THE DOUBLE BIRTH OF RUSSIAN AFRICAN STUDIES*

The 50th anniversary of the year that went down in world history as the "Year of Africa"is approaching. In 1960, a new 17 countries appeared on the world map. This has never happened. And all these States are African.

In connection with the jubilee year in Africa and around the world, a summing up begins: what was this half-century's journey like? What are the achievements on this path, what are the difficulties, mistakes, failures?

We also have to examine the path taken by the science of African studies. Just as accurately: what are its achievements, how far did its forecasts come true, what were its difficulties, mistakes, failures?

Both tasks are not easy and will require the thoughtful work of many scientists, politicians, and practitioners.

All this applies to the history of our country's relations with the countries of Africa, and to the results of these relations up to the present day.

It also applies to Russian African studies, and its historical path has not yet been sufficiently studied. And it is not easy to understand it. After all, the development of any branch of science is impossible to imagine, judging only by published research. It is necessary to know in what conditions it was born and developed, whether it was the product of ideas and enthusiasm of enthusiasts, or whether it was stimulated by society and the state. And if, on the contrary , the state treated without interest, or even hindered? Is it possible to understand the history of genetics or cybernetics in our country, if you do not know what kind of persecution they were subjected to by the official authorities?

And the people who created science! How can one understand its development, its successes, its failures, and its entire tortuous path, if one does not know these people, their characters, moods, level of education, their courage or, conversely, indecision, the desire for independence or trembling fear, fear of power and the desire to please it in every possible way?

How nice it would be if those who really carried science on their shoulders, wrote about it, would leave us their memories! But, alas, no one did. And this, if you think about it, is understandable. As they say, the time was like this...

In this article, I would like to combine what can be judged by scientific achievements with what I witnessed as a student and graduate student, from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s. Of course, very briefly, concisely, with a dotted line, trying to highlight what, perhaps, is the most important thing. it is not quite obvious to people who came to African studies later.

* The author would like to thank the RGNF for its help in working on the article.

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* * *

Leningrad. An old building of the Kunstkamera. An office with a view of the Admiralty and the Palace Bridge.

At the end of 1948, when I crossed its threshold, this office was the center of national African studies, the only one in our country.

African studies was identified with only one name - Dmitry Alekseevich Olderogge. He was the head of the Africa section of the Institute of Ethnography, which lived in this building. He was also the head of the Department of African Studies at the Eastern Faculty of Leningrad University, which is located right there, along Universitetskaya Embankment, a three-minute walk away.

It may seem that this is not a small amount - the sector and the department. Yes, it sounds impressive. But there and here, together, only a few people worked. The department has just been created, separating it from the Department of Egyptology and African Studies. The department did not recruit students - the first group was accepted only in 1950. And before that? Several female students who had studied African languages alongside ancient Egyptian decided to focus on Africa. One of them, V. N. Vologdina, defended her PhD thesis "The People of Europe"in 1953.

The history of Africa was not studied - neither in the sector, nor in the department. They studied languages and ethnography.

And that's all!

There was not a single magazine on Oriental and African studies in the country.

What else can we talk about-even if not about departments and research centers, but at least about individual scientists? First of all, about historians: as a historian, this is easier for me to judge.

In Leningrad, Associate Professor of the Department of History of International Relations Mikhail Borisovich Rabinovich, a student of Academician E. V. Tarle, defended his PhD thesis "Jamson's Raid" in 1941-about the British attempt to carry out a coup in the South African Republic of Transvaal at the end of the XIX century. But he did not manage to start continuing his work. War. When he was discharged after the end of the Great Patriotic War, he still carried out the tasks of the command to prepare materials about the history of the Leningrad Front.

Alexander Lazarevich Vitukhnovsky, M. B. Rabinovich's post-graduate student at Leningrad University, completed his PhD thesis "Russia and the Boer War"in 1949. The historian and journalist Veniamin Yakovlevich Golant completed his PhD thesis "Revolts in the African colonies of Germany in 1904-1908" in the winter of 1948/49.

Here are just three historians related to the African theme, for the whole of Leningrad!

These three people were established scientists. If they were appreciated, how much benefit they would bring to the development of African studies! But the "Black Continent" was outside the sphere of Soviet geopolitics, and the authorities did not care about its study.

