2022.2

The article is focused on a problem of the role of European prisoners of war interned in the concentration camps of Turkestan during the First World War, in the events of the Civil war in Central Asia. The problem considered in the article has not yet been researched in historiography. Both the materials of Soviet documents and the memoirs of participants in those events in English, French and German were used as sources. The problem of the place of prisoners of war in the recent history of Central Asia was considered both in the context of the regional events of the civil war and in the international context. The sources published in the collections, as well as documents from the archives of the Russian State Archive of War and Peace. The main type of sources in the process of writing the article were the memoirs of foreign prisoners of war, as well as eyewitnesses to the events of those days. In this case, the corpus of narrative sources allowed in the process of disclosing the problem to fill a number of gaps associated with the formality and informative paucity of documentary sources.

The article explores the role of Sanjay Gandhi (1946–1980) in socio-political and cultural life of contemporary India and traces the roots of his “personality cult” in the society. Though over forty years have passed since his death, the controversy surrounding his figure does not subside even today. In India a number of public facilities boast Sanjay Gandhi’s name and his controversial persona often becomes the subject of populist rhetoric of political parties, news reports, as well as the prototype of characters in fiction. Sanjay Gandhi entered the Indian politics in the notoriously famous mid-1970-s marked with the declaration of national Emergency. In order to gain more political influence, he started strengthening the Indian Youth Congress — the youth wing of the Indian National Congress party. Simultaneously Sanjay Gandhi gathered a clique of his personal advisers, some of whom were important politicians from different states of the country. They were the ones who implemented into life Sanjay Gandhi’s socio-political programs including the family planning and city-beautification projects etc. But nowadays, too, the name of Sanjay Gandhi evokes mixed feelings in the Indian society. Different political parties, including the Congress, continue to blame him for the excesses of the Emergency. This article is an attempt to study the phenomenon of Sanjay Gandhi’s “personality cult” through tracing its history, identifying the factors of its formation, and giving some examples pertaining to the “cult”.

Hawdha Ibn ‘Alī al-Ḥanafī, chieftain of the Arabic tribe of Banū Ḥanīfa, is a notorious person in the history of Arabia of the late 6th and the early 7th cent. This article is an attempt to re-construct his political biography. It can be traced fr om the late 6th century when Hawdha, probably pursuant to an agreement with the Lakhmids, protected Sasanid caravans as they travelled through Yemama wh ere Banū Ḥanīfa dwelt. An important turning point took place when one of those caravans was captured and plundered by Arabs from the Banū Tamīm tribal confederation. Hawdha gave shelter to the caravan men and the guards and then took them to Ctesiphon. Sasanid king Chosroes II (591–628) bestowed Hawdha with a crown and a brocade garment. This probably means that Hawdha was appointed a local king, vassal of the Sasanids. Later on, Hawdha acted on behalf of the Sasanids. He was involved in the massacre of the Banū Tamīm at al-Mushaḳḳar (end of the 6th or beginning of the 7th century) and then provided Chosroes II with information on the affairs in Arabia and protected Sasanid caravans. After the dethronement of Chosroes II in February 628 Hawdha began to establish ties with Byzantium, yet that was interrupted by his death in 629 or 630.

The article is dedicated to the foreign policy approaches and principles that were characteristic of Islamist organisations of Pakistan at the end of the XXth century (this, second part of the article, covers the 1988–1999 period). It has been ascertained that the partnership between Islamist forces and the Pakistani leaders, established by both sides in domestic politics, led to a specific perception of foreign policy by Pakistani Islamists, who were pursuing the most compelling topics while at the same time staying in line with the general course set by the Pakistani government. The most significant among these topics are apparently setting Pakistan against India and calling for Pan-Islamic solidarity, of which Pakistan was deemed to be a stronghold. The aforementioned views often intertwined, which is obvious from Pakistani Islamists’ attitude towards the Afghan conflict, their support for Muslim separatism in Kashmir and their contacts with Indian counterparts. The main principle that Pakistani Islamists have been following while developing their approaches towards global politics is formulating foreign policy priorities according to inner policy needs.

The article concerns formula structure of contemporary Japanese fantasy literature. Research’s relevance is determined by the development of Japanese fantasy literature in 2010s that followed after a rapid rise in popularity of web-novels, which herald the change in the paradigm of contemporary literature. Specifically, Japanese reincarnation fantasy contributed vastly to the common fantasy discourse, taking it by storm. Quantitative analysis of novels’ summaries aided by text-mining tools accommodates for outlining main structural characteristics of the Japanese fantasy conventional system. For the research purposes by application of continuous sampling method a body of 390 novels has been selected pertaining to general relevance and relevance to Japanese fantasy. Text-mining algorithm of BigData processing AI by User Local, inc. has been used. Article contains context-based classification of 39 thematic groups divided into 15 categories, representing 3 layers. In conclusion, quantitative analysis of summaries of 2010s Japanese fantasy coupled with content-analysis has produced a set of key words and a thematic classification. Thematic systematisation reveals a model of formula structure of Japanese fantasy. Research results forward a model of self-recreating ability of the literary formula, operating under a single framework that defines standards and boundaries of Japanese fantasy as an original literary formula. To top it off, formula structure discourse characteristics of contemporary Japanese fantasy found in a context of collocations allow for a possible survey of target audience.

This article deals with publications in the magazine “New Youth” under the heading “Poetry”, which existed from 1915 to 1923. “New Youth” was one of the most important journals in China in the first decades of the 20th century. “New Youth” was the first magazine that published the most important journalistic articles and works of fiction that shaped new Chinese culture and literature after the “May 4th movement”. This article focuses on the poems that were first published in “New Youth” magazine. The substantive and formal features of the literary works are examined not only within the framework of the magazine’s policy in general, but also in the context of the ideas of the “Poetry” column authors as to what the shape of new poetry should be. Creative experiments on the pages of “New Youth” led to the emergence of new poetic genres (vers libre, prose poetry) and the rapid evolution of the themes of new poetry.

