Soviet Scholars Research Articles

OMPARATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AND MUNICIPAL LAW SCHOOL (PART II)

The coming calendar year is marked by the fulfillment of the sixtieth anniversary of the Patrice Lumumba University of Peoples' Friendship (later was renamed to Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, RUDN) was founded. Within these sixty years the Faculty of Economics and Law, the Faculty of Law have been operated until the Law Institute, maintaining continuity, took the place. As one of the university graduates and a student of prominent Soviet scholars who stood at the origins of several schools of comparative law that currently exist, the author attempted to follow the dialectical process of formation, development and systematization of the scientific school of comparative constitutional and municipal law that is connected not only with the special nature and features of teaching foreign and domestic students, but also with significant achievements in the field of preparation of candidates in and doctors in this specialty. Contrary to other universities, comparative legal analysis was using as a basis for preparation of domestic law specialists for the states set free from colonial dependence and that explains the choice of regional and country-specific research model for forms of government, administrative organizational structures, political regimes of leading Asian, African and Latin American states with “socialistic” or “capitalistic” orientation. These mentioned states took the path of independent civilizational development, came through the periods of sovereignization and “decolonization” of wide range of political, economic and social relations. The formation of the “grounds” for African, Latin American, Arab-Muslim, Indian comparative studies is connected with the Department of Theory and History of State and Law, within which the scientific foundation of the school of comparative constitutional and municipal law was laid, the “baton was picked up”, at first, by the Department of Constitutional, Administrative and Financial law, and then by the Department of Constitutional and Municipal law, Constitutional law and Constitutional justice and Municipal law that maintained and updated the best traditions related to the training of Russian and foreign students, postgraduate students and doctoral students. At the present stage, comparative law is experiencing a new stage, caused by interest in the processes taking place in the United States and the European Union.

Theology of Soviet Law

That paper is one of my works, in which I try to apply the concept of political religion to Soviet law studies. Many political philosophers and scholars use this concept for describing the nature of totalitarian regimes, for which metapolitical goals (achieving communism, Nation defense etc.) and the tasks of their own legitimacy strengthening and increasing the control of society presupposethe usage of means which are religious by their nature. Political studies of political religion are quite developed, but legal theory pays almost no attention to such concept. So, in the paper I am trying to answer the question: if Soviet political regime can be defined as political religion, what does it means for law?In this paper I pay significant attention to Soviet law theology, that is the development of Marxism-Leninism dogmas in legal realm, which I call the “symbol of faith” of Soviet Law. I show how the “symbol of faith” guided Soviet legal studies, what philosophical and legal problems they raised and theways Soviet scholars solved them. I mean such problems as connection between law and economics, law and state, law and factual social relations, the role of law in achieving communism. In 1920s there were different versions of Marxist legal theory (Evgeny Pashukanis, Mikhail Reysner, Pyotr Stuchka,and others), but at the beginning of 1930s the unification of approaches was being made (the 1938 narrow-normative definition of law by Andrey Vyshinsky became its). The Vyshinsky’s definition was partly rejected during post-Stalin era, the new attempts to substantiate the broader understanding oflaw by connecting it with legal conscience and legal relations appeared. Though these conceptions were formally substantiated as attempts to find “the right one” Marxist understanding of law, their authors were rather trying to reconcile their own vision of law with official ideology.In the paper I also delineate how Soviet law theology influenced Soviet law system. By using some examples, I argue that this theology was not just the set of ideas far from legal practice. For example, Soviet ideological dogmas determined the development of the socialistic legality doctrine as thekey doctrine of Soviet legal order. At the same time Soviet legal system has never been developed exclusively under influence of Soviet political religion; it always was a mixture of influences, including Marxist-Leninist teachings, civil law tradition, political reasons etc.

