The Slavs and the East

The Slavs and

the East

Editors Mikhail Tikhomirov, Academician BabadjaiyGafurov, Corresponding Member of the U . S . S . R . Academy of Sciences

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Published in 1965 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Place de Fontenoy, Paris-7e

Printed by Imprimerie Marne, Tours

© Unesco 1965 Printed in France MC(CUA).f>4/D.58/A

Contents

Preface 7 Introduction 9 Ancient neighbours of the Slavs 17 Early sources 21 The first journeys to the East 28 Trade and trade routes 33 T h e interaction of cultures 38 Oriental studies 54 The awakening of the East 63 The Soviet East 67 Cultural relations today 71

Articles contributed by: Leonid Vassilyev, Yuri Zavadovsky, Vladimir Korolyuk, Yuri Nasenko, Anatoli Novoseltsev, A n n a Tveritinova, Naftula Khalfin, Nina Shastina.

Preface

T h e present work is one of a series of booklets for the general public, which deal with various aspects of the Major Project on Mutual Appreciation of Eastern and Western Cultural Values. It was prepared, at the request of the Secretariat, by the National Commission for Unesco of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

This publication is thus a contribution by the U . S . S . R . Natio­nal Commission to the implementation of the Major Project. It so happens that one of its two principal authors, Professor Babadjan Gafurov, corresponding m e m b e r of the U . S . S . R . Academy of Sciences, is chairman of the East-West Committee set up within the National Commission. T h e other is M r . Mik ­haïl Tikhomirov, m e m b e r of the U . S . S . R . Academy of Sciences.

These two scholars requested a group of authors, members of the Institute of Asian Peoples, the Institute of History and the Institute of Slavonic Studies, to write the various chapters of the work, which covers the following subjects: the neighbours of the Slavs in antiquity; earliest records; first journeys to the East; trade and trade routes; cultural influences; Oriental studies; the awakening of the East; the Soviet East; today's cultural links. The opinions expressed in these pages are

Preface 8

therefore those of the authors, and their observations do not necessarily reflect Unesco's views.

T h e Organization is, however, grateful to them for having described the development of mutual understanding between Eastern and Western cultures from the standpoint of the Slav peoples, and for having taken equal account of the phenomena of the past and of the present repercussions of these reciprocal influences.

Introduction

T h e progress made in the U . S . S . R . in the study of the history of the culture of Eastern and Slav countries is a matter of com­m o n knowledge, but w e are still not in a position—far from it—to give a concise, clear account of the relations between the Slav peoples and the peoples of the East through the cen­turies. In studying ancient periods, researchers are hampered, above all, by the scantiness and fragmentary nature of written sources. Consequently, the historian is constantly obliged to rely only on mute archaeological remains or on linguistic and ethnographical data, which cannot yet be accurately dated. O n the other hand, as w e come closer to modern times, sources become both more numerous and more varied. Present-day historians must not only uncover but also select their material in order not to lose sight of the forest for the trees.

Since this paper is being written at a time when very m a n y aspects of the subject 'the Slavs and the East' are still contro­versial, hypothetical or insufficiently studied, when our know­ledge about contacts between the countries of the East and those of Central and Eastern Europe throughout the ages and, more especially, during ancient and mediaeval times, is still fragmentary, and when m u c h of the data relating to the recent

Introduction io

past and more modern times still awaits specialized investiga­tion, it is naturally not the purpose of this pamphlet to cover the whole range of problems, even in a very cursory way .

In setting forth the basic facts in the history of contacts between the Slav peoples and the East, the writers of this paper realized that the terms 'Slavs' and 'East' are, historically speaking, by no means identical concepts. T h e term 'East' in this pamphlet means the numerous peoples of Asia, speaking a multitude of languages, often unrelated to one another. These peoples were in the past—and still are—at different stages of social development and their material and cultural traditions are highly disparate. T h e concept 'Slavs', on the other hand, is an ethnical one, covering a group of peoples interconnected by a certain c o m m o n origin and similarity of languages. It is true that the Slav peoples too, once the primi­tive community stage was over, did not constitute a single historical unit. In the course of their development, they came into contact with tribes and peoples of different cultures and different origins, so that the ethnical elements entering into the formation of the contemporary Slav peoples were by no means uniform. In the past, nevertheless, despite differences of religion and allowing for certain specific features and irre­gularities of social development, the Slav peoples were always united by their c o m m o n derivation from a single primitive Slav race and by the similarity of their historical past and their spiritual and material culture.

At the same time, it must be emphasized, w h e n studying the close ethnical, cultural and historical ties uniting the Slav peoples throughout the ages, that the contacts between these peoples and the East, from earliest times, were merely part of a whole pattern of contacts between the peoples of Asia and those of Central and Eastern Europe, in which not only the Slav peoples but also Germans and Hungarians, R u m a ­nians and Albanians, and the peoples of the Baltic provinces and Scandinavia participated; moreover, these contacts never took the form of mutual relations between two hermetically sealed or diametrically opposed worlds. T h e special nature of the historical process in the West and the East did not imply any basic contradiction between them. Fundamentally

11 Introduction

speaking, the historical progress of h u m a n society in East and West proceeded along identical Unes, with the transition of both Eastern and Western peoples from one stage of deve­lopment to the next higher stage being governed by the same social and economic laws in each case. T h e social and spiri­tual motives which impelled the peoples of the East and the West respectively to embark on the hard fight against oppres­sion and to aspire to, believe in and fight for social justice were, if not identical, at any rate very similar. This is particu­larly apparent at the present time, w h e n the peoples of both Europe and Asia have rallied together in the community of nations, united in the c o m m o n struggle for socialism, progress and peace.

The Slav peoples have played a large and important part in the historical contacts that have enriched the culture of the peoples of Europe and Asia through the centuries precisely because of the fact that, geographically speaking, the Slav peoples were close neighbours of Eastern peoples. Their lands were traversed, ever since the very early Middle Ages, by the most important transit trade routes of the world, linking the then flourishing countries of the East with a feudal Europe emerging from the ruins and ashes of the Ancient World.

The Slav languages belong to the very extensive Indo-European family, which includes the Romance , Germanic and Slav tongues, the languages of the Greeks, the Celts, the Letts and Lithuanians, the Iranians and Armenians, the Indians, Thracians and Illyrians. Slavs were the aboriginal inhabitants of vast areas of Central and Eastern Europe located within the present boundaries of the Soviet Union and Poland, between the Dnieper and the Oder.

As a result of extensive transmigration, in the course of which the n e w ethnical m a p of Europe took shape, the Slav tribes established themselves in the territory of modern Cze­choslovakia and settled in Pannonia (where the Hungarians appeared later and founded their feudal State). The Slav populations, little by little, occupied the whole of the area lying between the Oder and the Elbe, advancing even in some places beyond the Elbe to the west. Almost at the same time the Slav tribes began to m o v e forward into the Balkans, where,

Introduction ia

by the middle of the eighth century, they already constituted the dominant ethnical, military and political force, occupying a large part of the peninsula.

T h e era of mass Slav migrations in the early Middle Ages was also the time w h e n the three main branches of the great Slav people took final shape. T h e East Slavs include the pre­sent-day Russians, Ukrainians and Byelorussians; the West Slavs—the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Sorbs or Lusations; South Slavs (Bulgarians, Serbs, Macedonians, Croats and Slovenes) occupied the Balkan peninsula.

Subsequently, substantial changes occurred along the western frontiers of the Slav world. T h e German feudal drive to the East reduced the size of Slav-occupied territory in the West, where the Slav tribes along the Elbe and the Baltic found themselves absorbed by the Germanic ethnic mass.

At the same time, the territory occupied by the Slavs expan­ded considerably to the south and east. T h e East Slavs not only stood up to the attacks of the n o m a d tribes of the Black Sea steppes and threw off the Tartar-Mongolian rule which had stifled their spiritual and material culture for three centu­ries; but they even succeeded in conquering large areas of the Black Sea steppes, besides embarking on large-scale economic development of the limitless expanses of the Urals and Siberia. This expansion, begun as early as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by peasants and Cossacks pushing south and east, eventually m a d e the Russian Slavs direct neighbours of the peoples of Central Asia and the Far East.

The clearest illustration of the tremendous progressive impor­tance of this drive of the Eastern Slavs to the shores of the Pacific Ocean is the present-day economic and cultural deve­lopment of Siberia, which Soviet people are transforming into a very advanced industrial and agricultural region with a highly developed scientific and cultural life.

But another inference m a y also be drawn from the fore­going: the influence exerted by relations and links with Eastern countries on their social, political and cultural development was by no means identical for all the Slav peoples. T h e effect of such contacts was, quite obviously, m u c h greater in the case of the Southern Slavs, w h o remained for m a n y centuries

13 Introduction

under the feudal yoke of the Turks, and had m a n y economic links of all kinds with the countries of Asia Minor and the Middle East, than in the case of the Western Slavs. But the Eastern Slavs also—Russians and Ukrainians, in parti­cular—had, and still have, specially close contacts with a great variety of Asiatic countries. This circumstance has, of course, influenced our choice of historical material for the present pamphlet.

The Slavs, like the other peoples of Europe, have not merely helped to shape the n e w ethnical structure of Europe but have also, from the very outset, played an active part in European cultural, economic and political life. Together with the R o m a ­nic and Germanic peoples, they were the heirs of the Graeco-R o m a n Mediterranean civilization of the Ancient World, based, in turn, on the tremendous achievements of the ancient civilizations of Asia and Africa. T h e Slav peoples m a d e an enormous contribution to the development of European cul­ture and science, and so played an active part in creating world cultural tradition as a whole and contributed to the triumphs of h u m a n genius in all spheres of knowledge, from elaborating the heliocentric theory to penetrating the deepest secrets of the structure of matter and the heroic conquest of the cosmos. Yet, the advance of European civilization was never an iso­lated phenomenon: it drew its inspiration, throughout the centuries, from the superior, vitalizing civilizations created by the peoples of the East, just as the peoples of the East, in their turn, particularly in recent and modern times, have absorbed into their cultures and assimilated the technical and spiritual achievements of Europe.

T h e fact that the Slav peoples played an important part in this mutually enriching exchange of technical and cultural values is due mainly to the links which these peoples had, in ancient times and for m a n y centuries, maintained with the East. T h e Slav peoples, in creating their indigenous civili­zation, had always maintained extremely close and varied cultural contacts with other peoples.

T h e history of relations between the Slav peoples and peoples of the East had, of course, in addition to these fruitful exchanges of ideas and achievements, its negative aspects too—which

Introduction '4

brings us back to a problem already mentioned above, that of the choice of material for this pamphlet.

That w e decided, eventually, to confine ourselves to cul­tural and historical problems was not due to any reluctance on our part to touch upon the complex and controversial aspects of the past. W e do not in the least underestimate the significance of political contacts and relations in history— which, incidentally, have been studied in relatively greater detail; nor do w e take the view that history should ignore such negative phenomena as the three-century-long yoke imposed by the Tartars on Russia, the six centuries of Turkish feudal rule in the Balkans or the predatory nature of Tsarist foreign policy. But at this juncture, w h e n our planet is threatened by the monstrous scourge of nuclear war and the sole alternative to a disastrous world-wide atomic conflict is peaceful co-exis­tence between countries with different social systems, first priority must, in our opinion, be given to studying and clari­fying those aspects of past history which help to bring nations closer together and increase their mutual understanding and respect.

T h e team of authors, representing members of the Institute of Asian Peoples, the Institute of History and the Institute of Slav Studies of the U . S . S . R . A c a d e m y of Sciences, has concen­trated on questions of economic and cultural contacts between the Slav countries and the countries of the East, on the tradi­tions of their c o m m o n revolutionary struggle, and on broad co-operation between them in modern times; and has selected and arranged the material so as to illustrate clearly and vividly the following main themes: Cultural or economic isolation has never proved favourable

to real social, economic and cultural progress. Large-scale exchanges of cultural values and mutually advantageous economic exchanges have always promoted the general progress of countries and peoples, without materially afFec-ting either their individual image or the originality of their culture.

Economic and cultural relations between peoples, along with greater knowledge of one another, constitute powerful levers that help in discarding outworn national prejudices. By

15 Introduction

overcoming the racial, national and religious barriers erec­ted in the past by the exploiting classes, nations will thereby remove a serious hindrance to h u m a n progress.

T h e abolition of national and social oppression, as seen from the example of the development of Eastern peoples in the Soviet Union, creates the most favourable possibilities for a very extensive international exchange.

The present-day development of extensive co-operation be­tween the peoples of the East, the Slav countries, and all the countries with socialist systems yields beneficial results in all branches of their domestic and international develop­ment. Such co-operation is equally important to both parties and it serves the interests of mankind as a whole, since it helps to solve the most burning problem of the present-day world—war or peace—in favour of peace.

Ancient neighbours of the Slavs

A glance at the m a p of Europe and Asia immediately shows that the mountain range of the Urals, separating the Eastern European plain from Siberia, breaks off at its southern end before reaching the Caspian Sea, and forms a sort of natu­ral gateway, where the steppes of Asia meet those of the Black Sea region.

Long before they were ploughed up by Soviet tractors, these steppes were, in Gogol's words, 'a green and virgin wil­derness'. Covered with tall feather-grass that would hide a horseman, they provided the ancient nomads with rich pas­tures. T h e Asiatic peoples found here their most convenient route from east to west, and in the opposite direction, or across their path, moved those Slav tribes w h o sought an outlet to w a r m seas or new and fertile lands to conquer.

Ties of mutual influence linked up at the meeting-point of these two ethnic and cultural streams.

