Mongolian Studies in the USSR During the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945

Abstract

The article is devoted to the history of Mongolian studies in the USSR during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945. This research is based on the correspondence of the leading Russian specialists in Mongolian studies of the early 20th century N. N. Poppe and V. L. Kotvich, who successfully continued their research work in the 1920s–1940s. The paper makes reference to letters from the Polish Academy of Learning (Krakow) that contain aims of Soviet Mongolian studies, a work plan for 1941 and the scientific results of Mongolian cabinet of the USSR Institute of Oriental studies of the Academy of Sciences in the 1930s. It also focuses on memoirs by Lydia Leonidovna Viktorova published in 2003 as an important source for studying the activities and personal qualities of the Orientalists of the stated period. Lydia Leonidovna was a participant of the Great Patriotic War (an interpreter ‒ 1943–1944), a lecturer of Mongolian Philology Department and the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Leningrad State University (since 1956). She was a student of that faculty during the war (1945–1948) and in the first post-war years (1945–1948). The analysis of the correspondence makes it possible to conclude that the evacuated Institute of Oriental Studies continued its work in Tashkent, focusing mainly on the requirements put forward by the war. Mongolian studies were given renewed momentum in Buryat-Mongolian Research Institute of Language, Literature and History, Buryat-Mongolian Pedagogical Institute in Ulan-Ude, as well as in Irkutsk State University. As a result of evacuation and reorganization of the country’s central universities during the Great Patriotic War, leading orientalists, specialists in history and linguistics came to work in the national republics of the USSR and Siberia. The article reflects the wartime activity of such specialists in Mongolian studies as S. A. Kozin, T. A. Burdukova, K. M. Cheremisov, G. N. Rumyantsev, N. P. Shastina, D. D. Amogolonov, D. A. Abasheev and others. Keywords: Mongolian studies in the USSR, Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Leningrad State University, Buryat-Mongolian Pedagogical Institute, Buryat-Mongolian Research Institute of Language, Literature and History, the Great Patriotic War