuments make up the absolute majority of the Tangut monuments at our disposal (almost all known Tangut texts were brought by P. K. Kozlov's expedition and are stored at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg). The Lotus Sutra is represented by several copies. Its study began quite a long time ago, even at the stage of deciphering the Tangut script, as it quickly became clear that it was translated into Tangut from Chinese, and comparing the Tangut Lotus Sutra with a well-known parallel Chinese text made it possible to establish the readings and meanings of many Tangut signs.

Interestingly, the Tangut text uses a special sign to denote China, the reading of which is closer to jin than to the expected qin, which is known to be used to denote China in many early Buddhist Chinese texts. The speaker suggested that this fact may indicate that the term used by Buddhist authors, which Tangut translators were guided by, was primarily intended not to refer the reader to the first empire of China, which collapsed long before the penetration of Buddhism into China, but to the original Sanskrit term, which, according to Berthold Laufer, is found in texts IV century BC, i.e. written long before the establishment of the Qin Empire. This term, literally translated as "painful", later came to refer to the whole of China, and then probably meant the coast of present-day Guangdong. Thus, the study of the Tangut Lotus Sutra allows us to think again about the validity of the widespread theory that the name of China, used in many Western languages, goes back to the name of the Qin Empire.

The last thesis of the speaker caused a lively discussion. A. I. Kobzev (IB RAS) noted that the specific nature of the preservation of written monuments in India is such that it is difficult to accurately date one or another ancient text. Therefore, it seems to him that the data presented are still insufficient to question the origin of the word Chin or Sinae from the name of the Qin Empire. However, even if Laufer is right, it is possible that information about the kingdom of Qin - the westernmost of the Chinese kingdoms of the epochs of Spring and Autumn and the Warring States-may have reached India. In this case, this information was just supposed to go along the future Great Silk Road, in particular through the lands where the Tangut state was then located.

A. A. Koblyakova (ISAA MSU) read the report " Attributive and agentive constructions with the Tao (according to the text of Chuang Tzu)". The aim of the study was to analyze the term Tao not from the point of view of its historical and philosophical meaning (which has been done many times before), but from the point of view of its syntactic and semantic characteristics, using the scientific apparatus of linguistics, not philology. The report aroused great interest, but at the same time it was sharply criticized for some carelessness in the translation of fragments of the text.

The report of V. V. Bashkeyev (Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) was devoted to the analysis of the political struggle during the reign of U-di (87-141). Based on a statistical study of the information about the reign of this emperor contained in Ban Gu's "History of Han" and Sima Qian's "Historical Notes", the researcher offers his own periodization of his reign, traces the changes that occurred during the decades of Wu-di's reign. The author believes that it is possible to trace the gradual departure of the U-di from real power in the direction of ritual, formal power. In the last years of his life, the emperor actually lost control of the administration, almost did not live in the capital and was strongly influenced by his entourage. Despite the fact that many successes were achieved during the reign of Wu Di, mainly in foreign policy, from the point of view of the researcher, he cannot be called the best ruler of Western Han, since in many respects he is inferior to his grandfather, Wen di.

A. I. Kobzev believes that among the achievements of Wu-di, it is necessary to note the rooting of Confucian bookishness - after all, it was he who introduced the title of Wu-ching bo-shi ("Doctor of the Five Canons"), Confucian education was widely introduced. Perhaps one of the main conflicts

During Wu's reign, it is worth considering the struggle at his court of non-religious Confucianism and various cults, many of which were probably associated with Taoism. The speaker was asked to expand the source base of the study to include Han poetry, early medieval apocrypha dedicated to the life of Wu-di.

The seminar was concluded with a report by A. S. Trunova (Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) on the structure of Cao Xueqin's novel "Dream in the Red Chamber" (Hong-lou meng) and some cultural and literary allusions that can be traced in the preface to the novel. According to the researcher, the Russian translation of the novel is generally accurate, but many hidden meanings are not fully conveyed in it.