Servage ritual “bread walking”: mythosemantics and cultural context

The article presents unique archival materials providing evidence that everyday magic practices, eschatological narratives and beliefs were common inBelarusduring the Second World War. The scientific commentary on the facts registered by Soviet scholars in folklore­ethnographic expeditions of 1945–1946 confirms that during the war archaic rituals and folk orthodox beliefs were actualized in folk culture. It is proved that the ritual “bread walking” and the distribution of “holy letters” belong to the forms of ritualistic amulets. They occupy a peripheral position in the system of occasional rituals of Belarusians. Their ideological content determines the synthesis of folk religious ideologies with elements of contact, initial and apotropic magic. At the stock level, the amulets are implemented as transmission practices. In addition, the work defines mythosemantics, ritual context and intertextual relations of the “bread walking” ritual.

The Cossacks Chronicles of Eyewitness, H. Hrabianka’s and S. Velychko’s in studies in Soviet historiography

The purpose of the article is to analyze the Cossack chronicles of Samovydets, H. Hrabianka’s, and S. Velychko’s in historical research during 1917–1991. Research methods: comparative, system-structural, historical-typological, historical-genetiс. The problem of studying Ukrainian chronicles of the XVI–XVIII centuries of the Soviet historiography has been studied relatively little. In most cases, the chronicles of military chancellerists are considered in the general context of study of the chronicles, and the chronology of historiographic reviews is limited to the mid-1960s. Main results. The article deals with the works of Soviet researchers who studied the phenomenon of Cossack chronicles. The main subjects for the studies on the literature of the Chancellery are revealed, in particular: dating, place of creation and identity of the authors of the texts; the factual accuracy of the messages, the features of the source base used by the Chancellerists, the study of the lists and editions of the chronicles and their comparison among themselves, as well as the peculiarities of the authors’ outlook, their assessment of historical events and figures. The peculiarities of the studies of Soviet scholars under the influence of Marxist ideology are investigated. In a number of cases, researchers have been forced not to touch political and ideological aspects that contradicted official dogmas and interpret historical events in the discourse of class struggle. However, some of the workings of Soviet historians are still relevant today, including the study of the lists and editions of the Cossack chronicles and the features of their source base. Practical meaning: recommended for use in historiography studies and history of Ukraine. Originality. Generalized scientific work of Soviet scholars on the literature of Chancellerist. Scientific novelty. For the first time the works of scientists of 1917–1991 were systematized, in which the Cossack chronicles of Samovydets, G. Hrabianka and S. Velichko were studied. Type of the article: descriptive.

Die Landwirtschaft der arischen Völker aus der frühen Eisenzeit: Tiere und Menschen im vorachämenidischen Mittelasien1

The Iranian peoples, or Aryans as they called themselves, are the indisputable characters of the last millennium of the history of the Ancient Near East. How they began to take part in the history of Central Asia to become some of the most eminent rulers of Late Antiquity, is still difficult to follow today. Our intention in this paper is to collect the work on this subject of Soviet scholars and relate it with those carried out by archaeologists from different countries in cooperation with the Central Asian republics, particularly with our research within the frame- work of the Turkmen-Spanish archaeological Mission in Dahistan (Southwestern Turkmenistan). Through archaeological data, as well as through written sources, we will focus on the faunas that lived with these people, and put them in connection with the re-writing of the history of the so- called Median Empire.

Aural-mnemonic Architectonics of Ancient Chinese Philosophical Texts

Taking inspiration from Soviet scholarship and South Asian parallels, this article proposes a new interpretation of the compositional regularities in certain philosophical texts from ancient China. It argues that such texts are underpinned by mechanisms of aural and mnemonic reinforcement that contributed to the fixation of textual compositions and facilitated the creation of stable discursive spaces for communities distributed in space and time. The sophisticated structural patterning can be seen as a technological alternative to writing and literacy, providing another platform for advanced textuality. Visualisation of the non-linear compositional structures pioneered by Vladimir Spirin, a Soviet scholar of ancient Chinese texts, makes them more comprehensible to the contemporary reader, and this approach holds much potential if combined with modern dynamic hypertext technology.