For a long period during the last millennium B . C . , Scythians and Sarmatians—'the mare-milkers'—led a nomadic existence to the north of the Black and Caspian Seas. These were peoples of European racial type, whose languages—known as Eastern-Iranian—were distantly related to Persian. S o m e

Ancient neighbours of the Slavs 18

of them contributed to the development of an advanced Graeco-Scythian culture on the shores of the Black Sea, where Greek colonies were situated.

Gold vessels and ornaments, unearthed in great numbers from Scythian burial mounds , form a collection of extreme rarity, of which the U . S . S . R . is justly proud. T h e Greek histo­rian Herodotus describes h o w the Scythians buried their kings. W h e n the king died, his favourite concubine and faithful servants were first strangled and then buried with him—as well as his finest horses and golden vessels, for the Scythians believed that the dead m a n would need all these in the other world. A high m o u n d was raised over the tomb.

T h e descendants of the Scythians and Sarmatians settled on the shores of the Black Sea and intermingled partially with the Eastern Slavs, w h o inherited a number of words from the vocabulary of the Scythians. T h e Russian word for dog, sobaka, for example, is considered to be one such ancient borrowing. It is certain that the present names of some of the rivers of the Ukraine are also East-Iranian in structure. Moreover, it must be assumed that m a n y Slavonic-Iranian linguistic similarities can be explained by the c o m m o n origin of these Indo-European peoples; whilst similarities in the fields of mythology, religion and ethnics clearly reflect the ancient community of religion, mythology and culture, and conse­quent close cultural contacts that existed between the Iranians, in the wider sense of the term, and the Slavs.

Beyond the Scythians, further to the east, lived the ancestors of the Turkic-Altaic peoples. They were also horse-breeders, and their culture, to judge from archaeological data, in m a n y ways resembled that of the Scythians. This is particularly proved by a burial m o u n d discovered by Soviet archaeologists in the perpetual frost zone of the Altai Mountains: here, the deceased's horses were buried along with him.

T h e Huns , w h o belonged to the same racial and linguistic group, moved into Europe in the fifth century A . D . , and left similar burial grounds in what is n o w Czechoslovakia. After the Huns were defeated at the battle of Chalons on the Cata-launian plains in 451 and driven out of Western Europe, they were rapidly absorbed by other nomadic peoples.

19 Ancient neighbours of the Slavs

S o m e time later, in the sixth and seventh centuries, the Bulgars, w h o are believed to have belonged to the Turkic peoples, appeared in the steppes of South Russia. Some of them moved towards the Balkans; crossing the Danube, they found themselves among Slavs and rapidly adopted and mas­tered the Slavonic language and culture. S o m e of them moved to the upper Volga, where they founded the State of the 'Volga or K a m a Bulgars', which for a long time played an important role as an intermediary in trade between the Slavs and the peoples of the East.

Another intermediary in trading relations between the Slavs and the East was the Khazar Khaganate, which existed on the lower Volga until the end of the first millennium A . D . and which consisted of Turkic peoples whose leaders had adopted Judaism.

A m o n g the north-eastern neighbours of the Slavs were the Finno-Ugrians, w h o traded between the third and seventh centuries A . D . with Sassanid Iran and the Caucasus. A m o n g these peoples ancient Russian chronicles mention the Chudes, Mordvins, M u r o m s and Cheremissi. S o m e of these have gone on living in almost the same places up to the present day. Others moved far to the west, like the Magyars, w h o settled in Central Europe.

In regions where the Eastern Slavs came into contact with the Chudes, the Russian population, into which the Chudes were subsequently absorbed, has preserved a peculiar type of ornament: a pendant in the form of a small duck with a lump of earth in its beak. This little duck figures in the cosmogonical tales of the Finno-Ugrians and the Volga Bulgars.

In north-eastern Europe, sheltered by the Urals and by dense forests, lived the Ugrians, Permians and K o m i . For more than fifteen hundred years they accumulated unique treasure hoards, buried under the ground. Embossed dishes and cups of silver gilt, unearthed in this region in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, are exhibited in the 'Sassanid R o o m ' of the Hermitage M u s e u m in Leningrad.

Russian popular art, like that of several other Slav peoples, has preserved a number of motifs in c o m m o n with the art of the Scythians, the Altai peoples, the Bulgars, the Finno-Ugrians

Ancient neighbours of the Slavs 20

and the Sassanid Iranians. T h e portrayal of animals, in parti­cular, became very widespread among all these peoples. K n o w n customarily to specialists as the 'animal style', this style was formed while the Scythians were still in Hither Asia, and spread from there to Iran, the Caucasus and Central Asia, as far as the Altai and north-west India.

Animals were represented both singly, in pairs and 'face to face', and also in rows. Hunting scenes, or those represen­ting the attacks of predatory beasts on deer and other hoofed animals are particularly c o m m o n . Fantastic figures, half-beast, half-human, sometimes with appendages in the form of birds' wings or a snake-like tail, are also c o m m o n . All these griffons, sirens and centaurs sometimes underwent Byzantine processing before appearing as decorations on north Russian embroidery, on spinning wheels, and on other household articles.

These different phenomena, considered as a whole, are eloquent testimony to the fact that at no time in h u m a n history were East and West separated from each other by a blank wall, but that the cultures of Eastern and Western peoples developed under conditions of prolonged and rather varied contacts.

Early sources

Whereas our knowledge of the earliest contacts between the Slavs and Eastern peoples derives from folklore, linguistics, toponymy and archaeology, and from fragmentary information supplied by R o m a n writers (Pliny and others), w e have at our disposal, from the sixth century A . D . onwards, written evidence of contacts between the Slav world and the East which, though still very disjointed and fragmentary, is never­theless important. This was the period when the Slavs became well known in Byzantium. The Byzantine government enrolled detachments of Slavs in its service and used them in wars with Sassanid Iran. It was through the Greeks that the very name , 'Slavs', became known in the East.

But was it only through the Greeks that sixth-century Iran learned of the existence, somewhere in the far north, of a tall, fair-haired race, renowned for its courage and virility? The sixth century was, after all, the greatest age of Sassanid expan­sion; its garrisons then held the impregnable Derbent citadel and the Dariel Pass, so preventing the nomads from invading Transcaucasia. It is a pity that the Iranian sources of the period have not reached us. But m u c h later chroniclers of the Caspian regions, historians in particular, were not only familiar with

Early sources 22

the legends handed d o w n from former times but also with the chroniclers of the pre-Muslim period. It is precisely in their work that w e find several rather vague references to the Slavs, w h o became known in Iran in the second half of the sixth and the first third of the seventh centuries.

It m a y be assumed that as early as the seventh and eighth centuries, Slav settlements existed somewhere near the middle D o n , which Arab authors of the eighth and ninth centuries called 'the river of the Slavs'.

F r o m the eighth century onwards there was increasingly important commerce between the countries of the Arab Cali­phate and those of Eastern Europe and the Baltic seaboard. From its very beginnings, a particularly important role in this trade was played by the route along the River Volga. T h e Volga itself is called the 'Russian River' by Arab geographers of the tenth century. The boats of Eastern merchants moved northwards along its course, passing through the rich trading centres of Itil (near present-day Astrakhan) and Bulgar (south of the mouth of the K a m a ) . They were attracted there by the legendary riches of the northern lands, and primarily by their furs: silver fox, sable, marten, ermine, beaver and the pelts of other animals. Their value was well known in Khorezm, as well as in Bokhara, Rai, Baghdad and Cairo. Poets sang their praises, and kings, emirs and famous potentates strove to outdo each other with magnificent gifts from the dense forests and the rivers of the distant northlands. Finest of all were the furs from the land of the Volga Bulgars and the Russian north. In addition to furs, Eastern Europe exported w a x , honey and slaves. The countries of the Slavs received in return the products of sophisticated Eastern artisans, and, in particularly large quantities, silver coins. It is no mere coincidence that, through­out the whole vast area in which the Eastern and Western Slavs were settled, numerous hoards of silver coins of the eighth to tenth centuries are still being discovered, bearing silent wit­ness to the lively trading relations that existed with the East in those distant times.

But Eastern merchants were not the only active parties in this trade. 'Trading guests' from the Slavs were familiar figures in various towns of the Caliphate. Ibn Khurdadbih, an Arab

23 Early sources

geographer of the ninth century, provides us with evidence of their regular visits to Eastern lands. H e wrote: 'Concerning the Russian merchants, they are a kind of Slavs, and bring beaver fur, the fur of the silver fox and swords from the most remote parts of the Slav land to the R o m a n (Black) Sea ; and the Emperor of the Romans (Byzantium) levies a tithe on them (the merchants) ; and, if they so desire, they set off along the Tanais (Don), the river of the Slavs, and pass through the narrows of the capital of the Khazars, and the ruler of the Khazars levies a tithe on them. Then they set off for the Dzhurd-zhan (Caspian) Sea and land on whatever shore they please... and sometimes they carry their goods on camels from Dzhurd-zhan to Baghdad, where Slav slaves serve them as inter­preters.'

T h e lively trade relations between the countries of the Cali­phate and the lands of the Slavs strengthened the interest taken in the Slavs by Arab science. In works written as early as the eighth to tenth centuries, scholars find quite a lot of important data about the Slavs. Geographical and historical works of that period contain material concerning the origin of the Slavs, their contacts with other peoples, their churches and religion, the life and customs of the different tribes, the first Slav States etc.

At the beginning of the tenth century, the vizier of the central Asian State of the Samanids was al-Dzhaykhani. This enlight­ened minister combined his activities as a statesman with an interest in science; he patronized scholars, and was himself a student of geography. In compiling his great geographical work, he not only made wide use of the works of his predeces­sors, the Greek and Arab geographers, but also in seeking to fill in the gaps which existed in these works, and, if possible, to add new and contemporary material, he gathered around him merchants w h o had travelled to distant lands and ques­tioned them about the lands and peoples they had seen. These merchants included people w h o had been to the Volga, and also to the distant town of 'Kuyab ' (Kiev), the Russian capital. T h e inquisitive minister-geographer heard from them about the great riches of that country, about its warlike and doughty inhabitants, about the relations between the Russians and

Early sources 24

neighbouring peoples and, in particular, about their trade. Eastern merchants and travellers came to the lands of the

Slavs from the West, from Moslem Spain. Ibrahim ibn Y a k u b m a d e such a journey to the lands of the Western Slavs in the sixties of the tenth century, and has left us an extremely inte­resting account. A m o n g the Slav States, he described Bohemia, Poland, the principality of the Obodriti and Bulgaria. H e did not visit the latter country but saw ambassadors from Bulgaria during an audience given by the G e r m a n Emperor Otto I. These ambassadors 'wore narrow cloaks fastened with long belts which had gold and silver buttons'. Ibrahim ibn Yakub wrote of the Bulgarians that they had translated the Gospels into the Slav language.

This traveller goes into m u c h greater detail concerning the Western Slavs, w h o m he, more often than not, calls 'Slavs'. Speaking of the activities of the population, he noted that 'they (the Slavs) are diligent in tilling the soil and earning a livelihood and surpass all northern peoples in this respect'. Himself an inhabitant of the torrid south, where the farmer often ran the risk of losing his entire harvest as a result of drought, Ibrahim ibn Yakub remarked that in the country of the Slavs no such a danger existed.

T h e Slavs were, from ancient times, known in the East as a northern people. Eastern scholars of the time even explained such superficial characteristics of the Slavs as their fair hair and their fresh complexion by the peculiarities of the cold northern climate. Nor did Ibrahim ibn Yakub fail to mention this, although he was, of course, clearly exaggerating w h e n he wrote that the Slavs, accustomed to the cold climate, were afraid to travel even to Lombardy or to Italy, because the great heat would, as they alleged, have fatal consequences for them. At the same time, he noted, evidently with some sur­prise, that the inhabitants of Bohemia were generally dark-haired.

Nor did he omit to mention the towns of the Slavs, paying particular attention to a description of Prague. This town, which was celebrated for making saddles and shields, was visited by Russian, Polish, Pomeranian, Varangian, Jewish and Moslem merchants.

25 Early sources

By the end of the tenth century, paganism in Russia was in decline. W h e n the Russian prince, Vladimir Svyatoslavich ('the Saint'), head of one of the largest European States, decided to 'abandon the old gods', in the words of the Russian Primary Chronicle, he organized an unusual competition between representatives of the three biggest monotheistic religions— Christianity, Islam and Judaism—the so-called 'testing of faiths'. At the prince's request, representatives of each reli­gion told him about the significance and special features of their faith. T h e chronicler relates that Vladimir was at first attracted to the Moslem religion, but some of its dogmas, such as the ban on wine and pork, were not to his taste. Finally, Russia accepted Christianity from Byzantium.

This was not, of course, because Vladimir stubbornly refused to abstain from wine and pork, but because political conditions in the tenth century, the presence of Christian neighbours to the south and west, and, by that time, of quite strong Christian elements in Russia, obliged the prince to declare for Christ rather than M o h a m m e d . But it is curious that this 'testing of faiths', although it is basically cloaked in legend, found expres­sion in the literature of the East. In the first half of the thirteenth century, M o h a m m e d Awfi, a Persian poet from Central Asia living in India, compiled a unique anthology, Jawami ul-Hikayat in which he recounts, inter alia, h o w the prince of the Russians, Buldmir (Vladimir), sent ambassadors to Khorezm, as he wished to adopt Islam.

The contacts between the Eastern Slavs and the peoples of the Northern Caucasus and Transcaucasia were particularly close. Georgia became a strong and united kingdom in the twelfth century. Georgia was k n o w n in Russia as the land of the Abkhazians (Abkhazia). T h e Russian Chronicle has pre­served for us considerable information about the diplomatic and dynastic relations of Russian princes with the ruling house of Georgia. Thus, in 1152, Prince Mstislav married the daughter of the king of the Abkhazians (his wife was the aunt of the famous Georgian queen, Tamara , w h o herself took a Russian princeling as her first husband).

