2026.2

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 analyzes the views of the British colonial administration on the security system along the north-eastern borderland of India during the Second World War. It examines strategic projects developed by British officials in the early 1940s in the context of the Japanese advance in Burma and the reconsideration of the region’s future political and strategic configuration. Particular attention is paid to the concept of the “two rings of buffers” proposed by Foreign Secretary to the Government of India Olaf Caroe, according to which the defence of India in the North-East was to be based on a combination of an external belt of buffer states (primarily Tibet and Burma) and an internal defensive zone composed of the tribal areas of the North-East Frontier of India. The article shows that in British strategic planning of that period, the North-East gradually acquired increasing importance in the context of possible external threats to India’s security, the most significant of which was perceived to be the potential rise of China. At the same time, the political developments of the mid-1940s and the preparations for granting independence to India prevented the implementation of plans for the reorganization of the northeastern borderland, many of which remained at the level of strategic proposals.

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.

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.

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.