V. S. Baevsky and M. L. Gasparov: to the history of scientific communication in prosody

Based on the biographies of the prominent philologists V. S. Baevsky and M. L. Gasparov, this article examines the relationships of the Soviet scholars of humanities in the late XX century, and verifies the facts from the history of prosody. The archive of V. S. Baevsky with collection of 146 letters of M. L. Gasparov is deposited in Smolensk State University. It preserved handwritten and printed documents that tell about their shared scientific interests and sincere relationship. Gasparov’s dedicatory inscriptions on the books resembling the token reverence and friendship also serve as important and informative sources in studying this topic. The library of V. S. Baevsky accounts to 35 such books. There is also extensive memoir literature dedicated to V. S. Baevsky and M. L. Gasparov. The article analyzes peer reviews of V. S. Baevsky on the monographs of M. L. Gasparov, responses to the jubilees of the scholar, and obituary in his memory. The conclusion was made that mutual respectful dialogue established between V. S. Baevsky and M. L. Gasparov contributed to the synergy of efforts on the development of prosody as a research method, integration of university and academic science for the advancement of humanities in Russia. The study of various scientific contacts and relationships between the Soviet philologists allows having a new perspective upon the history of philology in Russia, examine the problem of opposition of Soviet science as a social institution, which was controlled by the government and its founding scholars, as well as clarify important facts in the establishment of prosody.

Vatican in the Second World War through the prism of Soviet historiography

The aim of the research. The article analyzes the achievements of Soviet scientists on the history of the Vatican during the Second World War. Particular attention is paid to the research of M. Sheiman, I. Lavretsky, and E. Winter. Most of the works were of a general nature, only some sections were devoted to the period 1939–1945. At the same time, Soviet scholars focused more attention on the Vatican's international policy and ignored the internal affairs and prominent figure of Pius XII. In the course of the study, the author found only some works that are directly devoted to the history of the Vatican during World War II. Only one of them – M. Sheinman's monograph – deserves to be a thorough title. The purpose of study is a historiographic analysis of the works of Soviet scientists about the Vatican in the Second World War. The relevance of the study is dictated by the lack of one general historiographical work on the Vatican in World War II. The method of research is based on a historiographic analysis of the work of Soviet scientists. Conclusions. In Soviet historiography, little attention was paid to the study of the history of the Vatican. An analysis of Soviet books gives us the opportunity to argue that this topic did not really receive the proper and largescale coverage in Soviet historiography. In the vast majority of works, it all came down to highlighting the relations of the Vatican and the Soviet Union. The author paid special attention to the fact that Soviet historians, having in their hands unique documents about the Vatican during the Second World War, did not analyze them in detail, but sought in them only anticommunist character. Therefore, today all hope is placed on a new generation of historians who will carry out a thorough analysis of all these documents

Re-understanding Vygotsky’s Psycholinguistics

Abstract The origins and nature of consciousness have preoccupied mankind since human beings became aware of themselves as thinking beings. Seeking answers to these questions was the focus of the life-long research project of the former Soviet scholar, Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (1896–1934), who was intent on developing a holistic theory of psycholinguistics to explore consciousness through psyche. In this quest, he concentrated on rechevóye myshlénie, a key element of consciousness created through the unification of thinking processes and languaging processes (the processes involved in the acquisition and use of language). However, the fact Vygotsky used this concept to imply a psychological process/ formation/system is lost when understanding it as “verbal thinking.” Despite its centrality in his whole theory of psycholinguistics, Vygotsky’s analysis of rechevóye myshlénie as the cornerstone of the creation of znachenie slova (meaning through language) has not received the same attention as his analyses of other concepts. Therefore, in this article we attempt to make a detailed investigation of rechevóye myshlénie upon Vygotsky’s methodology of psychological materialism and a number of related concepts compared with some prevalent translations and interpretations.

The Path to Chinese Philosophy in Russia (From the 1950s to the Beginning of the 21<sup>st</sup> Century)