There is also evidence of cultural contacts between Russia and Transcaucasia. Georgian craftsmen are believed to have

Early sources 26

participated in the construction of the celebrated churches of the capital city of Vladimir on the Klyazma.

Eastern, Western and Southern Slavs derived their know­ledge of the East both from contemporary word-of-mouth reports and from historical literature, principally Greek. Russian, Polish and Czech annals and chronicles (for example, the Polish chronicle of Gallus Anonymus , and the Czech chronicle of Cosmas of Prague, compiled in the eleventh to twelfth cen­turies, contained a certain amount of information about the civilizations of the ancient East—Egypt, Assyria, Media and Iran. The compiler of the twelfth-century Russian Primary Chronicle was obviously familiar with the geography and history of Eastern countries. Thus, he speaks of the trade route along the Volga to the 'Khvalynskoe' (Caspian) Sea and further to 'Khvalisi' (Khorezm). T h e work of the fifteenth-century Polish chronicler, Jan Dlugosz, contains numerous references to the ancient and mediaeval peoples of the East.

The last of the great Arab travellers of the Middle Ages known to us to have visited the Slavs was the Andalusian A b u H a m i d of Granada, w h o spent fifty-six of the ninety years of his life in long journeys through different countries in Asia and Europe. H e lived for a long time in Saksin, a town of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, situated at the mouth of the Volga, on the site of the ancient Itil, and he had a house in Hungary. A b u H a m i d also visited Bulgar on the Volga, and on his return journey from there (in the third decade of the twelfth century) he travelled through part of the territory of the Eastern Slavs, leaving behind him a sort of diary of his journey. A n outstanding characteristic of this m a n was his love for all forms of the odd or unusual. Thus, the section of his notes about the country of the Slavs (the Russians) begins with a description of forms of exchange which had impressed him. In the part of Russia which this traveller visited, the means of exchange was not metal coins, which the Arab merchant was accustomed to in other countries, but squirrel-skins.

A b u H a m i d also recorded other impressions. H e spoke of the 'bravery' of the Slavs, and said that their country was 'vast, rich in honey, wheat, barley and large apples of

27 Early sources

unsurpassed quality, which were abundant there and inexpen­sive'. In one Slav town in Russia, whose exact location is hard to determine, he had an interesting meeting with a native of Baghdad, A b d al-Karim, w h o lived there.

Twenty years after A b u Hamid 's visit to Russia, the Arab scholar, al-Idrisi, a member of a distinguished but declining family, w h o was attached to the court of Roger, the N o r m a n King of Sicily, far away in the West, completed a geographical work, Nuzhat al-Mushtak Fihtirak al-Afak (The Journey of O n e w h o Loves Horizons). While working on this project, al-Idrisi, like his distant predecessor, al-Dzhaykhani, not only m a d e use of scholarly works but also obtained the assistance of his patron, Roger, in collecting a mass of oral information about different countries and about trade in the contemporary world. The countries of the Slavs also are given quite a lot of prominence in his work. Al-Idrisi listed m a n y Slav towns, and mentioned the trade routes which he knew about.

T h e first journeys

to the East

After Christianity was adopted in Russia, pilgrimages (khoz-heniya) were among the first kinds of journeys made by Russians to the East. Pilgrims' tales of Constantinople, Byzantium and Palestine appear in Russian chronicles from the twelfth century onwards. As early as the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Russians had a special quarter (obol) in Constantinople, where merchants w h o had arrived from Russia used to live. Colonies of Russian monks sprang up in the monasteries of Constantinople. S o m e of them transcribed or even translated books by Greek authors into their native tongue, and also transcribed works by South Slav authors, and sent them to Moscow. It was through these that Russia became aware, long before the fall of Cons­tantinople, of the Turks having appeared in Asia Minor. A detailed account of the siege and capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 was left by one of the Russian eye-wit­nesses of this event—Nestor Iskander.

After the Turks captured Kaffa in the Crimea, in 1475, the Ottoman State became a close neighbour of Muscovite Russia. Desirous of direct contacts with the Turks, Moscow sent its first ambassador to Istanbul in 1497, with instructions to get an agreement permitting Russian merchants to engage

29 T h e first journeys to the East

in unhampered trade in the Turkish possessions. Subsequently, ambassadors were exchanged more or less regularly between Ottoman Turkey and Russia. The articles produced by Tur­kish craftsmen in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries— weapons, armour, plates and dishes in chased metal, harness decorations, precious fabrics and enamels—which are conser­ved in the 'Oruzhejnaya Palata' Armoury of the Moscow Kremlin, were all at one time or another brought into Russia as gifts from the Turkish Sultans to the Russian Tsars.

Sixteenth-century Russia learned about Turkey and the life of the Turks through the works of Ivan Peresvetov and M a x i m the Greek, which are written in a lively manner, and were extremely popular at that time. In the seventeenth century, a very well-known work in Russia and in Europe was a book, The Court of the Turkish Czar, by the Polish writer, Starovolsky, written after his lengthy stay in Turkey; soon after publication, it was translated into Russian and other European languages. In the eighteenth century, Vassilyi Grigorovich-Barsky tra­velled in Turkey and the countries of the Near East, as did Konstantin Bazili, Mikhail Vronchenko and Piotr Chikhachev in the nineteenth century.

From the fifteenth century onwards, there is evidence con­cerning the exchange of ambassadors between Muscovite Russia and Iran. For example, the Iranian historian, A b d ar-Razzak, refers to the arrival of Russian ambassadors in Herat in 1464. A n embassy from Sultan Hussein of Herat arrived in M o s c o w in 1490 with an offer of 'friendship and affection'.

Exchanges of embassies became more frequent in the six­teenth century, when the Kazan and Astrakhan khanates were united with Russia and Iran became her immediate neighbour.

From the seventeenth century w e have the travel notes of the Russian merchant, Kotov, concerning Iran and the lands situated on the route to that country. Kotov supplied very interesting geographical, ethnographical and economic material about the lands and peoples he had seen.

From ancient times India engrossed the imagination of the Slavs. The fantasy-embroidered story of Alexander the Great's

T h e first journeys to the East 3°

journey to the East, to India, was familiar to Russians and Western Slavs, under the title of Aleksandrija. More reliable information about this country was provided by the transla­tions of the Christian Topography of Cosmas of Indikopol. Most of the information about this 'land of wonders', however, reached the Slavs indirectly, mainly through Central Asia, Transcaucasia and Iran. T h e first Russian to see India with his o w n eyes was Aphanasi Nikitin, a merchant of Tver, w h o was there in 1466-72. H e described his journey in a book en­titled Travels Beyond Three Seas. In contrast with m a n y Euro­pean travellers, Nikitin managed to mingle with the Indians and gain a good knowledge of the country and its customs. In the seventeenth century, Russia tried to establish regular commercial and diplomatic relations with India, but of three embassies sent out, only the last one reached Kabul, in 1676.

Shortly after the creation of the Afghan State (1747), Bog-dan Aslanov was sent there by Russia as an ambassador to establish diplomatic relations and also to ascertain the possi­bilities of trade with India through Astrabad. Aslanov's journey began in January 1764, and lasted more than a year. Aslanov's notes were the first almost entirely reliable information in Russia about Afghanistan. From the third decade of the nine­teenth century onwards, Russian scholars were the first in Europe to make a thorough study of the history of the Afghan people and of its language, Pushtu. In 1858-59 a scientific expedition led by Nicolai Khanykov investigated a number of architectural monuments in Afghanistan. In 1878, the first Russian mission visited the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul.

The Russians were the first of the Slav peoples to establish permanent relations also with the peoples of Central Asia and Siberia. In the seventeenth century, Ivan Fedotov and the Pazukhin brothers collected information about Bokhara and Khiva and by the beginning of the eighteenth century, a m a p of Central Asia had been compiled in Russia, and Russians were already quite familiar with those regions. There is, in Paris, a m a p of Central Asia and the Caspian Sea, corrected by Peter I in his o w n hand when he was shown an extremely inaccurate m a p prepared in Europe.

3' T h e first journeys to the East

The Yermak expedition, which inaugurated the conquest of Siberia, was organized in 1581, from the lands owned by the Stroganov merchants beyond the Urals. The Cossacks and the 'pioneers' opened up n e w territories and built towns: Tobolsk, Tomsk, Yeniseisk and Yakutsk. As early as 1640, the Russians had their first m a p of Siberia. At the end of the seventeenth century, parties led by Poyarkov and Khabarov reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean. A Russian Cossack, Dezhnev, discovered the strait which separates Asia from North America. In the first half of the eighteenth century, two expe­ditions were led to Kamchatka by Vitus Bering. Russians also penetrated into Alaska (which belonged to Russia until 1867, when it was sold to the United States).

In the seventeenth century, detachments of Cossacks, in their conquest of Siberia, came into contact with nomad Mongols. In a desire to establish good relations with the M o n ­gols and, across their territory, with China, the Russian govern­ment exchanged ambassadors with the Mongolian ruler, Altan-K h a n .

It was only in the seventeenth century that regular contacts between Russia and China were established, when the Cossack Ivan Petlin accomplished a journey of incomparable daring to Peking. A n official embassy, headed by Feodor Baikov, was later sent to China with a retinue of one hundred. Feodor Baikov's credentials proclaimed 'and W e , the Great Sovereign, seek firm friendship and affection with Y o u , the Chinese E m p e ­ror . . . '. This embassy did not, however, gain audience with the Chinese Emperor. In 1675, Nikolaj Spafary arrived in Peking at the head of a large Russian embassy. H e was received in audience by the Chinese Emperor, and credentials were exchanged. The Russian people learned m u c h about China from this ambassador. The Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689 opened up wide prospects for Russo-Chinese relations.

Other Slav peoples also became acquainted with China in the seventeenth century. Polish missionaries, for example, were among those who carried Catholicism from Western Europe to China. O n e of them, Mikhail Boim, rendered great services to the authorities of the Ming Dynasty in the mid-seventeenth century during their struggle with the Manchus

T h e first journeys to the East 32

in the Kwang-si province, and his n a m e has passed into Chinese history.

Emerging on the shores of the Pacific Ocean and establishing themselves there, the Russians became acquainted also with the Japanese. In a Cosmography which appeared in Russia in 1670, it is stated that: 'Japanese people are very clever.' Japanese fishermen, shipwrecked on the shores of Kamchatka in 1695 and 1719, captured the interest of the Russians with tales of their o w n country.

In 1803 Japanese vessels were again shipwrecked on Russian shores. The Russians helped the Japanese sailors, and sent an embassy, headed by Nicolai Rezanov, back with them when they returned to their homeland. Later, the Japanese published a diary which they had kept during their stay in Russia. It contained detailed descriptions of the natural resources of Sibe­ria and the customs of its inhabitants. A m o n g its illustrations is an interesting Indian ink portrait of Rezanov, with explana­tory details of his costume.

Despite the mutual interest between Russians and Japanese, regular commercial relations between them were slow to deve­lop. A n expedition by the merchant Grigory Shelekhov, at the end of the eighteenth century, proved fruitless, as did even the later expeditions of Nicolai Kruzenshtern (1805) and Vassili Mikhailovitch Golovnine (1811-13). Trade between Japan and Russia began only in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Trade and trade

routes

The trading links between Slav countries and the East, which had been so animated during the early Middle Ages, were not discontinued subsequently. Even during the hard times of Tartar-Mongol domination, the ancient trade route along the Volga did not lose its importance, and in the fourteenth cen­tury, Russian vessels moved down the great river to the trading centres of the Volga right to the mouth of the river. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Iranian, Central Asian and Armenian merchants travelled upstream with the traditional products of Eastern crafts.

Gradually, as the young Russian State, having managed to throw off the Tartar-Mongol yoke, spread over the wide plains of Eastern Europe, and as its power and international prestige grew, new and ever more favourable conditions for trade with the East were established.

Absorbing successively within its frontiers the realms of Kazan, Astrakhan and Siberia, Russia carved herself a route towards the countries of the East. Astrakhan became a centre of Eastern trade, from which Russian merchants travelled along the Caspian Sea coast, through Derbent and Baku, to Trans­caucasia, Iran and even India. F rom the second half of the

Trade and trade routes 34

fifteenth century onwards, and particularly in the sixteenth century, their business journeys took them more and more frequently to the Caucasus, Transcaucasia, Iran, the Turkish Empire and its possessions. Merchants from Poland and Bohe­mia reached the countries of the East either through the Tur­kish possessions in the Balkan peninsula or through the Ukraine and the Crimea. Even in the seventeenth century, the trade route from Trebizond to the Crimea, the Danube regions and eastwards to Iran was very important. The South Slavs, w h o were subjects of the Ottoman Empire, maintained constant trading contacts both with Turkey itself and with the Arab peoples of the Mediterranean.

The riches of India were particularly attractive to Slav merchants, as well as to traders from other European countries. Trading relations between Russia and India were established as early as the late sixteenth century. Their growth is testified to by the fact that, whereas a considerable proportion of the Indian goods which reached Russia up to the mid-seventeenth century came through Archangel, where they arrived in British and Dutch ships, subsequently, it was only from the south that they all entered Russia.

