The article is devoted to the current problems of Russian Oriental studies and continues the discussion started in the first issue of the Vostok magazine (2015). Starting from the past, the author analyzes issues related to university education in Vladivostok and suggests ways to develop Oriental studies.

Keywords: oriental studies in Vladivostok, Oriental studies education, Oriental studies in Harbin, Russian School of Oriental Studies.

The figurative expression "The East is a delicate matter" can be supplemented with the following words: "Where it is thin , there it breaks!". In the first issue of the journal "Vostok" published an article by Doctor of Historical Sciences A. O. Zakharov "To the 60th anniversary of the journal: the future of Oriental studies", which raises very important issues for the Oriental science [Zakharov, 2015, p. 5-8]. The author relies mainly on examples that metropolitan researchers face, but the problems described, alas, are common to all Russian Oriental studies.

"Don't choose your relatives and neighbors"," Don't go to another monastery with your own charter " - these sayings are well known to Orientalists, because their analogues can be found in other languages. Having passed from the Urals to the shores of the Pacific Ocean in a single generation, Russia entered, as V. K. Arsenyev aptly put it, "a wedge into the yellow countries" [GAHK, f. 2, op. 1, d. 460, l. 69], thus becoming not only the closest neighbor of China, Korea and Japan, but also of the United States. and a bridge between European civilization and the Far Eastern countries.

A. O. Zakharov quite rightly raises questions about the lack of funding for Oriental studies. But is it just him? I would like to express a subjective view of the current state of Far Eastern Oriental studies, starting from the problems of Oriental studies education.

The creation of the Eastern Institute in Vladivostok in 1899, which became the first university in a huge region, was due to an economic and strategic circumstance - the construction of the China-Eastern Railway (CER). The initiators of the institute's opening were well aware of the goals and objectives of higher education in the Far East and did everything possible to ensure that qualified practitioners with a deep knowledge of Eastern languages and Eastern specifics left the institute. The current level of Oriental studies education corresponded to the modern bachelor's degree, but even a cursory analysis shows that many of the first graduates of the Oriental Institute became outstanding experts in China, Japan and Korea. The entire education system contributed to this. Numerous personalized scholarships allowed students to study without thinking about earning money. Both teachers and students could travel annually to the countries of the language being studied, where they not only practiced the language, but also joined the research work. Illustrative examples of this are reports compiled by students based on the results of these trips and published in Izvestiya Vostochnogo Instituta.

Currently, a series of large-scale projects related to China is being implemented in the Far East, but it is not clear that large companies are investing money in studying future partners or rushing to help universities train specialists with knowledge of Chinese, Korean or Japanese specifics. The student is forced to get information from the Internet: few people have the funds for a long trip to China or Japan.

Despite the tragic events of 1917-1922, Far Eastern Oriental studies was able to maintain its position in the study of neighboring countries. After the establishment of the State Far Eastern University (GDU) in 1920, which also included the Eastern Institute, the research of its professors and training programs continued in areas related to the specifics of the Asia-Pacific region. The first rector of the State University was elected a Korean scholar G. V. Podstavin, a professor of the Eastern Institute, who was once its director. It was assumed that the principles of work of the Eastern Faculty of the State University would meet "a) strictly scientific requirements for the theoretical study of languages and East Asian countries; b) serve the broad tasks of practical Oriental studies.... The faculty will provide comprehensive material for training orientalists with legal and economic training and orientalists with historical and philological training" [Ermakova, 1999, p. 53]. The Eastern Faculty had two sections: Chinese (with Mongolian-Buryat and Manchu-Tungus languages) and Japanese, and there were organized classrooms for Sinology, Japanese studies, English and Anglo-American literature, cultural history, and Manchu studies with a Mongolian sub-department and a commodity science laboratory. However, for lack of specialists (Podstavin left for Korea at the end of 1922) the Korean language was not taught and Korean studies were not conducted.