The article examines the main scientific research on Chinese philosophy published in the USSR and Russia from the beginning of the 1950s to the beginning of the 21 st century. Until the 1980s, the Soviet scholars described Chinese philosophy with ideological bias, the teachings of ancient Chinese philosophy were classified by them based on the criteria of materialism and idealism. During that period, the specifics of Chinese philosophy, especially traditional, was not successfully revealed. Since the beginning of the 1980s, special attention has been paid to the main philosophical schools, such as Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism. In particular, in the 1980s the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences published the books Confucianism in China: Problems of Theory and Practice, Tao and Taoism in China and Buddhism and Society in the Countries of Central and east Asia , in which the main figures and concepts of classical Chinese philosophy were researched in depth. At the beginning of the 21 st century, the six-volume encyclopedia The Spiritual Culture of China , edited by M.L. Titarenko, A.I. Kobzev and A.E. Lukyanov, was published. The first volume of the encyclopedia is dedicated to philosophy and covers the history of Chinese philosophy from ancient times to the present day. The author of the article, being the project manager for translating this encyclopedia into Chinese, shows that Russian sinology has completely freed itself from old clichés and has come closer in this encyclopedia to comprehend the very essence of ancient Chinese philosophy. The author concludes that in the era of globalization, in the context of a constantly deepening intercultural dialogue, it becomes necessary not only to limit ourselves to our own perception rooted in our tradition but also to absorb the interpretations of the researchers of other traditions.

Тема духовного подвижничества в трудах отечественных историков на рубеже XIX–ХХ вв.

The paper studies the problem of religious asceticism in the context of community service for the Russian Orthodox Church based on the analysis of works by the Russian and Soviet scholars and churchman historians at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries: Ye.Ye. Golubinsky, A.P. Dobroklonsky, S.I. Smirnov, P.V. Znamensky, A.V. Kartashev, M.V. Tolstoy, Ye.N. Poselyanin. The author looks into the birth of orthodox asceticism in Rus, provides a classification of the types of religious asceticism, gives characteristics of the most prominent ascetics in the Ancient Rus, such as Anthony and Theodosius Pechersky, Venerable Sergius hegumen of Radonezh, Joseph of Volotsk, Nilus of Sora, Daniel of Pereslavl, Cyril and Therapont of Beloozero. The author indicates the importance of each of the types of the orthodox religious asceticism for the Russian statehood, the Russian Orthodox Church, Russian culture, especially book culture, private and social life.

Linking the poetical text and the doctrines of Sufi brotherhoods: Sufi poetry of A. Lahuti

The article deals with the poetical heritage of Abulqasim Lahuti, more precisely his poetical works of an early period, which constitute a special section in his collection of poems, the Divan. It was published in Teheran as early as in 1979 by 'Ali Bashiri under the title As'ar-e mazhabi va 'erfani («Religious and Sufi verses»). The revolutionary, patriotic and lyrical poetical works by A. Lahuti published since 1909 are well-known. However, his early poetry, which reflects the time when he was in contact with various Sufi brotherhoods remains almost a terra incognita for most scholars who have been studying his poetry ever since. Moreover, the existence of such poetry of his was hardly even accounted for, at least by the Soviet scholars who made attempts to reconstruct Lahuti’s biography as a poet. Usually, it is difficult to link an author of a poetical piece (ghazal) with a certain Sufi brotherhood or school unless there is a direct indication left by his biographers that he was taught by certain sheiks. One of the least researched questions in the text studies remains, whether an ideology of a given brotherhood can be traced in the poetic features of a given ghazai. The section from the Divan by A. Lahuti contains traditional “genres”, such as the tawhid (the Unicity of the Almighty); na't (praise to the Prophet Muhammad, praise to 'Ali and Hussain); lamentation on the events in Karbala; praise to Sheikh Hayran Kurdistani and some other works. The second part of the section comprises 107 ghazals. As A. Lahuti mentions in his autobiography, he became a member of a Sufi brotherhood. The article explores the connection between the early poetry by A. Lahuti and the doctrine of Sufi brotherhoods as reflected in the poetics of his ghazais. His work of this period reveals his awareness of the doctrines of ne'matallahi and ahl-i haqq (or 'Aii- ilahi) Sufi orders. The poet had three mentors, each of whom represented the following types of the Sufi Path: ecstatic and visionary one; a militant one; and a humble one praising holy behaviour and being content with little. The early ghazais by A. Lahuti respectively reflects these types of the Sufi Path.