It must be emphasized that it was precisely from the sixteenth century onwards, when the great age of geographical discover­ies began, and Europe was fascinated by news of the incalcu­lable riches of India and China, that the Slavs proved again to be almost the principal link in expanding commercial and cultural relations between Western Europe and the East. Although Europe was by then already familiar with the sea route to India and although the capture of Byzantium by the Turks in 1453 had not yet led to the decline of the old trade route to the East through the Balkans and Asia Minor, the possibility of finding new routes through Polish and Russian lands tempted the merchant houses of Europe. As early as 1520, Paolo Centurione, a Genoese, came to Moscow with orders to find out a land route to China. A special company was set up in England in the mid-sixteenth century, with the aim of establishing trade routes through Russia to China and India. In 1558, Anthony Jenkinson, an agent of this company, secured the protection of the Russian Tsar and travelled along

35 Trade and trade routes

the Volga-Caspian route, first to Khiva and Bokhara, and finally even to Iran. In 1587, permission was also granted to Polish and Lithuanian merchants to trade with the countries of the East across Russian lands and to seek routes to China.

Besides searching for a land route to China, the Europeans did not abandon their attempts to discover a northern sea route to China. O n e of the first of these projects was launched as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century by the M u s ­covite ambassador in R o m e , Dimitri Gerasimov. In 1553, the Englishman, Chancellor, tried to carry out this project but got only as far as Archangel, with the result that the first trade contacts were established between Russia and England. Tsar Ivan the Terrible, w h o was interested in the East, is known to have promised a large reward to anyone w h o reached China by the northern sea route. It was only in the second half of the seventeenth century that these efforts were discontinued, when it was found that China could not be reached by sea, 'because of great ice, frost and fogs'.

A considerable part of the Slav trade with the East was in the hands of merchants of Eastern origin. A m o n g these, a prominent role was played by Armenian traders. They founded numerous colonies both in the East (in India, Egypt and Iran) and also in Europe, particularly in Poland, the Ukraine, the Crimea and Moldavia. M a n y Armenian merchants lived in Moscow and Astrakhan. In the seventeenth century, the A r m e ­nians, w h o had established a number of close trading contacts, held for a time what was virtually a monopoly in supplying Eastern goods to the countries of Europe via Russia and Poland. Besides the Armenians, an important role in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century trade via Astrakhan was played by merchants from India. S o m e of them, natives for the most part of the Punjab and Sind, settled in Astrakhan, where a special 'Indian market' was built in 1625. From here, the 'Indian guests' travelled to fairs in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod, and in 1723 they even approached Peter I with a request to allow them to trade also in Petersburg, Archangel 'and thence to the German States and through Siberia to China'.

Merchants from Central Asia ('men of Bokhara'), played an important part in trade with that region. They regularly

Trade and trade routes 36

brought their caravans across the Kazakh steppes and the lower Urals to the Volga region, with bales of goods from dif­ferent Eastern countries, including China, to which they had discovered a road long before the Russian merchants. W h e n Siberia was united with Russia, Tobolsk became an important commercial centre, where at the outset trade across the terri­tories of the Kazakh nomads was also conducted mainly by the ' m e n of Bokhara'. Later, from the end of the seventeenth century, Russian merchants also began to take their o w n cara­vans to China via Tobolsk, Kyakhta and Nerchinsk.

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the Crimea played an important role in trading relations between the Slavs and the East. Polish, Russian and Ukrainian merchants traded with the Ottoman Empire and the Caucasus through the Crimean Khanate and its trading towns and ports (for example, Kaffa, the present-day Theodosia). Goods were expor­ted to the East from the South Slav countries.

From ancient times, the main items which the Slavs exported to the East were leather, fur and articles m a d e of these mate­rials. The skilful Slav craftsmen carefully fashioned various sorts of leather, which were very highly esteemed all over the Near and Middle East as far as India. Russian and Bulgarian leathers, particularly morocco and 'yuft', were known there as telatin (from the Russian telyatina) and bulgar. Furs, above all sable, as well as ermine, beaver, silver fox, etc., were in huge demand. The Slavs also brought flax, wax , honey, wool­len fabrics, wooden articles, grain, h e m p and amber. According to written sources, 'linen clothes from Russia' were in great demand in the Indian town of Delhi as early as the fourteenth century. Russian leathers, furs and fabrics were sold in the markets of Samarkand and Bokhara; Bulgarian leather goods and attar of roses were popular commodities in the Near East; and Polish cloth in the Crimea and the Caucasus. Firearms were exported to Eastern countries in the sixteenth and seven­teenth centuries, whilst hunting birds—falcons and ger­falcons—were also highly prized at the courts of Eastern rulers.

The nature of Slav exports to the East changed noticeably from the beginning of the eighteenth century, and particularly

37 Trade and trade routes

in the nineteenth century. With the development of manufac­tured products, industrial goods began to play a dominant role. Russian, Polish and Czech manufacturers furnished the markets of the East with cheap factory-made textiles (mainly brightly coloured cottons), metal articles (instruments, utensils and weapons), dyes, glass, candles, ropes, paraffin oil, paper, etc. Paper was sent from Russia to the East in particularly large quantities: m a n y Iranian, Transcaucasian and Central Asian manuscripts of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries are written on paper m a d e in Russia.

T h e East supplied Europe and particularly the Slav countries with luxury articles, precious goods and ornaments: valuable weapons (damascene blades, Turkish sabres and pistols), rich, fine fabrics (Indian 'cashmere' shawls, Persian, Central Asian and Chinese silks), and precious stones. H a n d - m a d e rugs occu­pied an important place in this trade, and were particularly sought after in Poland. Spices and rare medicines were also imported from the countries of the East, mainly from India. Turkey, Iran and Central Asia traded in thoroughbred horses, harness, rice, coffee, fruits, nuts and tobacco, China in cheap cotton fabrics known as 'kitaika', tea, paper, porcelain, articles m a d e of metal and bone, etc.

It is interesting that as a result of m a n y centuries of trade relations between the Slav peoples and the East, quite a few words of Eastern origin have filtered into the trade terminology of the Slavs. For example, such expressions as altyn, coin (Tartar), pai, share, chek, cheque (Persian), mogarych, tip (Arabic), barysh, profit, tamozhnya, customs (Turkish), etc., were widely employed by the Russians. T h e abacus, which is used to this day as part of shop or office equipment in Russia and Poland, was introduced by the Mongols. From the mer­chants of the East the Russians also borrowed the caravan, indispensable as a means of trading along the difficult and lengthy highways of Central Asia and China.

T h e interaction of cultures

Throughout history cultural relations between peoples and the interaction of cultures have taken différent forms. Most fre­quently, they have been the result of direct and immediate contact. Not infrequently, however, cultural influences have penetrated also from neighbouring peoples, undergoing in passage a lengthy process of stratification of elements from a multitude of cultures. Cultural influences have by no means necessarily involved direct borrowings from alien cultures; creative recep-tiveness and modification have m u c h more often been customary.

T h e influence exerted on one another by the cultures of the East and the Slavs can be traced literally in all spheres of the material and spiritual existence of these peoples.

Agriculture

F r o m time immemorial the Slavs were tillers of the soil, sowing millet, wheat, rye and other cereals, some of which were introduced to the Slav ploughman by the East.

Through the intermediary of Byzantium and the Arabs, rice came to Europe from the distant countries of the East; it was k n o w n in Russia as 'Saracen millet'. Russian market-

39 T h e interaction of cultures

gardens also contain m a n y products of Eastern origin; water­melons, melons, pumpkins and apricots.

Russians have always been very interested in 'overseas' plants. As early as the seventeenth century, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich had a special garden laid out in the village of Izmailov, near Moscow, where plants brought from the East, e.g. the mulberry, were grown on an experimental basis. Russian ambassadors always tried to bring back new types of plants from the lands of the East. Thus, A d a m Laksman brought seeds of local types of rice and barley back out of Japan in 1793. More than once, Russian ambassadors to China were instructed to procure 'tea-bushes'.

Rare animals—lions, tigers, camels and elephants—were also brought back to Slav countries from the East. It is known that, as early as the tenth century, camels were brought into Poland; Prince Meczko I sent one as a gift to the German Emperor. Elephants which the Shah of Iran sent as a gift to Ivan the Terrible were kept not far from the Kremlin in Moscow. At the beginning of the eighteenth century several elephants were sent as a gift to Peter I, and in 1741 fourteen elephants arrived all at once in Petersburg. A special 'elephant house' was built for them, and their Indian keepers lived nearby.

Crafts

Articles made by Slav craftsmen were highly esteemed in the East. It was no coincidence that experienced master craftsmen of Slav origin could be met with at the courts of m a n y Eastern potentates. In the thirteenth century there was a whole colony of Russian master craftsmen in Karakorum, the Mongol capital. O n e of them, a skilled goldsmith named K o s m a , built a throne for K h a n Kuyuk , and fashioned the great seal of state whose imprint is preserved on a letter from the K h a n to the R o m a n Pope. Slav craftsmen had a consider­able influence on the development of craftsmanship among Eastern peoples.

In their turn, Eastern articles also had an influence on the work produced by the Slavs. In the early Middle Ages, the great demand for Arab jewellery among the Slavs was already

T h e interaction of cultures 40

leading to imitations. Eastern designs were reproduced in early Russian jewellery. Armourers also worked in the 'Eastern style': an example of this m a y be seen, for instance, in the Russian-made bakhterets (a sort of chain mail) preserved in the city m u s e u m at Ryazan; it is decorated with signs imitative of Arab lettering.

T h e Turks had a great influence on the crafts of the Southern Slavs in the fifteenth century. Illuminators of manuscripts, w h o were given the Arab-Turkish n a m e of Mudzhellid, were, in particular, influenced by Eastern master craftsmen and by Eastern taste. Ornamental designs on the pages and bindings of manuscripts were predominantly Eastern in motivation. Book-binders m a d e wide use of the technique of 'leather fili­gree' (stamped leather binding), which had been borrowed from the East. The sixteenth-century Serbian gospels are examples of this type of illumination.

T o a certain extent the craftsmen of other Slav lands also imitated Eastern articles. For example, fabrics, girdles, brocades and rugs imitating Persian and Turkish models were produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Poland, the Ukraine and Byelorussia (particularly in the towns of Brody, Zamoste and Slutsk). Interest in Eastern goods increased particularly from the seventeenth century onwards, w h e n m a n y hand-made products—fabrics, weapons, rugs and orna­ments—began to be brought into the Slav countries from the East. Eastern craftsmen also began to arrive. Armenians living in Poland taught the Poles h o w to make rugs. In Poland, as w e have already said, there had always been a great demand for rugs. In the sixteenth century so m a n y were imported by Polish mer­chants that exported rugs were known in Iran as 'Polish rugs'.

In Russia the influence of Eastern craftsmen was felt most strongly in the development of weaving. T h e finest Indian fabrics were particularly highly esteemed. It is an interesting fact that Russian missions leaving for India were instructed to bring Indian weavers to Russia. A 'velvet house' was estab­lished in the seventeenth century in M o s c o w for the production of satin, velvet, damask and other fabrics. The art of making carpets with a flat surface in the Ukraine was also brought in from the East.

4i T h e interaction of cultures

Trade with China introduced the Slavs to Chinese handi­crafts, and to porcelain in particular.

After the establishment of trade relations between Russia and China, porcelain became an important item in Russian imports. Some porcelain articles were m a d e in China specially for the Russian market. For example, a collection of apothe­cary's jars of startling whiteness and decorated with the royal emblem was manufactured for Peter I, and porcelain tiles were ordered for a stove at Peterhof Palace.

Certain Eastern handicraft articles were introduced to the Slav countries through the intermediary of the West. For example, the art of paper-making, invented at the beginning of our era in China, penetrated first into Central Asia. From there it was taken over by the Arabs and introduced into Spain. The manufacture of paper then began in other Western Euro­pean countries also. The first reference to a 'paper mill' in Russia dates from 1565.

In some instances, Slav master craftsmen w h o had become familiar with certain Eastern goods but did not know the techniques of their production, independently found out how to produce them, and sometimes even improved on the origi­nals. For example, 'cashmere' shawls, which commanded exceptionally high prices throughout the world, were produced by a technique known only in India. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Russian craftsmen succeeded in building a loom which m a d e it possible to produce shawls of a quality not surpassed by imported cashmeres. For example, the Journal of Manufacture and Trade (St. Petersburg, N o . 9, 1827) notes: 'As nothing was known about the construction of a loom for cashmeres, and as ordinary looms could not be used for this product, M a d a m e Eliseeva unpicked a genuine cashmere shawl and tried to discover, from the arrangement of its threads, h o w such a loom should be constructed. Her experiments lasted for more than five years, during which time a great number of looms were constructed and dismantled, before, finally, she succeeded in finding the correct answer.' Subse­quently, manufacturers in European, and also in Slav countries, began to master the art of making m a n y of the traditional products of Eastern craftsmen. Russian, Polish and Czech

T h e interaction of cultures 42

manufacturers began to produce silk fabrics, machine-made rugs and fez caps and even copper vessels and cofFee-mills, decorated with Arab inscriptions, Eastern vignettes or coats of arms, glass ware, etc. These goods of Slav origin soon gained a big hold in Eastern markets, together with fabrics, plates and dishes, and other industrial goods from Western countries.

In the nineteenth century, Russian goods had already gained a wide circulation in the countries of Central Asia, and in Iran and China.

Daily life

Cultural relations with the countries of the East had a consi­derable influence also on the daily life of the Slav peoples. Nor did the lengthy period w h e n the Tartar-Mongol yoke lay heavy on Russia, and Turkish oppression on the Balkans, fail to make their impact in this connexion. More than a few Eas­tern elements penetrated the language and customs of the Slavs. For example, some Southern Slavs, forced to accept the Moslem faith, adopted Moslem dress and habits also.

