2024.4

The article analyses the scientific and pedagogical activities of the teaching staff of the Department of the Near and Middle East History on the threshold of the 270th anniversary of the Lomonosov Moscow State University. The main goal of the authors was to make an objective assessment of the current state of the Department and its contribution to the development of Russian humanitarian knowledge, to determine its place in the structure of university science and education. Such a study makes it possible to characterize the specific nature of the training of Russian specialists in the Middle East and North Africa, the history and culture of Islam at Moscow University. At the same time, it allows us to get an adequate idea of the scientific schools formed in the Department, the level of academic research conducted by it, in order to assess the multifaceted work of the Department’s team within the framework of all-Russian and international Orientalist research projects. In the course of the work it was convincingly demonstrated that the Department of the Near and Middle East History has now firmly occupied its niche in the structure of Russian Oriental studies, becoming an important part of the Russian humanitarian community, a recognized center of education and training of qualified Orientalists for the needs of the country.

The article explores the main periods and trends in the development of studies in History and Politics in the Institute of Asian and African Studies and depicts the activities of certain departments. It reveals unity and diversity in the historical and contemporary social and political development of various parts of Asia and Africa regions.

The Institute of Asian and African Studies has been a leading institution for decades in the training of specialists across a broad spectrum of knowledge related to the development of Asia and Africa. IAAS serves as both a symbol and a reflection of the evolutionary trajectory of Soviet and Russian Oriental Studies. The Institute’s primary function is the preservation of classical Oriental Studies traditions, while concurrently addressing contemporary needs, providing in-demand, scientifically rigorous training, expanding its program offerings, reinforcing its position as a leading center for Asian and African Studies expertise, fostering robust academic and applied collaborations, and fulfilling Russia’s national development objectives.

This article is based on existing research and published archives and, by systematizing this information, seeks to reflect as fully as possible the process of decision-making on the restoration of diplomatic relations between China and the USSR in 1932. The main focus is on the analysis from the perspective of the Nanking government: the conceptual development and choice of interests of the Chinese and Soviet sides in the issues of Sino-Soviet relations and interaction with Japan during this period are examined. Soviet-Chinese diplomatic relations after 1931 underwent a relatively difficult process of reconstruction. Much of the Chinese and Russian literature provides limited analysis of this topic with simplistic conclusions. Due to widespread contradictions between China and the USSR, the Nanjing government was mistrustful of developing relations with the Soviet Union. At the same time, faced with unrest beyond the Far Eastern border, the USSR, out of caution and “distrust of the Nanking government,” also took a series of actions that were seen as “developing Japan-Soviet relations.” Under increasing pressure, China finally decided to start negotiations with the USSR to unconditionally restore diplomatic relations to prevent the Soviet Union from getting too close to Japan. The fact that the USSR gradually began to view Japan as a factor of instability also created conditions for the restoration of Soviet-Chinese diplomatic relations and their further development.

The article analyzes the actual problem of gender relations in Uzbekistan at the end of the XX — beginning of the XXI century, as well as the impact of gender relations on the economy of the state. There is a significant gender imbalance in the country, manifested in domestic violence, an impressive wage gap between men and women, forced marriages and so on — all this slows down the economic development of the state. The paper examines statistical data reflecting the employment of men and women of Uzbekistan in the labor market, the legislative framework governing the employment of the population. The role of mentality and religion in shaping the structure of gender relations in the economic sphere is determined. The stability of Muslim traditions in society is noted, which complicates the search for methods to achieve equality between men and women that do not contradict the foundations of religion. The segregation of the Uzbek labor market is considered and the main areas of employment of men and women are highlighted. The causes of the gender imbalance are determined, as well as attempts to correct it in politics are being studied. The paper examines the specifics of women’s employment, ways to encourage women’s participation in political and social activities, as well as the effectiveness of the methods used.

The paper discusses issues in the contemporary historiography of the West Punjab region, which now forms the Punjab province of Pakistan. The ethnic specificity of this area has been fully recognized by researchers; however, it is interpreted indifferent ways. To this end, the basic criterion has been the algorithm of “fixing” West Punjab within the general South Asian context. A detailed study of works on Punjabi ethnocultural identity allows us to distinguish two main research approaches: 1) consideration of West Punjab’s peculiarities in view of its ages-old cultural legacy; 2) analysis of its historical path and contemporary place based on the political realities of mid-ХХ–ХХI cc. While the first line of thinking is based on the assumption that West Punjabi culture has been inseparable from that of South Asia, the second one suggests that West Punjab should be considered exclusively as a Muslim-majority area, whose incorporation into Pakistan has been a natural outcome.

This article presents a review of the major scientific researches on the topic of ideograms in the Chinese and the Japanese languages, classified by their main themes and approaches in order to isolate similarities and differences of the approaches. In the paper we describe various approaches of Russian-speaking researchers to the study of ideograms from the second half of the XX to the early XXI century. Works in Sinology and Japanology during this period cover topics including writing, lexicology, and grammar, demonstrating a synchronized approach to studying the languages and cultures in both countries. Different perceptions of the issues under investigation can be noted in Japanology and Sinology. There is a lack of comparative studies simultaneously addressing both languages and their writing systems, as these topics are mostly presented separately in the works of Sinologists and Japanologists, indicating that despite the synchronization of studying linguistic aspects of both languages, joint comparative research within a single work is almost non-existent.