Relations of State and Academia: Soviet Scholars’ Conceptual Unity in 1930s

Relations of State and Academia: Soviet Scholars’ Conceptual Unity in 1930s

The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World by John Davies and Alexander J. Kent James Risen (review)

SEER, 98, 1, JANUARY 2020 186 the relations between the wartime leaders of the Grand Alliance. The work complements the publication of the three-volume journal of the Soviet ambassador in London, Ivan M. Maiskii. It is an important contribution to understanding the Soviet point of view during World War Two, undistorted in the present period of so-called ‘new cold war’. Département d’histoire Michael Jabara Carley Université de Montréal Davies, John and Kent, Alexander J. The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World. Foreword by James Risen. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL and London, 2017. xiii + 234 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Appendices. Indexes. $35.00. In the old Soviet Union maps were secret. The present writer well remembers how, in the 1970s, his desire to look at detailed eighteenth-century cadastral maps of a part of central European Russia for purely academic purposes was frustrated by the caution of archivists. Whether the authorities believed that such maps, somehow secretly copied, might be used by Western intelligence agencies for some nefarious purpose was unclear. It later transpired that even Soviet scholars often had difficulty accessing such materials. With respect to the general public the modern maps of towns and cities available for purchase were usually deliberately distorted. If access to maps of the USSR was restricted, Soviet maps of foreign countries or regions were generally unavailable with the exception of those at smaller scales. Western maps were, of course, available in the West and these were used by the Soviets to compile their own maps of Western countries and of other parts of the world. Between 1950 and the end of the Soviet period the Military-Topographic Directorate of the Soviet General Staff (that part of the Soviet military responsible for mapping) conducted a secret mapping project covering the whole world at a variety of scales and in several series. According to the authors of this volume, this constituted ‘the most comprehensive global topographic mapping project ever undertaken’ (p. 11). Estimates vary, but according to one, in excess of a million maps were produced. The authors group them into, firstly, topographic maps or topos (military and civil series), secondly city plans (military and civil series) and, thirdly, special maps of various kinds. Whilst most such maps were regarded as state secrets during the Soviet era, the breakup of the USSR in 1991 radically changed the situation. Many maps were deposited in newly-independent states such as the three Baltic states and REVIEWS 187 became available to view and copy. Others entered the market illegally or by other means. Many are now in private collections. The present volume, written by two self-confessed ‘map enthusiasts’ (one a retired Information Systems specialist, the other an academic specialist in cartography) gives a brief account of the history of Russian and Soviet mapping followed by a detailed discussion of the style, content and symbology of the Soviet maps, the cartographical methods employed and the story of how the maps entered into the public domain. The target readership is ‘the general reader’. It has to be said, however, that the authors occasionally allow their evident enthusiasm to overwhelm them. For example, their discussion of the technicalities of the map making methods used, beginning on page 19, seems likely to exhaust the understanding and the patience of many a reader. The real highlight of the book is the maps themselves. Liberally scattered through the text, and with an appendix of nearly sixty examples in Appendix 1, the full-colour map extracts give a vivid impression of the detailed analysis which went into the compilation of the maps and of their sheer aesthetic quality. Soviet maps have long been known for their ability to present enormous detail even at smaller scales. What is amazing is the range of data covered including, in some cities, building heights, road widths and bridge capacities, and, for selected water bodies, channel depths and navigability. Clearly the Soviets used not only Western maps and satellite imagery but many other sources, in all probability including feet on the ground. The fact that some militarily sensitive objects were not depicted on Western maps, but appear...

