Articles

The joint victory of the Soviet-Mongolian forces in the battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939 laid the historical and moral-ideological foundation that became an important resource of Russian-Mongolian relations in the post-socialist period. The article analyzes the mechanisms of constructing historical memory of the events at Khalkhin Gol and the factors that transformed this victory into a significant symbolic resource in bilateral interaction. The author examines the historical context of the conflict, the debate over its terminological definition, the geopolitical consequences of the victory, and the place of Khalkhin Gol in Mongolian and Russian commemorative narratives. Particular attention is paid to the post-socialist period: anniversary events, high-level visits, restoration and erection of monuments, youth expeditions, exhibitions, academic conferences and publications. The article concludes that the memory of Khalkhin Gol performs a stabilizing function: it maintains the image of “battle brotherhood”, structures the rhythm of interstate contacts and legitimizes strategic partnership by referring to a shared victorious past.

The article examines the United Arab Emirates’ role in Iraq’s post-conflict reconstruction in 2018–2024. It analyzes key political, humanitarian and economic aspects of interaction between the two countries, including the development of energy cooperation, infrastructure investment projects and UNESCO-supported reconstruction programs. Particular attention is given to the Development Road Project, a transport and logistics initiative linking Iraq’s southern regions with Turkey’s Mediterranean coast and potentially strengthening the Iraqi economy. The study explores foreign policy differences and points of convergence between the UAE and Iraq, particularly regarding the normalization of relations with Israel and regional security amid the Arab-Israeli conflict. The relevance of the topic stems from the search for effective ways to restore post-conflict states and from the growing role of regional actors in this process. The article analyzes the doctrinal principles of both countries’ foreign policies and introduces Arabic-language sources into Russian scholarly discourse.

The article examines the cultural connections between legends and natural as well as man-made monuments. The author analyzes monuments in folk legends as elements of cultural symbolism that reveal their significance from the perspective of cultural studies. The study is based on several key legends about monuments included in the Collection of Chinese Folk Tales. Two types of legends are identified: those explaining the origin of monuments and those explaining their characteristics. Within the first group, the article considers stories connected with historical figures, Daoist ideas of immortality, the spirit of traditional culture and motifs of folk literature. The study concludes that the relationship between local monuments and legends is essentially a process of symbolization: legends endow natural and man-made objects with names, spiritual content and memory, transforming them from physical objects into cultural symbols that carry collective memory, value systems and spiritual beliefs. The article also notes that Russian electronic academic databases contain no specialized studies devoted directly to legends about monuments, which makes the cultural analysis of this material a promising research area.

The article provides the first comparative analysis of themes and imagery related to World War II in both essays and fiction of Sakaguchi Ango (1906–1955). The programmatic essays “A Personal View of Japanese Culture” (1942) and “Discourse on Decadence” (1946) are examined, in which Sakaguchi expresses his view of Japanese culture and human nature, drawing on wartime ideological stances and his personal experience of the war. From Sakaguchi’s prose fiction, the short stories “The Idiot” (1946) and “Mr. Sun-Moon” (1949) are used as material for the study: the former describes the bombing of Tokyo from the perspective of an ordinary Japanese person, while the latter depicts a sense of loss in the postwar social crisis. The analysis shows that Sakaguchi preferred to interpret wartime experience through the lens of Buddhism, considering destruction and defeat as a particular example of the fragility of human nature. He presents a way out of the prevailing situation as paradoxical rebirth through the experience of tragedy or transgression.