Isolated traces of Eastern influences were rather slow in disappearing from Russian daily life. At the beginning of the twentieth century, peasants were still wearing long garments of Eastern cut—the kaftan or feryaz (a long tunic with a waist-girdle), the armyak (a cloth coat), the zipun (a homespun coat) and the kushak (sash) ; these names also came from the East. Eastern apparel—sharovary (wide trousers), kuntushi (a form of cloak), tufli (slippers)—was widely worn in Poland, the Ukraine and a m o n g the Southern Slavs. In turn, Slav clothes had an influence on the dress of a number of Eastern peoples.

S o m e foodstuffs of Eastern origin became firmly established in the diet of European peoples, including the Slavs. Tea was particularly popular a m o n g the Russians, w h o had first come across it in Mongolia, at a reception given by Altan-Khan in 1616. The Russian ambassadors were treated to milk with melted butter and 'with leaves of some kind in it'. T h e ambas­sadors first declined to accept tea as a gift for the Russian Tsar, but finally agreed. Tea was thus introduced into Russia consi-

43 T h e interaction of cultures

derably earlier than into Holland and England. For a long time afterwards it remained the main Russian import from China. In 1833 the first experimental tea-plantations were laid out in the Crimea, but it was only in the twentieth century that tea began to be produced on an industrial scale—in Georgia and the Kuban .

It was from the Russians that the habit of drinking tea, together with its Chinese name, chai, became widespread in the eighteenth century in Central Asia, Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Egypt. The vessel which in its native land, China, was used to mull wine, was adapted by the Russians and by other Europeans too for infusing tea.

The samovar, which came into use for heating the water with which the infused tea was diluted, was invented in Russia. M a n y Eastern peoples became acquainted with the Russian samovar, and it became extremely popular in Central Asia, Turkey, Iran and the Arab countries. In Kashmir it has even kept its Russian name.

It was from the Turks that the Slavs acquired the habit of drinking coffee (particularly widespread among the Southern and Western Slavs), and of smoking tobacco. Natives of Central Asia and the Caucasus introduced the Slavs to m a n y Eastern dishes and delicacies: plov (pilaf), shashlyk (kebab), and turkish delight. In addition to foodstuffs and clothing, a number of Eastern games also entered into the daily life of the Slav peoples; chess is an example (even today the queen is called ferz and the bishop slon, words borrowed from Iranian terminology).

Conversely, a number of everyday characteristics and customs were transplanted by the Slavs to various Eastern peoples. For example, when Siberia and Central Asia were united with Russia, m a n y cultural achievements of the Slavs, relating to daily life, clothing, foodstuffs, household articles, etc., became quite firmly established in the cultures of the local peoples. W h e n they came into contact with the peoples of the Far East, the Russians taught them, and the Japanese, in particu­lar, the art of photography, the tailoring of European clothes and the use of the barometer.

T h e interaction of cultures 44

Science

In ancient times and in the Middle Ages, those of the exact and natural sciences most widely developed in the East were geography, astronomy, and mathematics. The Slavs considered astronomy to be a Persian science and, indeed, the first astro­labes and other astronomical instruments were brought from Central Asia and Iran. T h e Europeans, including the Slavs, learned m u c h about mathematics from the Eastern peoples. T h e numerals still employed today are called 'Arabic' (although they really originated in India).

T h e leading role in the development of natural and exact sciences has in recent times passed to Europe. It should be pointed out that Slav scholars m a d e a considerable contribu­tion to the study of Asia, and the investigation of its flora and fauna. Konstantin Maximovitch, a Russian botanist of the mid-nineteenth century, w h o published a number of works on the flora of Japan, is known as the 'father of Eastern Asian botany'. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Russian botanist Vladimir Komarov (later the president of the U . S . S . R . Academy of Sciences) m a d e a study of the flora of the Far East, particularly Korea.

Slav scholars have done a great deal for the study of Eastern peoples, their daily life, manners and customs. The Russian ethnographer Nicolas Mikloukho-Maklay, for example, achieved a genuine scientific break-through. After several years spent in N e w Guinea, in the country of the Papuans, he suc­ceeded in proving that these so-called 'savages' were not inferior to Europeans in their natural intellect, moral principles and spiritual qualities. It was about a century ago, in 1871, that Maklay landed on the beach which was subsequently given his n a m e , but the Papuans still retain lively memories of this remark­able m a n ; in their language, an iron axe is still known as 'Maklay's axe', and such words as nozh (knife), pila (saw), arbuz (water-melon), dynya (melon) and tykva (pumpkin) have kept their Russian intonation.

T h e works of m a n y other Slav scholars also contributed to the study of the vast, unexplored regions of Asia and to the development of the geography and ethnography of the peoples

45 T h e interaction of cultures

of the East. For example, in the seventeenth century, Yuri Krzanió, a Croatian living in Russia, spent fifteen years in Siberia and compiled descriptions of Siberia, Mongolia and China. Krzanië's manuscript, Concerning Trade with China, which was written before 1675, was read by Spafary when he set out as ambassador for China. Returning in 1680 to his native land, Krzanió presented his History of Siberia to the Polish king, Jan Sobieski, thereby contributing in no small measure to acquainting Western Slavs with the Far East.

The peoples of the East have m a d e quite a considerable contribution to medicine and pharmacology. Accumulated and tested over hundreds of years, Eastern folk-medicine was held in great esteem in the West, as well as by the Slavs. 'Panty', the young horns of the spotted deer, and ginseng were valued above all the other medicinal products of the East. T h e former was soaked in special solutions, dried and pulverized, then shipped in this form to Europe, where it was in great demand. Ginseng was valued even more highly as the 'root of life', whose miracu­lous curative powers were legendary. In the eighteenth century, when Franz Yelachich, a Russian doctor, was setting off for China, he was ordered to discover 'whether the ginseng root grows there, and to try to obtain seeds or a cutting thereof.

In their turn, Western doctors acquainted the East with European medical science. Here again, the role played by the Slavs was quite considerable. Russian doctors founded the first hospital in Japan in the middle of the nineteenth century. The first doctor in Mongolia, Pavel Shastin, was a Russian. His methods of treatment m a d e such an impression on the M o n ­golians, hitherto familiar only with their sorcerers and 'sha­mans ' , that, for a long time, in Mongolia the word vrach (doctor) and 'Shastin' were synonymous.

The prominent Russian epidemiologists Dimitri Zabolotny and Vladimir Khavkin spent m a n y years studying plague epidemics in the countries of the East, and developing methods of anti-plague vaccination. In the laboratory which he set up in India Khavkin developed a vaccine against plague and tested its effectiveness on himself in 1899. This vaccine has saved the lives of m a n y millions of Indians, and the Insti­tute of Bacteriology founded in B o m b a y in 1925 on the basis

T h e interaction of cultures 46

of the Russian doctor's laboratory was given his n a m e . T h e Khavkin Institute is today considered to be one of the most famous centres of scientific medicine in the East.

S o m e mention should also be m a d e of the socio-political and philosophical thought of the countries of the East. T h e teachings of famous Eastern philosophers have influenced m a n y Euro­pean thinkers, and particularly one of the greatest of these —Leo Tolstoy.

Tolstoy, in his turn, had a considerable influence on Indian social thought, particularly on the teachings of Mohandas K . Gandhi. In Gandhi's words, all other books 'seemed insig­nificant compared with Tolstoy's independence of thought, profound morality and sincerity'. Gandhi developed and m a d e extensive use of the methods of civil disobedience and passive resistance, which played such an important role in India.

Literature and folklore

A study of the folklore of the Slavs reveals elements from the c o m m o n Indo-European fund which links up the pre-history of Slav literature with the folklore of the Indo-Iranian peoples. M a n y tales, fables and songs have subjects in c o m m o n with those of a number of other peoples in Europe and in Asia. In some cases it is even possible to discover direct borrowings. For example, the tale of Yeruslan Lazarevich, which enjoyed success in Slav popular picture-books up to the nineteenth century, was a faithful reflection of the subject of an Iranian epic, with the names slightly altered (Sohrab and Rustum).

S o m e works from the literature of the Eastern peoples had already reached the Slavs via Byzantium. For example, they were introduced in the twelfth century to the Indian Pancha-tantra which had initially been translated from the Arabic version into Greek. A story about the youth of Buddha, The Tale of Barlaam and Josaphat, taken from the Pahlevi, Arabic and Greek versions, belongs to m u c h the same period.

Relations with the peoples of the East, the pilgrimages which Russian people m a d e to Byzantium and Palestine, as well as the trading relations of Slav merchants, facilitated the appearance of numerous tales, byliny (epics), khozheniya (travel

47 T h e interaction of cultures

tales) and other products of literature and folklore. T h e earliest Russian manuscript preserved concerning such a pilgrimage is the Khozhenie Igumena Danila (The Journey of the Abbot Daniel), a description of a journey through Constantinople to Palestine in 1110-18. Such Russian byliny as those about Dyuka Stepanovich or Sadko, the remarkable minstrel of Novgorod, which relate adventures on journeys to the countries of the East, more especially to India, also belong to the twelfth century.

Legends and tales of Eastern origin on Biblical subjects, which reached Europe together with Christianity, were also widely known a m o n g the Slavs. It is c o m m o n knowledge that at a later period, in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, these subjects had an influence on certain works of a literary and artistic character.

Quite a number of themes and subjects related to Turkish and Arab folklore also m a d e their w a y into the folklore and literature of some of the Slav peoples over w h o m the Turks ruled in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Russia and other Slav countries were already familiar with m a n y works from Eastern literature, mainly, it is true, from Western European translations. In the eighteenth century the writer Dmitri Kantemir translated the Koran into Russian and Nicolài Mikhailovitch Karamzin the Sakuntala of Kalidasa. At the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, the tales of the Thousand and One Nights were translated into Russian, and during the same period Russian readers were also introduced to the poetry of Sa'di, which was highly esteemed by the great Russian poet Alexander S. Pushkin.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Ossif Senkovsky, a Polish-born writer and Orientalist, using the pseudonym of 'Baron Brambeus', published a cycle of Tales from the East, which was very popular with Russian readers. Immediately after this, Eastern and, in particular, Caucasian themes came to occupy an important place in the works of the greatest Slav writers—Alexander Pushkin, A d a m Mickiewicz, Mikhaïl Lermontov, Ivan Franko, Lesya Ukrainka and others. Works from the literature and folklore of the East were also reflected

T h e interaction of cultures 48

in the creations of the best Slav writers. For example, the works of Leo Tolstoy reveal his familiarity with the tales and legends of China and Japan ( The Chinese Empress Silinchi, The Golden-haired Princess), and also with moral maxims which fitted in with his o w n ideas ('Honest m e n are not rich and rich m e n are not honest', 'truth is terse, lies are always long-winded', etc.)

Russian literature, and the works of Tolstoy, Dostoievsky and Anton Chekov in particular, had, in turn, an enormous influence on the whole world, including the countries of the East. The works of the great authors mentioned were already well known in India, Japan, China and other Eastern countries by the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Russian literature became especially popular in Japan. At the end of the nineteenth century m a n y Japanese students were sent to study in Russia. O n e of them, Masutaro Konisi, met Leo Tolstoy in 1892, and on his return h o m e printed a number of translations and articles on the subject of Russian literature. In the words of the Japanese, Tolstoy's humanitarian thought 'shook the spiritual world of Japan to its foundations'.

Language

At the source of the Slav languages, and uniting them into a single family, lies a c o m m o n stock of roots and the g ramma­tical structure of the language of the ancestors of the Slavs. The Slavs, however, are known to be historically and geneti­cally related to the Indo-European group of peoples, and for this reason the Slav languages preserve some features approxi­mating them to the Indo-Iranian languages. In describing the origins of the Slav languages reference can be m a d e to the part played in their formation by the languages of the Iranian, Finno-Ugrian, Uralo-Altaic and Turkic groups.

Furthermore, all the Slav languages contain m a n y borrowed words of Eastern origin; these are less often found in Czech and more often met with in the Serbian and Bulgarian languages. 'Layerings' of Turko-Mongolian words are noticeable in the Russian and Polish languages, which were penetrated by Mongolian and Tartar words connected with nomadic ways

Golden comb from the Solkha burial mound, portraying Scythians, South Russia; fifth century B.C.

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49 T h e interaction of cultures

of life and horse-breeding: the Russian loshad (horse) and the Polish losza (mare) are derived from the Turkic alasa (horse). Some Russian and Polish military terms have their origin in Eastern roots: the words yesaul (captain), kho-runzhi (cornet), karaul (guard) came from the Mongols, and the word bulava (mace) from the Polovtsians. During the period of Turkish rule in the Balkans, a multitude of Eastern words and expressions were organically absorbed into the Bulgarian and Serbian languages: pazar (market), qualdirma (roadway), sise (bottle), parmaklik (railing), qalafat (carpenter). T h e Russian and Ukrainian languages are indebted to Turkish and Persian for the words takhta (ottoman), izyum (raisins), kavun (water-melon), chuval (bag), kishmish (currants), etc.

T h e languages of China and Japan had little real effect on the Slav languages: they are too far removed from each other and structurally dissimilar. Mention m a y be m a d e only of a few words which have penetrated into the Slav languages, more particularly, Russian: zherC sherC (ginseng), fanza (a Chinese peasant house), kimono, samurai, mikado, bogdykhan (Chinese Emperor). Mamont ( m a m m o t h ) , taiga and a few other words were taken by the Slavs (and from the Slavs by other Europeans too) from the languages of the peoples of Siberia.

In some cases, it is possible to trace a c o m m o n source which enriched the vocabularies of both the Slav and the Eastern peoples. For example, both the Slavs and the Arabs received a number of Greek words from Byzantium—usually those describing everyday articles and artistic and architectural objects, for example, the Russian sunduk and the Arabic sunduk (box or chest), the Russian fonar' and the Arabic fanar (lan­tern), the Russian palata and the Arabic balât (chamber).