A Tribute to Dr. Hafeez Malik: 17 March 1930 - 20 April 2020

3 A TRIBUTE TO Dr. Hafeez Malik 17 March 1930 - 20 April 2020 Aroosha Mansuri* My grandfather, Dr. Hafeez Malik was an esteemed scholar and a prolific writer. But rather than repeat a list of accomplishments one can easily find elsewhere, including in this very journal, today I would like to share some aspects of the man not always apparent in his scholarly work, characteristics that only those who knew him personally saw: his open-mindedness, his endless intellectual curiosity, and his generosity of spirit. Dr. Malik was born March 17, 1930 in Ghakhar Mandi, a small town in Gujranwala District of colonial India. He was raised by a single mother, a schoolteacher who believed in the value of education: she would point to his qalam, pen and say, “use it wisely and it can open doors for you.” He was taught Arabic, Farsi and Urdu by his maternal grandfather. He entered Government College in Lahore in colonial India and was graduated in the entirely new country of Pakistan. In those years he was an ardent supporter of Mohammed Ali Jinnah and became an active member of the Muslim League, calling for the creation of Pakistan once the British colonial rule was ended. My grandfather’s first book, based on his doctoral dissertation, traced the development of Muslim nationalism in India and Pakistan in which he himself was involved. Although Pakistan was created for the Muslims of India, my grandfather was preternaturally open minded, always sensitive to the plight and rights of religious minorities. For example, when asked in a social setting what caste he came from, he would say “dalit” (untouchable) to show his distaste for the question. He liked to speak for the oppressed: despite his personal relationship with Prime Minister Bhutto, my grandfather vehemently disagreed with the Bhutto government’s amendment to the constitution in 1974 declaring Ahmadis to be non-Muslim. His open-mindedness embraced the beautiful and good in all cultures and religions, and his special love was Christian sacred music: he often told me that Shubert’s “Ave Maria” was his favorite song. He was also unreservedly curious and never tired of learning. In the last few months of his life he had acquired a twenty-three volume compilation of 4 writings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmed, the founder of Ahmadiyya Movement, entitled Roohani Khazain. As with everything he read, I saw that he had highlighted dozens of pages in yellow and stuck notes throughout the volumes, in preparation for writing an article. Sadly, he passed away before he could finish it. In his final days, when his body began to fail but his mind was still sharp, he would ask me to read him the poetry of Iqbal and Ghalib. If I mispronounced or omitted a word, he would immediately correct me: he had memorized every line of these verses. He was so in love with the beauty of high Urdu and the hidden meanings buried within it, one of my grandfather’s books was about Allama Iqbal’s poetry and philosophy. But his most salient characteristic had less to do with the intellect than with the heart. My grandfather nurtured friendships across the world and across decades. He counted many political leaders, academics, writers, and artists among his friends. Rafiq Tarar, the ninth President of Pakistan, was once a schoolboy, walking miles together with my grandfather to their village school; if one did not have lunch, the other would share his. Whenever the two met later in life, they would instantly switch to Punjabi and carry on like the two schoolboys they once were. Another lifelong friend, confidant and intellectual companion was Javed Iqbal, the son of the great poet Allama Iqbal. He also fostered friendships with scholars in the Soviet Union, especially among the “Stans” of Central Asia. He visited the Soviet Union over a dozen times, and was brilliant at maintaining long-distance friendships with Soviet scholars, in particular Yuri Gankovsky. While there are far too many friends to mention, my grandfather’s three closest among Villanova colleagues must be. My grandfather was honored to help Father Kail Ellis establish the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies at Villanova; he had...

«СИБИРСКАЯ СКИФИЯ» В ТРУДАХ ЗАПАДНЫХ УЧЕНЫХ. ЧАСТЬ 1: 1913–1980-Е ГОДЫ

This article gives a general idea of the most significant scientific contacts and discussions between Western and Russian (Soviet) archaeologists about the era of early nomads: the origin of the “animal style”, the balance and interaction between the Scythian cultures of Siberia, Greater Black Sea area, Mongolia and Northern China, the chronology and ways of spreading of these cultures. Whereas Soviet scholars could at least read the works of their English-speaking and German-speaking colleagues, for most Western researchers the language barrier remained an insurmountable obstacle. Most authors of generalizing and popular works on “Scythias” had to use the publications of those few scientists who somehow knew the Russian language. This work is an attempt to fill to some extent this gap in the history of the study of archaeological cultures of Southern Siberia and Altai.

Советская историография средневекового литовского прошлого

The article deals with the process of organization and development of the study of the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Soviet Union. The author considers the fate of pre-revolutionary historians, experts in Lithuanian history, who were forced to either emigrate or change the field of research. The article presents the analysis of the first works of Soviet scholars concerning the Lithuanian Middle Ages. It also examines the contribution of Vladimir I. Picheta and Vladimir T. Pashuto to the organization of Soviet Lithuanistics.