This article analyzes the structure and semantics of Sanskrit terminology in Jyotiṣa Vedāṅga, one of the six Vedāṅgas directly related to the Vedas and intended for the understanding and preservation of the Vedas. Jyotiṣa Vedāṅga takes its name from the word jyotis “light, luminary” and denotes the discipline concerned with the movement of celestial bodies and the temporal periods determined by them. The article focuses on key lexical and terminological units of the Jyotiṣa corpus: the names of its three divisions, Gaṇita, Horā and Saṃhitā, the terms apauruṣeya and pauruṣeya, and selected passages from Sanskrit metrical treatises. The Sanskrit material is presented in scholarly IAST transliteration and is accompanied by Russian translation and concise explanatory comments. In terms of content, Gaṇita describes computational and astronomical issues, Horā deals with horoscopic interpretation, while Saṃhitā is concerned with natural and social omens. This format makes it possible to present Jyotiṣa Vedāṅga not only as a source for the history of Indian astronomy but also as a textual corpus with a stable lexical-semantic and terminological organization.

Railways were a key mode of land transport during the Second World War, including in the Afro-Asian world — from the fronts of North Africa in 1940– 1943 to the theatre of operations in Manchuria in 1945. The exploitation of railway systems already built by that time contributed significantly to the successes of the opposing powers, while further development of these systems made it possible to regard them as powerful geopolitical rays — vectors of military and political influence on space. The experience of rail communications in the logistics of the Second World War taught several lessons which later were taken into account in a number of potential and actual armed conflicts in Asia and Africa. First, a power with a more developed railway network as dual-purpose transport infrastructure stands a better chance of victory. Second, the war emphasized the need to deliberately disrupt the operation of the enemy’s railways. Third, where railways are insufficiently developed, the improvement of ocean communications (“sea power” according to A. Mahan) significantly reduces their effectiveness in their own land-based environment, more specifically in the Eurasian coastal arc (N. Spykman’s Rimland). British and American strategists learned this lesson in the context of the Cold War, which soon began. Fourth, the experience of Asian and African railways during the Second World War is invaluable for assessing the risks of future conflicts. For instance, the use of the Thai–Burma Railway as an instrument of a maritime power against a land power allows us to interpret the Baku–Tbilisi–Kars Railway, built in the early twenty-first century, as a geopolitical ray that strengthens transport routes bypassing Russia and has anti-Russian potential.

Based on issues of Pravda Vostoka for 1935–1936, the article identifies the main forms of passive resistance among the peasantry: mass absenteeism, violations of the water-use regime, above all the theft of collective-farm water, and opposition to technical innovations, especially mechanization. The newspaper materials reveal no clear boundary between conscious, albeit passive, resistance, on the one hand, and ordinary indiscipline that did not imply purposeful action against Soviet power, on the other. The author explains this by the fundamental features of the social order of the USSR. Rejecting traditional coercive forms of domination as the main source of legitimacy, Soviet power sought to base its legitimacy on setting and solving ever larger constructive tasks. Therefore, not only acts containing malicious intent, but also insufficient enthusiasm in carrying out economic transformations, above all mechanization, could be treated as serious misconduct. Seeking first to solve a problem, the Soviet press and other authorities changed their approach and moved to significant sanctions — reprimands, dismissals and the like — if phenomena considered shortcomings became stable. The article also substantiates the source-critical relevance of Pravda Vostoka, which remains insufficiently studied in recent historiography. The Soviet periodical press of the 1930s was not merely a transmitter of the state point of view: it also acted as a public controller, exposing the most unattractive sides of Soviet reality in their diversity because it regarded these problems as temporary and solvable.

The documents of Lutheran missionaries who worked in Tamil Nadu from the beginning of the 18th century contain extensive information about life in the region. In accounts of Tamil society, alongside Brahmans there often appear unclear figures called pantaras or pandaras. Their status is interpreted differently in scholarly literature: they are described as priests for lower castes or as non-Aryan priests, and some authors write about their conflict with Brahmans. Analysis of the sources makes it possible to systematize the available information. The Pandaras were associated with cult practices. They were not identical to Brahmans and were not part of the Brahman group, yet they were not consistently opposed to Brahmans. In some situations Brahmans and Pandaras could even replace one another. The sources show that Pandaras were more closely linked to non-Aryan cults. Their status imposed fewer restrictions than that of Brahmans and allowed them to perform rituals prohibited to Brahmans. Pandaras could be pilgrims or mendicant ascetics; they could act independently or serve as temple employees; they could act alone or belong to different communities. Most likely, pandar is a collective term. Unlike Brahman status, the status of a Pandara was not inherited. The term pandar was probably not a caste name. Thus, analysis of Tamil Nadu’s social structure and of the source material allows us to view the Pandaras as cult specialists with the widest possible audience.