Teachers of the Faculty of Oriental Studies (A.V. Grebenshchikov, A.V. Rudakov, N. V. Kuner, etc.) began a number of interesting developments during this period: alphabets were compiled for the indigenous peoples of Primorye and the Amur Region, and anthropological studies of the peoples of the Far East were conducted. The scientific work of orientalists was carried out within the framework of the Local History Research Institute, opened at the State University in 1924 to study the Far East-both Russian and foreign. In 1927, P. S. Anufriev and A.V. Grebenshchikov went on research trips to Japan and Manchuria. A new series," Oriental Studies", appeared in the" Proceedings of the State University of Oriental Studies", in which the results of research were published. In 1929, the Oriental Studies Society with socio-political and linguistic sections was opened at the Eastern Faculty of the State Pedagogical University. Its members organized a translation agency and started surveys among the Chinese population of Vladivostok. Through their publication, the Bulletin of the Society of Oriental Studies, they raised topical issues for that time, mainly socio-political.

Russian Oriental studies also developed successfully in exile. Expatriate orientalists have created a network of Russian educational institutions in Harbin, including universities with an Oriental bias. A well-known higher Oriental educational institution was the Institute of Oriental and Commercial Sciences in Harbin (1925-1934), founded by graduates of the Oriental Institute. At two faculties, Oriental (Eastern economics) and commercial, training was conducted according to the program and textbooks of the Eastern Institute in Vladivostok. The faculties had in common the study of such subjects as geography and history of China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia and Tibet, commercial and economic geography of the Far East, Manchurian economy, problems of the Pacific Ocean, the state structure of the Far East, the history of trade, the main provisions of Chinese civil law, etc.

In order to attract students to research work, in October 1928 the Institute established a circle of Oriental studies-a prototype of the scientific student society. Many of the circle members ' works were published in the pages of Vostochnik magazine,

published at the Institute, as well as two collections of "Far East", released by kruzhkovtsy. The results of the work of the local history section of the circle, which was engaged in a survey of Chinese regions by industry, made it possible to create a Museum of Trade Samples at the Institute.

Oriental studies courses were also opened at the Faculty of Law (Harbin), which was accredited by the State University of Oriental Studies in Vladivostok in 1920-1924. Teachers and graduates of this faculty included practicing lawyers in China, as well as government advisers in this country. The curriculum of the Faculty of Law included the study of the East and Oriental languages. In the fall of 1926, Dean Valentin Alexandrovich Ryazanovsky (1884-1968, Oakland, California, USA) opened the Eastern Economic sub-department at the Department of Economics, explaining its necessity by the fact that the economic interests of China, Russia and Japan collided in Manchuria. He reported:

"In addition to the main economic and legal disciplines, the following subjects are taught here: East Asian Geography (mainly China and Nippon), East Asian History, East Asian ethnography, East Asian Economic geography, Chinese cultural history, Chinese State law and Nippon, Chinese civil law and Nippon, international relations in East Asia, communication routes East Asia, banking and monetary system of China, economy of economy, trade and industry of Manchuria, English, Nippon language, etc. For an economist who wants to work in the Far East, we provide information on the geography, history, ethnography, law, and economy of the Far East countries (mainly China and Nippon), and we will teach them mainly spoken language and then modern literary Chinese or Nippon. Our goal is practical: to enable such persons to work in the region and within it" [GAHK, f. 830, op. 3, d. 2014, l. 5].

Even then, Russian orientalists-emigrants successfully used the system in practice, when students could form their own future specialty, choosing the appropriate courses for studying. Today, future Orientalists can only dream of this.

The study of the host country was also typical for Russian schools in exile. Striving to promote Oriental studies as one of the principles of organizing Russian education in China, Russian Orientalists published corresponding textbooks that were successful, despite their shortcomings [Shkurkin, 1929, 170 p.]. Alas, there are still almost no such textbooks in the Russian Far East. Language acquisition can be compared to the process of eating: the ability to use table tools (chopsticks) is not enough to recognize the taste of a dish, it comes with understanding the smallest nuances of Eastern culture, when you can recognize all the ingredients.