Thirty Years Ago, a Soviet-American Seminar Was Held in Vladivostok

Precisely thirty years ago, in June 1990, an international scientific seminar dedicated to cooperation between the countries of the North Pacific was held in the then Soviet Vladivostok. The seminar was initiated by the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Fletcher is one of the oldest and leading international training institutions in the United States. The main inspiration for the seminar, which was supported by the Soviet Peace Committee and its Primorsky branch, was the head of the North Pacific program of the Fletcher school, Professor John Curtis Perry. The core of the participants of the ten-day seminar in Vladivostok, held in the House of Negotiations at the suburban Sanatornaya station, were students and professors of Fletcher, as well as young Soviet scholars and diplomats. There were also representatives of Japan and China. Among the Soviet participants of the seminar there were many very well-known names. These are Alexander Yakovenko (the recent Russian Ambassador to the UK, and now the rector of the Diplomatic Academy), prominent political scientist Boris Makarenko, historian and writer Konstantin Pleshakov, and historian Amir Khisamutdinov.

Historian of the Orient in an Era of Change: Works of V.V. Struve and the Session of the Academy of Sciences of USSR in July 1936

he was then attributed to the “old” scholars who switched to Marxism. In the mid-1930s the leadership of the USSR strongly pressed on historical scholarship, demanding total transition to the tracks of exclusively Marxist understanding of historical processes. Oriental studies, and personally V.V. Struve, were to ensure the ideological purity of the new texts such as ancient history textbooks for schools and universities. In July 1936 the Department of Social Sciences of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR held a meeting at which representatives of the state power (K. B. Radek) demanded the unification of Oriental discourse. Basing on archival documents and taking into account the scientific and political context, the authors shows what motives guided the actions of both representatives of the party elite and scholarship, divided in the mid-1930s in estimates of how much Marxist Soviet scholarship should be. On the example of discussing the theoretical “purity” of the scientific activity of academician V.V. Struve, the authors shows that the line to create a fully state-dependent academic structure was not quite realized, and even during the period of strong external pressure the social sciences were able to remain in a semi-autonomous state. In fact, the demand for exceptional ideological “purity” of texts turned out to be not so relevant at that time, as Radek (whose political position was unstable) thought, and Stalinist historiography was formed in the parameters of the external Marxization for the “old” historians.

COMPARATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AND MUNICIPAL LAW SCHOOL (PART I)

The beginning of the next calendar year marks sixty years since the Patrice Lumumba University of Peoples' Friendship (later was renamed to Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, RUDN) was founded. Within these sixty years the Faculty of Economics and Law, the Faculty of Law have been operated until the Law Institute, maintaining continuity, took the place. As one of the university graduates and a student of prominent Soviet scholars who stood at the origins of several schools of comparative law that currently exist, the author attempted to follow the dialectical process of formation, development and systematization of the scientific school of comparative constitutional and municipal law that is connected not only with the special nature and features of teaching foreign and domestic students, but also with significant achievements in the field of preparation of candidates in and doctors in this specialty. Contrary to other universities, comparative legal analysis was using as a basis for preparation of domestic law specialists for the states set free from colonial dependence and that explains the choice of regional and country-specific research model for forms of government, administrative organizational structures, political regimes of leading Asian, African and Latin American states with “socialistic” or “capitalistic” orientation. These mentioned states took the path of independent civilizational development, came through the periods of sovereignization and “decolonization” of wide range of political, economic and social relations. The formation of the “grounds” for African, Latin American, ArabMuslim, Indian comparative studies is connected with the Department of Theory and History of State and Law, within which the scientific foundation of the school of comparative constitutional and municipal law was laid, the “baton was picked up”, at first, by the Department of Constitutional, Administrative and Financial law, and then by the Department of Constitutional and Municipal law, Constitutional law and Constitutional justice and Municipal law that maintained and updated the best traditions related to the training of Russian and foreign students, postgraduate students and doctoral students. At the present stage, comparative law is experiencing a new stage, caused by interest in the processes taking place in the United States and the European Union.