These three took up the history of Africa on their own initiative. The authorities did not encourage them. None of these dissertations have ever been published, although they are the result of hard work. And the fate of the authors, even if by some coincidence, was such that they did not allow them to seriously continue their endeavors.

M. B. Rabinovich was arrested in April 1949 because of false political suspicions. But even after rehabilitation, they didn't return to the university. He published several sections of his dissertation in the form of articles, but never continued his work.

A. L. Vitukhnovsky was still allowed to defend his dissertation in the fall of 1949, although his supervisor was at that time in the Leningrad prison "Kresty". However, they did not leave him at the university - they were assigned to work in Petrozavodsk, where neither the libraries nor the archives had the materials he needed to continue the topic he had started.

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V. Ya. Golant was also unlucky. He was awarded a degree, but soon, in the same 1949, was withdrawn, accusing the author of not sufficiently exposing the policy of American imperialism in German South-West Africa (now Namibia) in the early twentieth century. (Needless to say, the United States did not have any significant interests in those places at that time, and could not have had any.)

In the course" History of the Countries of the East", which students listened to at the History Faculty of Leningrad University, there were no lectures on Africa. However, for us, students of the Department of History of International Relations, the head of this department, Professor Nikolai Pavlovich Poletika, taught the course " The colonial policy of European powers (before 1914)" and in it spoke about the colonial division of Africa. But even there, it was still not about Africa itself, but about the feuds between the Western powers in the "battle for Africa". Of course, even if not about Africa itself, but about its colonial division, N. P. Poletika had quite good knowledge, and he could share it with students. But he had to leave Leningrad University in 1951. In the context of the struggle against "rootless cosmopolitanism" and "low worship of the West", which was also aggravated in Leningrad by the notorious "Leningrad case", he, a true scientist, felt that he was in trouble, and literally fled, taking advantage of the offer to go to work at Tashkent University.

I can cite my own fate as an example. I was just a student. But the general situation at that time also affected me. About my desire to study the history of South Africa at the end of the XIX century, Associate Professor V. G. Bryunin, who replaced N. P. Poletika as head of the department, said:"We considered you an intelligent student, but you were brought to archeology."

To him, the concept of "Africa" seemed very far away, not only geographically, but also historically - he himself was engaged in the German Democratic Republic, which was created in 1949.

Of course, the development of African studies, as well as the entire socio-political and scientific life of Leningrad, was sharply affected by the position of this city in the country. In the last Stalinist years, he was disgraced. The " Leningrad case "and the associated repressions also forced scientists to live with their heads down and" keep their heads down " with initiatives that could suddenly turn out to be risky. It is not by chance that the volley of Stalin's post-war ideological decisions began with a blow to Leningrad, with the banning of the magazine "Leningrad", with the defaming of Akhmatova and Zoshchenko. In 1950, there was an attempt to defeat the Leningrad Oriental Studies. If the words of Vladimir Vysotsky apply to our entire country in those years, then they are especially true for the residents of Leningrad:

And we though shootings did not mow down,
But we lived without daring to raise our eyes, -
We are also children of the terrible years of Russia...

D. A. Olderogge is a hereditary nobleman. My father, a "royal colonel", is in exile, my uncle was shot. When in 1948 I first met Dmitry Alekseevich, he walked with a wand-my heart was playing tricks. He was only 45 years old.

* * *

And in Moscow? There was no academic center for African studies, no university department. Neither African history nor languages were taught. The first department was created in the early 1960s - the Department of African Languages of the Institute of Oriental Languages at Moscow State University (now the Institute of Asian and African Countries). They also started teaching African history there.

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In 1950 Marina Veniaminovna Wright defended her PhD thesis "Russian expeditions in Ethiopia in the XIX-early XX centuries and their ethnographic research". In the same year, Ivan Ivanovich Vasin defended his PhD thesis, which is close to the research of the Leningrad resident V. Ya. Golant: "The colonial policy of Germany in South-West Africa (the Herero and Hottentot revolt in 1904-1907".

These were the first two theses on the history of "Black Africa", defended in post-war Moscow.