The article continues the study of the political biography of Nosaka Sanzo, one of the most prominent leaders of the Japanese Communist Party in the twentieth century. Drawing on documents from Soviet party and foreign-policy archives, materials of the US occupation authorities, CIA reports and publications of the Japanese party press, it examines Nosaka’s return to Japan after the war, his contacts with American and Soviet representatives, his role in shaping the line of “peaceful revolution”, the subsequent subordination of the JCP to Soviet and Chinese directives, and the circumstances of Nosaka’s late party condemnation in 1992. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between Nosaka’s personal political strategy, intra-party conflicts, external influence from Moscow and Beijing, and the logic of the Cold War. The author argues that Nosaka’s figure cannot be reduced either to the image of the “face of the party” or to the later party version of “betrayal”. He appears simultaneously as a communist theorist, a mediator between the JCP and external centers of the communist movement, a cautious politician inclined to compromise, and a participant in a system dependent on foreign support. The case of Nosaka illustrates how party organizations construct and revise their own past, and how the political assessment of the same action may change radically depending on the historical context.

This article examines the figure of the leak sorcerer in Balinese culture and traces the dynamics of its representation across folklore, traditional literature, cinema and contemporary digital lore. The study employs an interdisciplinary approach that integrates folklore studies, literary criticism and cultural anthropology. The analysis centers on ethnographic data regarding beliefs in leaks, the folk-performative cycle “Calon Arang”, the poem “I Gede Basur”, and the 1981 feature film “Mystics in Bali”. As a figure of folk belief, the leak serves as a personification of hidden threats within the community and a mechanism for explaining misfortune. In literary tradition, by contrast, its image is integrated into Hindu cosmology and systems of sacred knowledge, including literacy and the mastery of mantras. The cinematic interpretation, aimed at a mass audience, intensifies elements of monstrosity and the exoticization of the “Asian monster”, while simultaneously introducing new motifs absent from earlier tradition. Particular attention is paid to the phenomenon of “reverse involution”, whereby cinematic imagery returns to the oral tradition and begins to be perceived as part of authentic folklore. The resilience of beliefs in leaks is sustained by the image’s capacity to adapt to various medial forms and social contexts. This Balinese case study demonstrates that mass culture not only reflects tradition but also actively participates in its production and reinterpretation.

The article examines the short stories of Xiao Hong (萧红), a Chinese writer little known in Russia but widely known in her homeland. Reviewing publications on Xiao Hong, the authors note that most critical responses focus primarily on the content of her works, while the formal features of Xiao Hong’s prose have received less attention. Turning to the analysis of her stylistic originality, the authors trace the poetic evolution of Xiao Hong’s artistic language and clarify the criteria of periodization: the degree of external conflict, the nature of social problematics, the type of imagery and the way psychological states are conveyed. The early stories of 1933 are considered as socially oriented realist prose with naturalistic detail and heightened expressiveness. The works of the second half of the 1930s are characterized by a weakening of direct accusatory rhetoric, an increasing role of subtext and a more objective psychological manner. In the stories of 1940–1941, impressionistic imagery and lyrical organization of the narrative come to the fore. The authors show that Xiao Hong’s later works, if one may speak of early and late periods in the career of a writer who lived only thirty years, are marked by a more complex artistic structure. Some of Xiao Hong’s short stories have been translated into Russian by the authors of the article for the first time.