A number of Slav words penetrated to the East. Thus, for example, the Turks acquired voivoda (Russian voevoda, com­mander), zolota (gold coin), sapqa (Russian shapka, cap), kapuska (Russian kapusta, cabbage) and m a n y other words.

T h e influence of Slav lexicology has also m a d e itself strongly felt among the numerous peoples of Eastern origin living in Slav countries, and particularly in Russia. This is especially noticeable in words with a contemporary context and connected with the development of science, industry and culture. As a

T h e interaction of cultures 50

rule, most of the national groups n o w inhabiting Russia, as well as the populations of m a n y of the Union Republics of Central Asia and Transcaucasia, understand and make wide use of the Russian language.

Descendants of ancient Eastern peoples, the Karaims, for example, still exist in isolated colonies in the territory of the Slavs. Here is an interesting anecdote. W h e n some Polish Orientalists visited the Karaims at the beginning of this century, one of them chanced to read aloud in a Karaim household a glossary of ancient Polovtsian words. The host's 7-year-old daughter, hearing familiar words, provided a number of expla­nations of the text. The astonished Orientalist realized that the little girl understood a language which had been forgotten for m a n y centuries.

The exchange of influences between the Slav and the Eastern languages is, of course, not limited to the examples cited above. Nevertheless, such examples do provide evidence of the character and direction of these mutual influences and of the w a y in which they have promoted the mutual enrichment of the lan­guages and cultures of the Slav and Eastern peoples. This is particularly true of Russian, which has been enriched through contacts between the Russian population and m a n y Western and Eastern peoples. Russian has today become a world language.

Architecture

During the formation of the Slav States, South Slav and Russian architecture was strongly influenced by that of Byzan­tium. This was particularly noticeable in the field of eccle­siastical architecture, with its monumental churches of the domed cruciform type, roofed with low, hemispherical cupolas. S o m e time later, Muslim architecture, introduced by the conquering Turks, left its mark on the buildings of the South Slavs. Mosques with minarets, Eastern bath-houses, market­places (ckarshi), roadside inns (khans), etc. became c o m m o n features of most South Slav towns. Eastern influences are less noticeable in the architectural history of the Western Slav countries—Poland and Czechoslovakia—although here, too, quite a few architectural monuments of Eastern type m a y

51 T h e interaction of cultures

be found side by side with the old Gothic-style churches. Archi­tectural monuments, built by Armenian architects, have sur­vived in the Ukraine and in Poland.

After the union of the Khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan with Russia, Eastern motifs become more prominent in Rus­sian architecture. For example, the famous Pokrovsky church (Cathedral of Saint Basil the Blessed), erected by the master builders, Barma and Postnik on the Red Square in M o s c o w during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, was built in the national Russian skater (tent) style of ecclesiastical architecture, but embodied also a number of Eastern elements. Ingeniously composed, striking in its forms and in the brilliance of its colour­ing, this building is a genuine masterpiece of the Russian builders' art.

Russian architecture left its mark, in turn, on the develop­ment of architecture in a number of Eastern countries, parti­cularly in the Caucasus, Central Asia and Siberia.

Art

Early Slav art owed m u c h to the various Eastern peoples w h o once inhabited the Slav lands. It was particularly influenced by the Scythian 'animal style', with its characteristic motifs of animals: battling, galloping, writhing or poised ready to leap.

With the emergence and spread of Christianity in the Slav countries came the first flowering of painting, particularly in the form of frescoes and icons. As early as the tenth and eleventh centuries, frescoes and mosaics were characteristic features in Kievan Russia where, in contrast with Byzantium, these two forms of monumental pictorial art were, as a rule, c o m ­bined. Icon-painting developed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; the panels commonly used were covered with a special compound, lefkas, and individual icons and complete iconostases were produced. Russian master painters were also to be found in the East: a church in the ancient Armenian capi­tal, Ani, was decorated in 1215 by a Russian artist.

A certain Eastern influence can already be detected in the drawings of the early Slav masters of the same period. For example, examination of the background of some South Slav

T h e interaction of cultures 52

Orthodox icons unexpectedly reveals elements of Muslim archi­tecture (silhouettes of mosques, etc.). In the Serbian Prizren Gospel of the thirteenth century, the Evangelist M a r k is even portrayed in Eastern dress. T h e art of icon-painting reached its zenith in Russia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with Andrei Rublev and Dionysius.

In the works of Slav artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries m u c h attention is devoted to Eastern subjects. S o m e of these artists, Vassili Vereshchagin, for example, portrayed in their works the life of the peoples of Central Asia, India and other Eastern countries.

Russian artists of the nineteenth century carefully studied the painting of other peoples. They had long been interested, for example, in the theory and practice of Chinese painting. A mission to Peking in 1830 included the artist, Anton Legashev, w h o had been officially instructed to m a k e a thorough study 'of Chinese painting, and the preparation of the pigments which are so outstanding in their clarity and durability'. Legashev acquitted himself admirably, and brought back formulae for preparing Chinese ink and pigments, as well as a series of pic­tures he himself had painted in China.

T h e East had a notable influence also on the development of the applied arts of the Slavs. Indian precious stones and articles fashioned from pearls had acquired great popularity at an early date. M a n y precious stones in Russia were called lal, from the actual Indian word lal meaning 'red'. Motifs from Persian and Central Asian rugs evoked imitation in Russia and Poland.

Music, theatre, dancing

Certain musicologists suggest that the musical culture of the ancient Slavs was based on a five-tone scale, similar to that on which Chinese popular music is composed to this day. This tone-scale was at some stage widespread all over Eastern Europe and Asia, and forms the basis of the round-dances (kolo) of Serbia and the ceremonial songs of the Eastern Slavs which have been preserved up to the present day. Later, with the development of musical culture in the Slav countries, musical

53 T h e interaction of cultures

motifs of Eastern origin are met with in the works of m a n y outstanding composers—Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov and others. T h e 'Polovztian Dances', 'Persian Songs' and 'Arabian Dances' are, in part, adaptations of rhythms and melodies preserved in the tradition of everyday life from distant times.

In its turn, the classical music of the Slav composers contri­buted to the development of modern forms of musical art in a number of other nations. The greatest contemporary com­posers of Georgia, Zakari Paliashvili, Andreï Balanchivadze and others, were influenced during their formation by the Russian school of music. O n e of Nicolas Rimsky-Korsakov's pupils was Alexander Spendiarov, w h o first set Armenian natio­nal music in the context of the major musical forms.

In China, India and a number of other Eastern countries, the theatre, although in a rather special form of its o w n , gained celebrity at an early date. Nevertheless, the introduction of certain Eastern peoples to the dramaturgy and theatre of Europe was due in no small measure to Russian cultural personalities. A n outstanding figure among these was Guerassim Lebedev, w h o spent twelve years in India at the end of the eighteenth century and actually became the founder of the European type of dra­matic theatre there. Guerassim Lebedev himself translated a number of plays into Bengali, formed and rehearsed a company of actors, wrote music, designed scenery and presented the first performance, which was a milestone in the development of Indian culture, and right up until the present day Indians regard Lebedev as one of the forerunners of the contemporary Indian theatre.

Lack of space has prevented us from mentioning more than a few examples of the ways in which the cultures of the Slavs and the East have influenced and enriched one another. The real extent of cultural relations between them has been far wider. But even these few examples show h o w beneficial they were. It is important to note that the process of inter-penetra­tion of m a n y elements from the cultures of the Eastern and Slav peoples has resulted in cultural achievements which not only enriched these peoples themselves, but also became the heritage of world civilization and of mankind as a whole.

Oriental studies

T h e gradual strengthening of relations between the peoples of Europe and the Eastern countries helped to stimulate the growth of a strong interest in the East and in Eastern studies. A n e w special science was born: Oriental studies. Oriental studies form a historically-established complex of the scientific disciplines engaged in the study of history, economics, material and spiritual culture, combined with a general study of the peoples of the East, based principally on source-material ob­tained from these peoples themselves.

T h e development of Oriental studies was given a special fillip in the Slav countries because of their direct proximity to the East, and because the history of m a n y Slav countries has been closely interwoven with that of one or other of the peoples of Asia.

Oriental studies as a science went through a lengthy period of development. Its early history consisted of the accumulation of such information about the peoples of the East as was, for example, to be found in laconic descriptions of historical events in Russian, Polish and Czech chronicles of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Scientific Oriental studies began in the Slav countries in the seventeenth century, when the works

55 Oriental studies

of the Moldavian, Spafary, the Croatian, Krzhanié and the Russian, Andrei Lyzlov appeared as the first modest efforts to draw general conclusions from and to explain the data accu­mulated. In the following years interest in the East grew stead­ily, as m a y be seen from the large number of works that appeared, particularly in the nineteenth century, which was the age of brilliant discoveries in Oriental studies.

Nowadays , thanks to the strengthening of friendly relations between Slav and Eastern countries, Oriental studies have found n e w and favourable conditions for development. N e w themes have emerged: the problems involved in the struggle for national liberation; the generalization of the efforts of Eastern peoples, after winning their independence, to build up their State, socio-economic and cultural structures. O n c e again light has been thrown on the nation's role, as creator of history and culture, both in studying the distant past and investigating contemporary problems.

Oriental studies in the Slav countries have provided science with a number of discoveries of world importance. Russian and Soviet scholars hold a leading place a m o n g Slav Orien­talists.

At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, as a result of extremely arduous journeys through Asia, Russian geographers not only eliminated the so-called 'blank spots' on the m a p of Asia but also m a d e discoveries which led to the emergence of n e w branches of Oriental studies. Thus, Piotr Kozlov discovered, in the 'dead' city of Khara-Khoto, a secret hiding-place where a library had been pre­served, and this formed the foundation for a n e w science: Tungut studies. Under the Soviet régime, Nicolai Nevsky took up the task of deciphering the Tungut written language. H e compiled a word-list of this dead language, determined its phonetic basis, and was the first to induce these ancient writings to tell mankind about a vanished civilization. Nevsky's work, published in i960 under the general title of Tangutskaja Filolo-gija (Tungut Philology), was acclaimed by the scientists of the U . S . S . R . and honoured by a supreme award—the Lenin Prize.

Soviet archaeologists have been responsible for discovering

Oriental studies 56

m a n y of the advanced cultures of the Ancient East. The ruins of a fortress on M u g Mountain in Central Asia lay for centuries buried beneath the sands. Here, excavations revealed valuable documents on parchment, paper and wood . The deciphering of these documents, which were written in a variety of languages, and also the discovery (during excavations by Alexander Yaku-bovsky and his pupils) in ancient Pyanjikent of multi-chrome frescoes on the walls of temples and dwellings, and of sculptured items in clay and wood, m a d e it possible to reconstruct the history of the culture of Sogdiana.

Excavations in Chorasmia in Central Asia, carried out under the direction of Sergei Tolstoy, revealed the profoundly original and vivid art of its ancient inhabitants, ancestors of the modern Tadzhiks and Uzbeks. T h e monumental sculptures and deco­rative frescoes of Chorasmia are striking in their originality and expressiveness.

Archaeological investigations in Siberia have provided a great wealth of material on the history and ethnography of the peoples w h o inhabited this enormous region. In the Pazyryk burial mounds in the Altai Mountain oblast, funeral fur­nishings, articles of leather, wood and metal, mummified bodies, and even fabrics, felt and rugs of local origin were found, pre­served in a rare state of excellence by the perpetual frost. So rich were the finds that Sergei Rudenko was able to describe in detail the culture of the ancient populations of the Altai (fifth to third centuries B . C . ) , w h o created a special art of their o w n , with motifs resembling the 'animal style' of the Scythians.

The excavations m a d e by Sergei Kiselev, Alexis Okladnikov and Mikhaïl Gryaznov are also noteworthy for the number of finds of world importance. As a result of their work, studies were m a d e of the ancient cultures of m a n y of the n o w extinct peoples of Siberia.

T h e archaeological work done by Boris Piotrovsky in Trans­caucasia led to the discovery of the remarkable monuments of the ancient state of Urartu, the kingdoms of Colchis and Iberia, Caucasian Albania and Media.

These discoveries by Soviet scholars are a worthy continuation of the work of Russian Orientalists.

57 Oriental studies

T h e remarkable Russian scholar, Vassili Bartold, was at one and the same time a Turkologist, an Iranist and an Arabist, a brilliant historian, ethnographer and philologist with a very wide range of interests.

T h e Soviet Arabist Ignace Krachkovsky was a specialist in both history and cultural history. Besides editing m a n y ancient written documents, he was the first to undertake the task of acquainting European science with contemporary Arab literature. His Arabskaja geografiíeskaja literatura (Arabian Geo­graphical Literature) was a unique encyclopaedia for Arabists, and his book Mad arabskimi rukopisjami (Concerning Arabian Manuscripts), a lively and attractive account of ancient m a n u ­scripts, which was translated into m a n y languages, is of more than purely academic interest. O n e of Krachkovsky's pupils —Feodor Shumovsky—is continuing his work in the study of Arabian geographical literature.

In Russia, Ancient Eastern studies were initiated by two outstanding scholars—Mikhail Nikolsky and Vladimir Gole-nishchev. Nikolsky was the first to study and publish the inscriptions of Urartu, which he himself collected in the C a u ­casus. In a number of papers he showed the importance of a study of the past history of Urartu for the history of the Ancient East. In his long and prolific life, Vladimir Golenishchev m a d e an enormous contribution to science. H e discovered and pub­lished a number of the most important literary monuments of Ancient Egypt. H e m a d e the first catalogue of the collection of the Egyptian antiquities in the Hermitage, and his o w n superb collection formed the basis of the Eastern Department of the State Pushkin M u s e u m of Fine Arts in Moscow. Vladi­mir Golenishchev was the founder and first holder of the Chair of Egyptology in the University of Cairo.