Despite the difficulties, expatriate Orientalists sought academic degrees. In 1925, Vladimir Vladimirovich Engelfeld (1891-1937, Harbin), Head of the Department of Administrative Law of the Faculty of Law, defended his dissertation "Essays on the State Law of China" in Paris. Four years later, Georgy Gins (1887-1971, Berkeley, USA) successfully defended his dissertation "Water Law in China". Ivan Alekseyevich Lopatin (1888-1970, Los Angeles), a former teacher of the State Pedagogical University, known for his works on ethnography and Oriental studies, left his homeland in 1924, defended his doctoral dissertation in the United States and became a professor at the University of California. Unfortunately, today few Far Eastern Orientalists can boast of having doctoral degrees in Oriental studies, although they have more opportunities for this than their fellow emigrants.

Oriental studies, like any science, exists at the expense of individual bright personalities. An honorary member of the Royal Asiatic Society and other scientific societies was the lawyer-orientalist Valentin Alexandrovich Ryazanovsky. Tru gained worldwide fame-

The works of the outstanding linguist Sergei Mikhailovich Shirokogorov (1887-1939, Beijing), one of the founders of the State Linguistic University. Pyotr A. Budberg (1903-1972, Alameda, California) was a successful founder of the American School of Oriental Studies.In 1920-1922, A. P. Khionin, a student of the Oriental Department of the Moscow State University, brought up many Orientalists in China and continued his scientific work in Australia, where he prepared for publication the "Newest Chinese-English Dictionary" with 9060 characters and more than one hundred thousand expressions. The achievements of the Vladivostok School of Oriental Studies are also highly respected abroad. Berlin orientalist Hartmut Walravens, in particular, has published a series of books dedicated to the Sinologists A. V. Rudakov and A. V. Grebenshchikov, the outstanding linguist P. P. Schmidt, and the ethnographer I. A. Lopatin.

During all the years of operation of the Far Eastern University until its closure in 1939, the faculty of the Eastern Faculty was the pride of the university, and in terms of the scale of scientific research, the publication of Oriental works, and the training of Oriental specialists, the State University competed with Leningrad University. Despite the defeat of the Vladivostok School of Oriental Studies in the late 1930s (the Faculty of Oriental Studies suffered the most from the repressions), by the 1970s the School of Oriental Studies in Vladivostok was destroyed. it gradually began to regain its lost position. The Eastern Department, which was opened at the Faculty of Philology of the Far Eastern State University (FESU) in 1962, had to start from scratch: form a teaching staff, create textbooks, and develop methods. Of the first 18 graduates of the department, seven were retained for teaching, which made it possible to open new departments and partially restore the old positions. The faculty, continuing to study the countries of the Asia-Pacific region, educated new Orientalists in the best traditions of the first Far Eastern university.

A special topic is social Oriental studies. Soon after the arrival of the Russians in Manchuria for the construction of the CER in Harbin, the Society of Russian Orientalists (ORO) was founded in 1908. Its founders were graduates of the Eastern Institute: A. P. Boloban, commercial agent of the CER in Qiqihar, A. V. Spitsyn, editor of the newspaper "Yuan-dong-bao", I. A. Dobrolovsky, his assistant, A. N. Petrov, official of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, and P. S. Tishenko, Mayor of Harbin. Along with the major cities of China where Russian communities existed, branches of the Society were opened in Vladivostok and St. Petersburg, translators, diplomats, merchants, professors of the Oriental Institute and St. Petersburg University became its members. Although the Society could not boast of much attention to its activities on the part of the broad strata of the Russian population "due to the denial of Oriental studies as a cycle of special knowledge about the East, which has the right to independent existence and development" [From the editorial board, 1909, p. I-II], it successfully fulfilled its main task-to popularize knowledge about the East among population. Without any state support, amateur Orientalists, along with professionals, conducted research in Manchuria, reported on them at Society meetings, and published their own journal, Vestnik Azii, on the pages of which they published all their reports.

Russian Orientalists in China did not confine themselves to their research. They did not lose contact with their colleagues from other countries, nor with Soviet scientists. This can be clearly seen from the correspondence of Academician V. M. Alekseev, who wrote to V. A. Ryazanovsky that he sees the professors of the Faculty of Law as an outpost of Russian science and culture. At that time, the idea of international cooperation in science was successfully implemented in practice. I assume that today it is difficult to find such a type of orientalist-social activist as existed in the past. Unfortunately, it is not easy to create a public institution like the ORO, although the idea implemented by Russian emigrants in China to unite all lovers of the East is worth returning to and thinking about recreating the Society of Russian Orientalists in the Far East with its own

an electronic site. In the meantime, there is no question of any coordination of efforts in Oriental studies at all - everyone works in accordance with their own plans and tasks. A. O. Zakharov is right to complain about the lack of strong ties with Orientalists in Europe and the United States and promote cooperation of foreign authors with the Vostok magazine as one of the ideas.