The concept of “ki” (気), denoting energy, air, breath, pneuma, spirit and much more, is one of the fundamental and most distinctive categories of Chinese and, more broadly, Far Eastern philosophical thought. In Japan, the adoption of this concept began with the penetration of Chinese religious and philosophical thought. The article analyzes the meanings of the lexeme “ki” / 気 as it appears in Japanese lexical units and idioms. Set expressions are divided into six groups according to the meanings they convey. A large number of idioms are identified that reflect human feelings and emotions, as well as the perception of reality. The article also examines the growing role of the concept of “ki” in military affairs and martial arts. Based on Issai Chozan’s 1729 treatise “Tengu’s Discourses on the Art [of the Sword]”, the study shows that the state and fullness of “ki” directly influence changes occurring not only in the human body but also in the heart, mind and soul, and therefore in the psycho-emotional state. The article concludes that the idea of a primordial energy permeating and shaping the surrounding world is found in different layers of vocabulary. Idioms, as one of the most stable parts of language and culture, clearly demonstrate the preservation of the original meanings of the Chinese concept qi, which was borrowed and adapted by the Japanese tradition. The material for interpreting and representing the concept of “ki” consists primarily of phraseological units, set expressions and individual lexical items that verbalize basic concepts of national tradition and reflect the worldview of Japanese culture.

A new interpretation is proposed for a passage from the Mushi (The Oath on the Field of Mu) chapter of the Zhou Shu (Zhou Scriptures) section of the ancient Chinese Shangshu (Esteemed Book), or Shujing (Canon of Scriptures). The passage contains a speech by the Zhou king Wu-wang before the decisive battle with the Shang army, calling on the Zhou army to advance a few steps and then halt, to strike several times and then halt. In its literal form, this passage seems logically inconsistent. Liu Qiyu has provided criticism of the traditional interpretations of the passage and proposed to read this passage as a description of a war dance, performed immediately before the battle. The author, drawing on Zhouli (The Rites of Zhou) and other sources, corroborates the traditional explanation as a description of the rhythmic movement of troops, suggests the figurative nature of the passage, attributing this to the stylistic features of the text and proposing an analogy in the description of the actions of the Zhou troops with the process of writing the character wu (militantness), consisting of elements zhi (foot, stop) and ge (axe). The number of steps and strikes corresponds to the number of seven strokes in the character wu in its ancient writing in zhuan (seal) script. This proposal is based on the discussion by Zhuang-wang, the ruler of the Chu kingdom, on the composition of the character wu and the concept of militantness, consisting of seven virtues, presented in Zuo’s Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Chronicle (Chunqiu Zuo zhuan). The need to interpret the passage under consideration with the assumption of its euphemistic nature supports the opinion that the text of Mushi was recorded relatively late in the Eastern Zhou period.

The article analyzes Armenian travel notes of the 17th–19th centuries that reflect the routes, travel conditions and trade practices of Armenian merchants and clergy in India. The study is based on three key sources: the trade journal-diary of Hovhannes Ter-Davtyan from New Julfa, The History of Tahmaz Guli by Kuchuk Harutin and the travel notes of the priest Avetik Karbetsi Tsagikyan. For each source, the author has compiled a route map. Ter-Davtyan’s journal presents one of the routes followed by Armenians to India in the 17th century: from Shiraz via Bandar Abbas to Surat, while a later delegation from Echmiadzin, travelling in the first half of the 19th century, went from Shiraz to the port of Bushehr and then to Bombay. Karbetsi describes towns and villages, terrain, climate, dangers of the road and everyday hardships, including shortages of water, poisonous insects and bandits, among them guides who ultimately robbed the travellers. Kuchuk Harutin’s notes reflect the realities of military campaigns: difficult crossings through forests and deserts, and sweltering heat that dried up water within minutes. A separate section examines the postal system of the Armenian trading diaspora. The article documents both maritime and overland routes for the delivery of correspondence between New Julfa, Bengal, Madras, Surat and other trading centers. The study demonstrates the importance of Armenian sources for the history of transregional trade and routes, and highlights the role of Armenian travellers as intermediaries between East and West.