A. I. Kobzev noted that this is typical for many translations of Chinese fiction, for example, many passages of a 16th-century novel. Jin Pin mei ("Plum Blossoms in a Golden Vase") translated incorrectly due to the lack of adequate correspondence in the Russian literary language to Chinese vocabulary related to sexual themes.

The seminar was marked by the active participation of participants, and its important pedagogical function, which was not too noticeable at previous seminars, was particularly clearly outlined: the reports of young scientists were listened to and discussed, which were sometimes subjected to harsh criticism, no doubt useful for them.

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On May 15, 2013, the seventh quarterly seminar "China and the World. Traditions and Modernity", dedicated to the 85th anniversary of the Chief Researcher of the Department of China, Doctor of Historical Sciences prof. Stanislav Robert Kucera, one of the best experts on the history of Ancient and Medieval China, the brightest scholar, beloved colleague and revered teacher. The hero of the day, among other things, is deservedly known for his excellent translations of Chinese philosophical and historical texts, epigraphy, so the seminar was offered reports related to the problems of translating Chinese texts and terms.

E. F. Bayalieva (Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) made a report on her observations when working with the unique set of Yuan laws " Zhizheng tiaoge "("Articles and points [of the motto of the Zhizheng government]"), published in 1344. The vault was considered lost at the beginning of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), but in 2002 several volumes of the monument were discovered in a private book collection in Korea. The researcher noted the extreme complexity and specificity of the language in which the monument is written (which is generally typical for official documents from the time of Mongolian rule), and also said that the code is not a code, but rather a collection of decrees issued by the supreme power, which were supposed to be used by local officials as precedents in solving complex court cases. Often, such decrees were issued in response to requests from below, when a particular case could not be resolved on the basis of existing laws.

At the moment, E. F. Bayalieva is working on translating the chapter devoted to the rules of circulation of paper money. The code describes in detail the appearance of banknotes, the rules for exchanging old or damaged banknotes for new ones, and the rules for their accounting and disposal. It should be noted that, of course, at that time no country in the world could boast of such a developed banking and financial system, not to mention the fact that paper money did not exist in any country in the world at that time, except for yuan China. However, even such a well-thought-out system, as we know, did not save China from financial crises and rapid inflation of paper money.

The seminar was continued with a lengthy report by A. I. Kobzev, devoted to the problems of translating a number of key terms of Taoist philosophy in the treatise "Chuang Tzu". A. A. Koblyakova, a graduate student of the Moscow State University Institute of International Relations (ISAA), gave a lecture at the sixth seminar " China and the World. Traditions and modernity". Then some unsuccessful translation options caused a lively discussion. The researcher focuses on the famous episode about the robber Zhi, who explains to the interlocutor that the tao is inherent in people of all professions, including robbers. After analyzing all the translations of this fragment into Russian (including those made by S. R. Kucheroy), as well as the main English translations, the speaker came to the conclusion that most translators are inclined to translate the term tao in a philosophical way, such as Tao, Path, etc., while from the Chinese text it is quite possible to translate the term Tao into English. it is obvious that the author of the treatise in this parable plays with images and meanings and explains the need to follow the Tao through an ordinary road: "How can you go without a road?" - asks the interlocutor robber Zhi. And it is on this mixing

According to the speaker, the key image of this well-known parable is based on the philosophical and everyday meanings of the Tao sign.

An interesting report was made by A. R. Vyatkin (IB RAS). In the course of his work on the translation of Sima Qian's work, almost entirely done by R. V. Vyatkin (separate volumes in collaboration with B. C. Taskin and A. M. Karapetyants), he repeatedly encountered curious cases of incorrect or inaccurate translations of individual phrases that distorted the meaning of the entire narrative. The participants of the seminar recognized that even in the translations of the best specialists, such unfortunate moments happen, and therefore reprints and reconciliation of translations with the originals do not lose their significance even if the text has been translated for a long time and moreover by a well-known and qualified specialist.

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