Joint efforts to obtain grants are also a big problem. We can only welcome the organization of international competitions by the Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation, in particular with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Unfortunately, the attempt of Vladivostok and Chinese researchers, who had long-standing contacts with each other and were ready to work together, to submit documents for the competition ended in failure: their Chinese colleagues simply did not find the technical possibilities for this. Apparently, the mechanism of interaction of the Fund itself with a foreign organization is not fully debugged.

Modern foreign researchers have long come to the conclusion that it is very difficult to discover something new, working in classical directions. Much more interesting results can be obtained by performing interdisciplinary research. Russian emigrants, for example, successfully studied various aspects of China, paying attention to Eurasian ideas. Especially interesting are publications on political or literary Eurasianism. This is evidenced by the bibliography of the famous Canadian professor Olga Mikhailovna Bakich, a native of Harbin (Bakich, 2002). Siberians-oblasts successfully promoted their ideas on regionalism. It is enough to recall the works of Ivan Innokentievich Serebrennikov (1882-1953, Tianjin). In Russian Oriental studies, this aspect is not yet fully understood.

Unfortunately, the works of most expatriate Orientalists are still unknown in their homeland. Not only in Vladivostok, but in Russia as a whole, there is little concern about collecting materials on Oriental studies. At first glance, the situation is better in the United States, where 40-45% of Oriental literature is in Russian, but these publications are not fully used. In China, almost all libraries and archives that contain Russian documents or publications remain closed. For many years, the University of Hawaii at Honolulu has been engaged in a comprehensive collection of literature on the Asia-Pacific region and relations with Russia. Moscow drew attention to this and published a catalog of this unique collection [Polanski, 2002, 204 p.]. Currently, the publishing house "Pashkov Dom" is preparing this handbook for reissue. It remains to be hoped that Far Eastern Orientalists will be able to work with these materials, but how many will succeed?

The author of these lines was lucky enough to find in the United States the archive of the Sinologist Sergei Alexandrovich Polevoy (1886-1971, USA), a graduate of the Oriental Institute (1913), and bring it to Vladivostok. Now he is at the Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU), but there are no attempts to use these invaluable materials for scientific purposes. Despite repeated attempts, it is still not possible to publish the memoirs of another graduate of the Eastern Institute - Ippolit Gavrilovich Baranov (1886-1972, Alma Ata), discovered in a manuscript in one of the Russian archives. An indicator of the lack of interest in Oriental literature is the fact that the Primorsky Regional Public Library named after A.M. Gorky refused to publish the already prepared index of literature about Japan stored in its collections. Nevertheless, initiatives to restore lost memory, which is important for modern students, should be encouraged in every possible way. I would also like the names of famous Vladivostok Orientalists to be immortalized in street names or on commemorative plaques on the buildings where they lived, as well as in the creation of scientific biographies that would help a new generation of researchers in the Far East to recognize themselves as the successors of the Russian school of Oriental studies.

The situation with Oriental studies education in the years of Perestroika turned out to be contradictory. On the one hand, graduates and teachers of the Faculty of Oriental Studies

there was an opportunity to go to China or Japan, which weakened the personnel potential. On the other hand, due to the increased interest in eastern neighbors and foreign languages, Oriental studies departments have appeared in many educational institutions in Vladivostok. Scientific work on Oriental studies has also been intensified, and dissertations are being defended... But all this is somewhat out of touch with the world of Oriental studies, as evidenced by the weak participation of Vladivostok Orientalists in international symposia. The author tried to attract colleagues to participate in the World Congress of Slavists in Tokyo, which will be held this summer, but could not find anyone willing.