The history of modern Hebrew started in the 19th century, when Eliezer Ben-Yehuda set out to bring back the sleeping since the third century Hebrew language. This process was called the “revival of Hebrew”. Some innovations characteristic of the Slavic and Germanic language groups were added to the basis, that was preserved in traditional literature. However, we have not yet had to talk about the final design of the literary norm. Hebrew continued develop during the first waves of Jewish migrations from Europe to Eretz Israel, absorbing the regional characteristics of the settlers. Changes are still taking place in it. Modernization processes in Israeli society are leaving their mark on Hebrew. Language revises norms that are not relevant to modern discourse, acquires neologisms and slang, discards hopelessly outdated elements. Special institutions have been established to stabilize and codify continuous development. It would seem that they should become an aid in teaching modern Hebrew, because all educational and methodological literature is focused on their rulings. However, the role of such organizations is highly controversial. In practice, they often do not solve the controversial issues of comparing literary norms and conversational status, but leave them open. This puts the teacher of modern Hebrew in front of a moral choice: to adhere to the study of dry rules or sometimes to the detriment of them to give preference to a lively informal language. For Hebrew, this problem has the character of an existential question, laid down during the first waves of Jewish migrations at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries, and does not have an unambiguous answer. The choice depends on the preferences and views of the teacher.

The article examines the peripheral actants in Japanese utterance on the degree of expression of their prototypical agentive characteristics: volition, affectedness, ability to control, individuality, etc. The research was based on the material of author’s parallel Russian-Japanese fiction corpus. While analyzing cases of permutative voice in Japanese it is revealed that cases of anthropo-oriented impact of an inanimate subject are characterized by a focus shift from a human as a causation object and bringing him to the syntactic periphery with the raising of a means/instruments or somatics to an object position. A specific type of syntactic transformation is revealed: the movement of the possessor from the original dative to the attributive non-agentive position in possessive constructions, which contributes to the proof of the theoretical thesis about the restriction of the dative coding of the external possessor in Japanese. Special attention is paid to case variation of peripheral actants because case alternation in the design of high-agent and low-agent actants also demonstrate the importance of the propositional level of utterance and prototypical agential features. As a result of a complex study of the agential potential of peripheral actants it is confirmed that the processes of actant-predicate interaction are largely determined by the semantic features of not only the core, but also of the peripheral syntactic and semantic participants.

In Persian poetry sky is a powerful being whose incessant rotation around the earth determines the course of time and governs people’s destinies. Poets glorify the height and grandeur of the firmament, invoke its mercy upon themselves or upon the one to whom the poem is dedicated, and often they address the sky with reproaches. However, usually it does not answer them. The article discusses two cases in which the sky responds to the appeal, and a philological translation of the relevant passages is proposed. One example can be found in the masnavi poem by the Sufi poet Farid ad-Din ʿAṭṭār the Musibat-nameh (The Book of Torments) (12–13th cc.) where the Traveller of Thought (sālik-i fikrat), i.e. the personified thought of a meditating soul, converses with the sky seeking solace in his metaphysical grief. Another one is a fragment from Ferdowsi’s poem Shah-nameh where the Sky is being addressed by the author himself. Although these appeals to the Sky are quite different, the responses are similar: in both cases, the Sky ― and through it the poet ― appeals to human beeing’s higher purpose and unique place in the universe.

Liu Xie’s (465/466–520/522) treatise Wen xin diao long of 50 chapters presents the traditional literary theory, literary criticism and history of Ancient and Early Medieval literature of China in the most systematic and complete form. Its first complete Western translation into English by Vincent Yu-chung Shih (施友忠, Shi Yuzhong, 1902–2001) was published as late as in 1959. This presentation examines the 1959–1961 book reviews by the foreign literary experts on the Shih’s translation. They contain diverse assessments, suggestions and criticism of the first foreign-language edition of Wen xin diao long, which is an important resource for developing the parameters of a complete scientific edition of the forthcoming Russian translation of the treatise. The reviewers did not object to the choice of Liu Xie’s treatise as a source text. The courage of the translator who took up such a difficult task was lauded. The comments concerned the structure of the book (Introduction, translation text, Notes, Glossary, Index), the execution of the translation, the content of the Introduction and the scientific apparatus of the book. Vincent Shi’s translation became a significant event in the study of Wen xin diao long in the international sinology. The reviews pointed out objective difficulties, many of which remain relevant to this day and are associated with a lack of translations and knowledge of ancient and early medieval Chinese literature. The end of the 20th — beginning of the 21st witnessed appearance of the seven new translations of the treatise into European languages, which had to refer to Vincent Shih’s translation, to challenge him or agree with him both in the matters of translation proper and in the matters of the publication setup.

Economic development of Israel is a key issue not only in the regional researches but in case of the national economics around the globe. Small territory, lack of natural resources and estrangement from the states in the region: all these factors had a huge negative impact on the national economy of Israel in 1948. There was a need to develop the agriculture in order to build a recursive and self-ensuring economy. Traditional agricultural communities and settlements played a key role in its’ development. They still represent one of the main producers of agricultural goods. Moreover, the branch remains an important part of the inner production and export even in the innovative era. Two main types of agricultural goods for export consist of citruses and vegetables. The current wave of Israeli-Palestinian conflict influences the agriculture along with all types of industries. However, Israel has gone through the similar phases throughout its’ history. The agricultural market remains stable and ready for such fluctuations.