The paper examines the poetic image of a sparrow in the poems by Shinkichi Takahashi against the background of Zen Buddhism, which the poet practiced throughout his life. Though most scholars still discuss his poems in the context of Japanese Dadaism, the author shifts the interpretation of his legacy to Zen imagery and Zen philosophy. A great number of essays and notes published by Shinkichi Takahashi that remain almost unknown outside Japan may help us to expand our horizon in understanding his poetic images and render him a unique and profound poet that influenced the following literary tradition of Japan. The poet’s exceptional consistency and lifelong devotion to the image once created by him provides us a rare opportunity to study the transformation of his self-concept throughout his entire life. One of the main objectives of the article is also the question of delimiting the ideological message of European Dadaism with its subsequent interpretation in Japan in the context of the poet’s work. The paper attempts to establish what brings Shinkichi Takahashi’s dada closer to the elements of Zen philosophy, and what distances him, thus, from European Dadaism.

This article is devoted to the work of Bus’hak Shirazi, whose poetic heritage had not been studied in detail before, but was only mentioned in review works on the history of medieval Persian literature. A collection of his works, published in 1302 AH (1924), was kept in the library of the University of Toronto and became available to the author of this work in the form of a PDF copy. In modern Iran, the book has not been reprinted and is a bibliographic rarity. Bus’hak created his works within the framework of the poetic practice of “nazira-navisi” (response writing) to the reference works of his predecessors and the well-known works of his contemporaries. “Answers” were composed according to special rules, and the tradition as a whole, starting from the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, played an important role in the literary life of medieval Iran. Within the framework of this work, several ghazals of Bus’hak Shirazi were studied, which are part of his “Divan of Foods”, and a comparative analysis was carried out with the works he parodied (sample ghazals of Saadi and Hafiz) in order to identify the peculiarities of Bus’hak’s parody style. The study demonstrates that Bus’hak’s parody work is another component of the mosaic of the literary life of that time, without which its picture cannot be considered complete.

The article is related to the collection of the hadith qudsi that is the most popular one in Russia — the “40 Hadith Qudsi”. Its authorship is erroneously attributed to Ali Fikri Yavuz who had just translated the text from Arabic into Turkish. The purpose of the given article is a detailed analysis of this collection, in addition to the identification of its original author and the study of the used sources. The research presented in the article is purely textological and also includes the comparison of the examined collection to the other compilations of the hadith qudsi. Moreover, the article comprises the analysis of the rhymed prose represented in the Yavuz collection. The main issue that the author raises may be formulated as follows: may the examined collection be just a compendium of the hadith qudsi or is it an independent literary work?

This article is devoted to the 120th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding scientist Alexander Andreevich Guber. This is a tribute to the memory of his life and activities associated with Moscow State University, with the IVYA at Moscow State University, where he taught courses on the history of Indonesia for the first time and made great efforts to found a new department of the history of the countries of the Far East and Southeast Asia, the head of which he remained until the end of his days.

Taiwan’s uniqueness in geographical position, and political-economic situation contributes to its special status in the Chinese-speaking world. As one of the most important transport hubs located between the Eurasian continent and the Pacific Ocean, for centuries Taiwan has been the focal point of attention of the European and Asian countries. Since the 17th century, European maritime powers (the Dutch, then the Spaniards) occupied the southern and northern parts of the island. In the second half of the 17th century, with the strengthening of East Asian states’ role, Taiwan was under control of general Zheng Chenggong of Ming Dynasty, and his descendants. Subsequently, the island was governed by Qing Dynasty, imperial Japan and the government of the Republic of China. Constant change of power over the past five centuries has contributed to the formation of a unique linguistic system in Taiwan, and the influence of the cultures of the indigenous Austronesian peoples, European and Japanese colonialists, and immigrants from Southeast Asia has contributed to the special cultural identity of its population. Taiwan has come a long way from autocracy to democracy. During the reign of five political forces, the multi-component model of the language policy, taking into account the interests of immigrants from Mainland China and aborigines of Taiwan, was repeatedly replaced by a single-component one (in the center of which there were alternately Japanese and Chinese languages). In the modern period, there is a pluralistic language policy focused on the harmonious co-functioning of the languages of the peoples on the island. This article attempts to examine the dynamics of the language policy of various political forces that ruled in Taiwan since the 16th century, and to analyze the process of the formation of the so-called “Taiwanese identity”.

Using etymological methods, the present study identified three Sinitic and Slavic shared (Sino-Germanic) etyma: U+9E7F, U+9732 and U+8EF8. These three etyma form a rhyme correspondence. This regular sound change validates the etymological connection in question. The etymon U+9E7F for “deer and similar animals of the superfamily Cervoidea” has been identified in Sinitic, Slavic, Germanic, Baltic, Celtic, Romance, Hellenic, Armenian, Indo-Iranian and Tocharian. The etymon U+9732 for “dew” has been identified in Sinitic, Slavic, Baltic, Romance and Indo-Iranian. The etymon U+8EF8 for “dark” has been identified in Sinitic, Slavic, Germanic, Baltic, Celtic, Romance, Albanian, Hellenic and Indo-Iranian. In Indo-European linguistics, the Proto-Indo-European roots *h1ol-ḱ-i- “deer, elk”, *Hros-eh2 “dew” and *h2eḱs-(i-) “axle, axis” are newly identified in Sinitic.