The recent merger of universities into the Far Eastern Federal University and the loss of the historical name, in my opinion, set back Oriental studies for many years. Sailors often say, " Whatever you name a ship, it will sail." It can be seen that modern university leaders pay more attention to the development of a political science school than an Oriental one. Many Russian orientalists and their foreign colleagues still ask whether the Eastern Institute should have been reorganized into the School of Regional and International Studies (SRMI) [Direktor..., 2013]. Not so long ago, however, the name of the school was supplemented with the words "Oriental Institute", but the essence of this has not changed and there are still many questions about the attitude of the university administration to Oriental studies. Teachers of Oriental studies receive very low salaries, and the academic load does not allow them to engage in scientific work at all. There is no objection to encouraging teachers to publish books or articles in English, but for some reason there is no such encouragement for publications in Chinese, Japanese or Korean.

Modern scientific periodicals deserve a separate discussion. The fair requirement to have a certain number of scientific publications before defending a dissertation sometimes turns into a farce. Applicants for an academic degree only need to have money to ensure the publication of their articles. After reading the conditions for accepting articles for publication in many journals, even those included in the list of the Higher Attestation Commission, we can make an unambiguous conclusion about the transformation of some, mostly recently opened, publications into commercial projects. The craze of heads of educational institutions for publications in Scopus journals also does not look justified: in the race for a rating, the essence of a real contribution to science is lost.

On the initiative of A. S. Dybovsky, a graduate of the FESU Faculty of Oriental Studies and now a professor at Osaka University, an international conference was held at the Far Eastern Federal University on September 25, 2014, where orientalists discussed modern problems of Oriental studies. The final document noted:

"We hope that Oriental Studies will never drop out of the FEFU curriculum, as it is essential for successful cooperation between Russia and Asian countries. However, Oriental studies should be given a proper place in the FEFU development priorities in a timely manner. The preservation of the current position of Oriental studies in FEFU is its slow strangulation, which is associated with huge economic and political losses for our country in the future. Now qualified personnel are being lost due to the university's relocation to a new campus far from the city, extremely high workload and low salaries of teachers. If we do not take urgent measures, the point of no return will be passed, and the formation of a new contingent of Orientalists, as well as the Oriental scientific environment, will take decades, as it was after the Stalinist terror of the 1930s" [Final..., 2015, p. 5].

The participants proposed to return the Eastern faculty to its full status, making it a separate school.

At the beginning of the 20th century, some analysts emphasized that Russia's defeat in the Russo-Japanese War was caused by the lack of specialists in Japan and China. Alas, even today you can count the real experts of the Far East on your fingers. Modern problems in Oriental studies should be interpreted more broadly: how well do we know our eastern neighbors?..

list of literature

GAHK - State Archive of the Khabarovsk Territory.

Director of the Institute of the Far East of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician Mikhail Titarenko, expressed concern about the abolition of the Eastern Institute in connection with the creation of FEFU // Novaya Gazeta in Vladivostok. 2013. August 8 (N 199).

Zakharov A. O. K 60-letiyu zhurnala: budushchee vostokovedeniya [To the 60th anniversary of the journal: the Future of Oriental Studies]. 2015. N 1.

Ermakova E. V., Kutsy G. S., Volodarskaya E. P., Georgievskaya E. A., Glushchenko I. I., Evtushevsky A. G., Kanevskaya G. I. et al. Far Eastern State University: History and Modernity. 1899-1999 / Ed. by V. I. Kurilov. Vladivostok: Publishing House of the Far East. univ., 1999.

Vostokovedenie na Dalnem Vostoke: istoriya, sovremennost ' i budushchee [Oriental Studies in the Far East: History, Modernity and Future]. Vladivostok: Publishing House of the Far East. univ., 2015.

From the editorial board / / Bulletin of Asia. Harbin, 1909, No. 1 (July).

Polanski II. Russian printing in China, Japan, and Korea: A collection catalog. Hamilton Libraries of the University of Hawaii, Moscow: Pashkov House (Russian State Library), 2002.

Shkurkin P. V. Textbook of Oriental studies for secondary educational institutions (III-th step). Harbin: OIMK Publishing House, Zarya Publishing House, 1925.

Bakich О. Harbin Russian Imprints: Bibliography as History, 1898-1961: Materials for a Definitive Bibliography. N.Y.-P.: Norman Ross Publishing Inc., 2002.

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