T h e founder of the Russian school of ancient Eastern studies was Boris Turaev. Himself a trained Egyptologist, he was at the same time extremely interested in the Coptic and Ethiopian languages. His main work, Istorija Drevnego Vostoka (History of the Ancient East), also throws light on the history of such countries as Nubia and Aksum, a subject which had not pre­viously been studied.

Vassili Struve, a pupil of Turaev, is the head of the Soviet

Oriental studies 58

school of historians of the Ancient East. His perfect familiarity with sources and his profound philological knowledge have enabled him to explain the existence in the Ancient East of a slave-owning society, and to trace the history of its origins, development and downfall. More than a hundred scientific papers have come from his pen, as well as a course on ' T h e History of the Ancient East' which has w o n universal recogni­tion.

Nina Pigulevskaya has carried out a number of detailed studies concerning the relations of Byzantium with the East, and the history of the Near and Middle East in the early Middle Ages.

T h e deciphering by Sergei Malov of ancient Turkic runic inscriptions of the seventh to ninth centuries discovered in Mongolia and in the valley of the river Yenisei, is an outstand­ing achievement in the field of Turkic studies. These inscrip­tions are exceptionally important for the study of the ancient civilization of the peoples of Central Asia.

Indian studies in Russia are noted for a number of world-famous names, a list headed by Ivan Minaev, the founder of studies in Indian Buddhism and the contemporary languages of India. 'Eastern studies in Russia', he wrote, 'never had, and never could have, an abstract character. W e are too close to the East to have a purely abstract approach to such studies For the Russian scholar, the East cannot be a dead, exclusively literary subject of scientific inquiry.' Sergei Oldenburg, his successor, was the initiator and director of the publication of a monumental collection of Buddhist texts, Bibliotheca buddhica, devoted to a study of the history, culture and literature of India, China and Mongolia. Sergeï Oldenburg deciphered and interpreted the ancient Indian manuscripts which he him­self discovered in Sinkiang.

The study of Buddhist philosophy was the life-work of Feodor Shcherbatskoy. His most celebrated work, the two-volume Buddhist Logic was the result of more than twenty-five years' labour. Shcherbatskoy was the first to draw attention to the materialistic elements in ancient Indian philosophy.

The study of modern Indian languages and literature was begun in the U . S . S . R . on the initiative of Alexei Barannikov,

59 Oriental studies

w h o dedicated his work to the service of cultural collaboration between the peoples of India and the Soviet Union.

T h e eminent Russian scholar Yuri Roerich, son of the famous painter Nicolaï Roerich, spent almost thirty years in India, devoting his studies to Tibet, Mongolia and India and, in particular, translating from Tibetan the monumental chronicle Golubiye annaly (the 'Pale Blue Records').

Russian scholars have m a d e a serious study of Mongolia: the names of Isaac Schmidt and Ossip Kovalevsky are known to anyone w h o has taken even a superficial interest in M o n ­golian studies. Palladius Kafarov's discovery of the Sokroven-niye Skazanija (a thirteenth-century chronicle written in Chinese characters, but in the Mongolian language), was a landmark in the study of Mongolian culture.

Shortly after the creation of the Mongolian People's Republic, an expedition from the Soviet Union, headed by Piotr Kozlov, was sent there and discovered the Noin Ula burial mounds, which provided a wealth of material on the culture of the Huns . Soviet, Czech and Mongolian archaeologists have worked together on excavations of Karakorum, the ancient capital of the Mongolian Empire.

Boris Vladimirtsov has done outstanding work on the history of the social organization of the Mongols during the feudal period. His books Gingis-Lan (Genghis K h a n ) and Obscest-vennyj stroj mongolov (The Social Structure of the Mongols) have been translated into a number of Western and Eastern languages.

Slav scholars have also m a d e no slight contribution to the study of China. Nikita Bichurin (whose n a m e in religion was Hyacinth), one of the leaders of a Russian religious mission sent to China at the beginning of the nineteenth century, which was, in fact, the first permanent Russian embassy in that coun­try, helped to promote the growth of international sinology by his numerous works on the history and culture of China and by translations from the Chinese.

Another celebrated Russian sinologist was Palladius Kafarov, the compiler of the first Chinese-Russian dictionary, later aug­mented and published by the sinologist, Pavel Popov.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the most serious

Oriental studies 60

and knowledgeable specialist in the history of the culture, religion and philosophy of China was the Russian scholar, Vassilyi Vasilyev. In the twentieth century, Vassilyi Alekseev, for a long time the doyen of Chinese studies in the U . S . S . R . , m a d e a most valuable contribution to the development of sinology. His works on the literature and culture of China are widely read.

T h e founder of Japanese studies in the U . S . S . R . was N . K o n -rad, the author of a series of valuable monographs on the philosophy, history and culture of Japan and China. In his work Konrad always pays tribute to the important role of Eastern cultures in world civilization.

At the end of the nineteenth century, after the 'discovery' of Korea, Russia became the leading country in the study of the history, geography and culture of that country. T h e three-volume composite work, Opisanie Korei (Description of Korea), published in 1900, was, at the time, actually a complete con­spectus of all that was then scientifically k n o w n about that country.

Eastern studies have achieved great success in Czechoslo­vakia, where they have a long tradition. As early as the seven­teenth century, the celebrated scholar, Jan A m o s Komensky (Comenius), corresponded with the Sultan of Turkey and turned his attention to the problems of Eastern studies in his research work on the Bible. His Otv'értaja duer' jazykov (The O p e n Door of Languages) was extremely popular abroad and went through m a n y translations, including four into Eastern languages. Direct contacts with the countries of the East, and the scientific centre and library established in Prague facilitate the successful work of Czechoslovak Orientalists.

In the first half of the twentieth century, the work of two Czech Orientalists m a d e an important contribution to science. Alois Musil discovered a number of architectural monuments in Arabia, drew a m a p of the unexplored regions of that country and gave detailed ethnographical descriptions of the Bedouins, together with material on their language. Another scholar, Bedfich Grozny, deciphered Hittite hieroglyphs, laid the foundations of a n e w science—Hittite studies—and intro­duced the world to the ancient culture of Asia Minor.

6i Oriental studies

His works are of prime importance for comparative linguistics. T h e works of the Czech Orientalists, Frantisek Leksa, Rudolf Ruziëka and Vincenc Lesny, are widely known. Their work is being continued today by Felix Tauer, Y a n Rypka, Pavel Poukha, Y a n Bakos, Timofeï Pokora and their pupils.

The translation work done by Czech scholars reflects the profound and sincere interest felt by the people of Czechoslo­vakia for the cultures of the East. Czech art publications like Artia, scientific reviews such as Archiv orientalny, and popular science journals, like New Orient and Novy Orient, appear in the principal European languages and are well known through­out Europe.

In Poland, as early as the sixteenth century the research studies of Vilnius Academy included Oriental disciplines dealing with the interpretation of the Bible, a subject which called for a knowledge of ancient Hebrew. This tradition has been maintained also in the Vilnius State University, which has given science such important Orientalists as O . Senkovsky, w h o later became one of the founders of Russian Arabic studies. Poland was for a long time a close neighbour of the Turkish Empire, so it is not surprising that Turkish studies have long since attracted Polish scholars. The work of Ananiasz Zaion-chkovsky on Kipchak terminology and his studies of ancient Turkish antiquities are of outstanding importance for Turkish and Slavic studies as well as for the history of relations between East and West. The names of Vladislav Kotvich, Tadeusz Kovalsky and Marian Levitsky—authors of works on Turko-Mongolian philology—the sinologists, Y a n Khmelevsky and Vitold Yablonsky, the Arabist, Tadeusz Levitsky, and the Indologists, Stanislaw F . Mikhalsky, Stanislaw Shaier and Elena Willman-Grabowska, are world-famous. T h e works of Polish Orientalists, together with their periodicals, Przeglad orientalis-tyczny, Rocznik orientalistyczny and Folia orientalia, are published in m a n y European languages and are widely known beyond the frontiers of Poland. In Warsaw the State Archaeological M u s e u m has a magnificent collection of objects illustrating the material culture of the Ancient East m a d e by the archaeo­logist, K . Mikhalovsky, w h o led an archaeological expedition to the U . A . R .

Oriental studies 62

Bulgarian scholars, in studying the history of their o w n country, have in their research drawn on Eastern—and particularly Turkish—documents. Bulgarian translations of Turkish manuscripts, m a d e by Piotr Ikhchiev, Nicolaï Skazov, Ivan Dorev and Gleb Glybov, were among the first publi­cations of their kind in Europe. T h e works of such contem­porary Bulgarian Turkologists and Arabists as Boris Nedkov are widely known, and have been published also in a number of European languages.

In Yugoslavia, Oriental studies are closely related to research in the field of national history. For more than five hundred years, the Yugoslav lands were under the rule of the Turkish Empire, so that Turkish written material is at one and the same time material for the history of the peoples of Yugoslavia during that period.

According to the Yugoslav Turkologist, H a m i d Kalechi, the earliest library of Muslim manuscripts was founded in 1445 in Skopje. A collection of valuable Eastern manuscripts is preserved in the Eastern Institute founded in Sarajevo in 1950 by the Muslim Theological University, Gazi Husrevbeg. T h e institute's journal, Pñlozi, publishes early Turkish diplomatic, epigraphic and other material, research papers on Turkish feudalism in the Balkans and the relations between Turkey and the European powers. Turkish historical monuments are the subject of a series of papers entitled Monumenta Turcica, published by the institute.

The awakening of the East

In the middle of the last century Europe was passing through a rapid process of economic expansion: factories and railways were being built, share-holding companies were being formed and steamships began plying to overseas countries. As a result of three great discoveries in natural science—the biological cell, the law of conservation of energy and the Darwinian theory—man's natural environment appeared to be in perpetual motion. Technology rapidly developed. Literature and art were enriched by a whole constellation of sparkling names. But by the seventies of the nineteenth century, capita­lism, which had achieved these successes in scientific, technical and cultural development, began to enter a new phase, that of imperialism. The hunt for sources of raw materials, for market outlets and spheres for capital investment generated a new wave of colonialist conquests.

T h e peoples of the East were not prepared to accept this situation. T h e great popular revolt in India in 1857-59, the revolt of A h m e d Arabi in Egypt in 1881-82, the 'Boxer rising' in China, put d o w n in 1900 as a result of intervention by eight great Powers, and m a n y other popular uprisings occurred during the second half of the nineteenth century.

The awakening of the East 64

Despite all imperialist efforts to slow the economic develop­ment of the colonial and independent countries, this develop­ment continued, though at a slower rate. Colonizers set up firms to treat raw materials, they built railways and opened mines. This tended to strengthen the role of the working class and the nationally-minded middle class in the East, at the time of the Russian Revolution of 1905.

China, in particular, responded enthusiastically to the revo­lution in Russia. Conditions for acceptance of the new ideas had been prepared by the familiarity of the leaders of Chinese society with Russian culture. At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, books and articles devoted to Russia appeared. The first translations of works of Russian literature quickly became popular. T h e famous Chinese writer L u Sin' pointed out: 'Russian literature opened our eyes to the beauty of an oppressed nation's soul, to its sufferings and to its struggle. . . . W e understood what was most important —that there are two classes in the world: the oppressors and the oppressed.. . . This appeared at that time as the supreme discovery, on a par with the discovery of fire.'

Other Asian countries too responded to the revolutionary alarm signal which had been sounded in Russia. Even in India, separated from Russia by an artificial barrier, cultural and scientific links with the Slavs were not completely cut.

In Syria and Palestine, Russian schools were established in the nineteenth century by the 'Rossijskoe Palestinskoe Obsëes-tvo' (Russia-Palestine Society). S o m e young Arabs studied in Petersburg and Moscow. F r o m the end of the last century interest in the study of Russian culture increased in Turkey also. For example, the writer A h m e d Midhat wrote in a fore­word to his translation of a biography of Pushkin: 'Today, Pushkin is not only regarded as a Russian writer; he is acquiring the significance of a great m a n w h o is recognized as a figure belonging to world civilization.'

Ideas need no visas to travel. It is, therefore, not surprising that the ideas of the Russian Revolution began to spread quickly in the East. National liberation movements sprang up in a number of countries. T h e bourgeois revolutions in Iran (1905-11), Turkey (1908-09), China (1911-13), the swelling

65 The awakening of the East

movement for national liberation in India in 1905-07, whose slogans were swaraj (home rule) and swadeshi (national self-sufficiency), the creation of an autonomous Mongolia in 1911, etc., stimulated the social development of Asia. These revolu­tionary movements, however, were at a stage still doomed to failure.

T h e victory of the October Revolution in Russia inspired people with n e w hopes for a better future. O n 4 M a y 1919, a powerful anti-imperialist movement began in China, which later, in 1925-26, led to revolution.

O n e after the other came massive risings against the imperia­lism in India, each more menacing than the previous one. Efforts by Indians to understand Russia, which was building a n e w life, evoked an interest in Russian classical literature, with which India at first became familiar through English translations. T h e ideas of Tolstoy were reflected in the work of Tagore and Gandhi, and Chekhov became a model for Prem Chand, who wrote in Hindi and Urdu. T w o quotations sum up the atmosphere of this era:

'Russia, following the great Lenin's precepts, looked into the future and thought only of what was to be, while other countries lay numbed under the dead hand of the past and spent their energy in preserving the useless relics of a bygone age. In particular, I was impressed by the reports of the great progress made by the backward regions of Central Asia under the Soviet régime. In the balance, therefore, I was all in favour of Russia, and the presence and example of the Soviets was a bright and heartening phenomenon in a dark and dismal world.' (Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography.)

'Separated from life, it (education) becomes dead capital, and ceases to be of use. W h e n I came here, I noticed that (the Russians) were making education a vital force, because they do not separate the school from the surrounding world . . . the usual aim of the education which they diffuse is to seek to educate the individual.' (Rabindranath Tagore, Russian Letters.)

Immediately after the triumph of the national liberation revolution in Turkey, the latter concluded in 1921 a treaty of friendship and brotherhood with Soviet Russia. T h e good

The awakening of the East 66

neighbourly relations established between Turkey and the Soviet Union facilitated the rapprochement of the two peoples and their fruitful collaboration in different fields. In Turkey, thanks to Soviet assistance, a number of industrial enterprises were founded; Turkish specialists underwent training in the U . S . S . R . and delegations of scholars were exchanged.

Relations between the Soviet Union and Iran began to deve­lop on a completely new basis. W h e n , in 1921, the Soviet Union annulled the treaties imposed upon Iran, the w a y was opened up for a wider exchange of achievements in the fields of science, literature and art.

T h e Great October Socialist Revolution evoked a wide response in the Arab East also. Translations of books by Soviet writers were soon widely read.

East and West paid close attention to Soviet life. T h e peoples of the Soviet Union emerged with honour from their severe trials, and overcame the secular backwardness they had inhe­rited from old-time Russia. These successes enabled m a n y people to appreciate what had not been fully understood in the first years of the Soviet State's existence.

The Soviet East

In the second half of the nineteenth century an event occurred in Central Asia which was of paramount importance for its future history: the region was incorporated into the Russian Empire. A colonial régime was established in Turkestan, as that country was then called. The Uzbeks, Tadzhiks, Kirghiz, Turkmens and Karakalpaks shared the lot of the Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian workers, w h o were governed by Tsarist satraps, capitalists and landlords. A new form of exploi­tation was brought to bear upon the Central Asian peoples, w h o continued to suffer under the yoke of their o w n lords and beys.

Nevertheless, unification with Russia was a factor of great importance for Central Asia. It was not merely, and not so m u c h , that more advanced socio-economic (capitalist) relations began to develop there. The Central Asian peoples became part of a country to which the centre of the world revolutionary movement had been transferred, and where the most advanced and militant party—that of Lenin—was being formed. It was precisely this party, most of whose members were repre­sentative Russians, that roused against Tsarism and exploiters of all kinds all the peoples and national minorities of the multi­national Russian Empire.

The Soviet East 68

Under the direction of this party, the dekhkans (peasants) and artisans of Central Asia, the workers of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia actively participated in the Great October Socia­list Revolution—and defended the gains m a d e in October during the years of civil war and foreign intervention.

After the victory and confirmation of Soviet rule in Russia, Lenin's nationality policy was consistently carried into effect. O n the ruins of the Tsarist 'prison-house of nations', which the workers had destroyed, a State was created, based on friendship and on the collaboration of all races and nationalities. The better developed peoples (and by virtue of historical circum­stances, Russia was the foremost of these) helped the others to overcome more quickly their backwardness, so that all could progress together.

Here is a typical example. In the difficult year of 1920, Lenin ordered a special train to be sent from M o s c o w to Tash­kent. In its carriages were professors and lecturers, whose mission was to set up the first Central Asian institute of higher education—the University of Turkestan (today the V . I. Lenin Tashkent State University). They took with them all the necessary equipment, a well-stocked library, and in a very short time, first scores, then hundreds, then thousands of Uzbeks, Tadzhiks, Kazakhs, Kirghiz and Turkmens, w h o had received a university education, carried the torch of knowledge into the towns and villages of Central Asia.

T h e Central Asian peoples have been able to leap forward through a whole historical epoch and m o v e from feudalism direct to socialism. The Great October Revolution gave them political freedom; but freedom would have been meaningless if their economic backwardness had not been eliminated. The Communist Party and the Soviet Government saw to it that the economy of Central Asia developed at a rate that exceeded the average for the whole country.

Once-backward border regions of Tsarist Russia have been transformed into flourishing, autonomous industrial-agricultural republics.

A real revolution has taken place also in the cultural life of the peoples of the Soviet East. Here, not only has universal illiteracy been totally eradicated, but numerous local cadres

6g T h e Soviet East

of specialists with secondary and higher education have been trained also.

Each republic has it o w n university, its national academy of science and a widely-spread network of institutes for educa­tional, scientific research, cultural and medical studies. The names of the Kazakh geologist, Kanysh Satpaev, and of the Uzbek scholars, Tashmukhamed Sarymsakov (mathematics) and Abid Sadykov (chemistry), and m a n y others, are well known far beyond the frontiers of the Soviet Union.

The scholars of Central Asia and Transcaucasia are playing an important role in the studies of the East and its culture. Very rich collections of Eastern manuscripts in Tashkent, Erevan, Tbilisi, Dushanbe and other cities constitute valuable material for scientific publications. T h e multi-volume editions of the catalogue of manuscripts of the Oriental Studies Institute of the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences, or the famous Canon of Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and the publications of the Matena-daran collection of Armenian manuscripts, have attracted the close attention of scholars throughout the world.

The culture of the peoples of the Soviet East, national in form and socialist in content, has attained unprecedented heights.

The friendship that prevails between all Soviet peoples has not only facilitated the flowering of each of their cultures, but has also contributed to their mutual enrichment and to mutual cultural exchanges. A n d , while in the numerous theatres and concert halls of the Central Asian Republics the productions of Russian and Ukrainian composers and the incomparable Rus­sian ballet meet with invariable acclaim, the hearts of the peoples of M o s c o w , Kiev, Minsk and other towns in Russia, the Ukraine and Byelorussia are w o n over by the rhythmic dances of the East in the renderings of such magnificent choreo­graphers as Galya Izmailova or Mukar ram Turgunbaev, the dramatic art of Sara Ishanturaeva, the birdlike notes of Khalima Nasyrova, the enchanting music of A r a m Khachaturyan or Uzeir Gadzhibekov. The books of Sadriddin Aini, Mukhtar Auezov, Chingis Aitmatov, Aibek and Berda Kerbabaev do not rest long unwanted on the shelves of bookshops and libraries, for they are read by the whole country.

The Soviet East 70

T h e former slaves, brilliantly portrayed as they have been by the classical Tadzhik writer, Sadriddin Aini, have, with the help of the Russian and other peoples of the Soviet Union, become the fully independent masters of their o w n destiny. A s they build up their o w n socialist society, the workers of Central Asia, together with all the workers of the Soviet powers, have confidently moved on to the task of building c o m ­munism.

Cultural relations

today

The outbreak of the Second World W a r menaced all the values of civilization which h u m a n genius had created. T h e sky over Europe was darkened by the smoke from the furnaces of Maidanek and Auschwitz—a 'brown plague' threatened to spread all over the world. Freed from fascism in Europe, the peoples of Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Rumania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia set out on the road to socialist construction. The peoples of the U . S . S . R . and the Eastern European countries, w h o had experienced inexpressible suffering and endured the severest losses during the war and w h o were n o w engaged in peaceful, creative labour, could yearn for nothing more desirable than peace.

In the countries of the East, a new wave of national-libera­tion revolutions developed after the defeat of Japan. The process of socialist expansion in Mongolia was accelerated. The Chinese people w o n their national independence and embarked on the conversion of their country to socialism. The peoples of Korea and Viet-Nam set out on the same road. India, Indonesia, Burma and other Asian countries ob­tained their independence. In order to eradicate their age-old

Cultural relations today 72

backwardness, all countries need a lasting and stable peace. For this reason, the ideas of peace and friendship between peoples which emanate from the socialist countries are understood by and familiar to all the peoples of the East.

A n awareness of the historic role of the East in world progress, not only in the past but in the present, has led the Slavs to study the cultural heritage and the contemporary spiritual life of the East.

Friendly relations with the peoples of Asia have helped to popularize in all corners of the Soviet Union the literature and art of China, India, Indonesia, Japan and other countries. For example, dozens of works by classical and contemporary Chi­nese authors, collections of Chinese poems, tales and legends have been published in the U . S . S . R . Works by Indian writers and politicians appear in large editions and are sold out i m m e ­diately. Each year sees increased interest taken in the classical and contemporary literature of Iran. Works by Pakistani wri­ters, 'Faiza A k h m a d a Faiza, Kasmi and others, are being published. The Japanese Kabuki Theatre which toured the U . S . S . R . attracted such crowds of spectators that performances had to be repeated. The original music of the peoples of South-Eastern Asia, their pictorial arts and the particularly impres­sive technique of lacquer painting, the products of popular artists, works of literature and cinema films are constantly attracting the attention of a very wide public. A n orchestra from Afghanistan and an exhibition of pictures by Afghan artists m a d e a very successful tour of the U . S . S . R . In 1962, the U . S . S . R . Academy of Sciences held a special academic meeting to commemorate the ninetieth anniversary of the great Pakistani writer and educator, Abdul Khaka .

The enormous interest taken in the East is reflected in the fact that a number of primary and secondary schools in M o s ­cow, Leningrad, Tashkent, Alma-Ata and other cities have introduced lessons in Eastern languages—Hindi, Chinese, U r d u and Arabic.

Poland, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria are also strengthening and widening their contacts with the countries of the East. M a n y people attend evening classes at the school of Eastern languages in Prague after the day's work; several hundred students graduate every year from the school.

73 Cultural relations today

Cultural exchanges between the Soviet Union and the coun­tries of Asia are an example of peaceful collaboration and brotherly mutual assistance.

For example, most Mongolian scholars or savants have been educated in the Soviet Union. T h e Mongolian Academy of Science works in close contact with the academies of science of the U . S . S . R . , Czechoslovakia and Poland. Scientific and cultural collaboration with socialist countries is helping to develop the economy and enrich the culture of Mongolia.

Viet-Namese students are studying in Soviet institutes of higher education, and Soviet scholars travel to Viet-Nam to study its history, language and culture. Viet-Nam is being given help by other socialist countries also, especially Poland and Czechoslovakia.

With the assistance of the U . S . S . R . , industries are being built up in Indonesia, and roads are being driven through the jungles of the island of Kalimantan. Soviet people have helped B u r m a to build a technological institute equipped with the latest apparatus. Soviet specialists are building a radio sta­tion in Laos.

T h e independence of India, w o n in 1947, opened up wide possibilities for cultural association between Indians and the peoples of foreign countries, including the U . S . S . R . More and more books are being translated into the languages of India. There is possibly not a single language in that country into which Gorki's novel Mother has not been translated. His play The Submerged has had great success with Indian intel­lectuals, w h o also appreciate other Soviet writers, such as Boris Polevoi.

Soviet literature, theatre, cinema and music are extremely popular in Japan. All the important works of Soviet authors have been translated into Japanese. Every appearance by Soviet performers in that country is highly successful, but audiences are particularly attracted by the classical Russian ballet. T h e Soviet choreographers A . Messerer and V . Bur-meister have helped to train young Japanese dancers and have already put on a number of performances in Japan.

Cultural contacts are growing between the Arab countries and the Soviet Union and other socialist States. There has

Cultural relations today 74

been an increase in exchanges of scholars, actors' groups and cinema films; quite a few Arab students are studying in the U . S . S . R .

Performances by the Bolshoi ballet and the Soviet violinist David Oistrakh were recently welcomed with great interest in Turkey. Turkey has quite extensive scientific and cultural rela­tions with Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Poland.

The Society for Cultural Relations with the U . S . S . R . , orga­nized in Iran as long ago as 1943, helps to organize photographic exhibitions, sporting contests, film shows and other mani­festations which contribute to rapprochement between the two peoples. T h e society publishes a magazine Pajame Nau (New Herald), and lays particular emphasis on acquainting the Ira­nian people with the achievements of Soviet science and cul­ture. M a n y works by Slavic authors (Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol, Chekov, Gorki, Ostrovsky, Sholokov, Hasek, Fridrich Capek, Branislav Nusiè, etc.) have been translated and published in Iran.

In Afghanistan, professors from the U . S . S . R . lecture in the University of Kabul. A number of courses in the Russian lan­guage have been organized in the country, and the works of Leo Tolstoy, M a x i m Gorki, Nicola'i Ostrovsky are translated and published. Plays by Russian dramatists, including Anton Chekhov, are performed in the Kabul Theatre 'Pokhyni N a n -dare', on the lines of Konstantin Stanislavsky's system.

After the State of Pakistan was formed in 1947, the U . S . S . R . , Czechoslovakia and other socialist States established diploma­tic relations with it. The success of the U . S . S . R . pavilion at the International Industrial Exhibition in Karachi in 1955 facili­tated the conclusion of a number of mutually advantageous economic agreements. Scientific contacts have expanded remar­kably: Soviet Union savants have participated in several sessions of the Pakistan Philosophical Congress, in a colloquium on the problems of Islam, in medical conferences and so on. In 1962, in Karachi, Lahore and Dacca, an exhibition of works by Russian and Soviet artists was staged.

The Soviet people consider egalitarian and mutually advan­tageous cultural collaboration to be an important factor in strengthening peace, friendship and mutual understanding

75 Cultural relations today

between peoples, for developing national cultures and enriching the treasure houses of world culture.

T h e main feature characterizing the current expansion of cultural relations between the Slavic countries and the East is the aspiration of all the peoples for peace.

Peace is our c o m m o n cause.