Of course, Africa was written about in very fashionable books after the war on the history of international relations-up to the"History of Diplomacy". But there Africa was mentioned as an object of action of the European powers. The famous Moscow Germanist Arkady Samsonovich Yerusalimsky, in his Stalin Prize - winning book "Foreign Policy and Diplomacy of German Imperialism" (1948), gave a large chapter "The Transvaal crisis of 1895-1896". But it was not about Africa itself, but about the foreign policy of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

I draw attention here to the work of historians. Of course, the works of economists and geographers were also published at that time, although they were still very few in number. Especially noteworthy is the economist Irina Pavlovna Yastrebova. In 1946, she defended her PhD thesis "The economy of the Union of South Africa during the Second World War", a very good study for those times.

In the early 1950s, a certain revival of the ethnographic direction began. This is due to the arrival in the Moscow part of the Institute of Ethnography of Ivan Izosimovich Potekhin. This scientist was discharged after participating in the Finnish and World War II and joined the Institute, and in 1949 became deputy director. It was known that he had been studying South Africa since the 1930s, but he did not like to talk about his work at that time.

An extremely active, active and enthusiastic person, I. I. Potekhin for several years created a group of Africanists in the Moscow part of the Institute of Ethnography. It became part of the Leningrad Africa Sector, headed by D. A. Olderogge, but the number of employees was not inferior to the Leningrad one. Sergey Rufovich Smirnov entered it. By the beginning of the 1950s, he already had serious experience behind him. In 1934 - 1939, he was one of the students of the only pre-war student group at Leningrad University that specialized in African languages: Swahili, Hausa, and Amharic. And in 1946, he defended his dissertation, although not on "Black Africa", but on neighboring Sudan - "The Mahdist Uprising in the Sudan".

The team created by I. I. Potekhin included M. V. Wright, and then several new employees and graduate students who quickly prepared their PhD theses: Antonina Semenovna Orlova ("The Malgash people at the end of the XIX century", defended in 1954), Roza Nurgalievna Ismagilova ("The peoples of Kenya under the colonial regime", 1955)., Leonid Dmitrievich Yablochkov ("Bantu of British Central Africa", 1955).

I. I. Potekhin managed to create a collective of African studies in Moscow, first of all, of course, thanks to his indomitable energy. But, nevertheless, it is unlikely that he could have achieved this without holding an administrative post-deputy director. In addition, the support of his superiors was also ensured by the fact that, unlike the non-partisan D. A. Olderogge, he conducted active political work and participated in violent political campaigns. In 1949, at the height of the campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans", he published an article in the journal" Soviet Ethnography "(No. 2) entitled"The task of combating cosmopolitanism in Ethnography". As part of his campaign to expose Western science, he organized and published Anglo-American Ethnography in the Service of Imperialism (1951).

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In scientific terms, he worked on the problem of ethnic consolidation of the Bantu peoples of South Africa. I encouraged my employees to develop this topic based on material from other regions and countries.

The most important achievement of African studies in these years was a huge (732 pages large format) volume " The Peoples of Africa "(1954). Responsible editors are D. A. Olderogge and I. I. Potekhin. The organizational role was largely assumed by I. I. Potekhin.

D. A. Olderogge wrote the chapters "The ancient history of the indigenous population of Africa", "Anthropological types of Africa", "Languages and writing of the peoples of Africa". Chapters on the regions of Africa were written by D. A. Olderogge, I. I. Potekhin, S. R. Smirnov, and A. S. Orlova. D. A. Olderogge and I. I. Potekhin prepared the Maghreb chapter together with V. B. Lutsky, one of the most prominent Soviet Arabists.

Of course, the authors could not avoid the then Soviet ideologization and politicization, but, nevertheless, the book was prepared professionally, filled with the most valuable information that the Soviet reader could not get anywhere else at that time. It was, one might say, an encyclopedia of basic knowledge about Africa.

Then it was perceived as a starting point, a launching pad for the development of Soviet African studies.

* * *

But a few years passed, and, fact by fact, it began to turn out that in fact the start was given two decades earlier. And that the first period, which to me, and to many others, seemed to be the birth of our workshop of African studies, was preceded by an earlier, but completely forgotten one. Forgotten not by accident, but deliberately. To clear up - and very gradually-it began in 1956.

This year is significant for our entire country with Khrushchev's report on Stalin and the acceleration of rehabilitation of victims of repression. And for African studies - and a sharp increase in attention to the countries of the East, and hence to Africa. One of the concrete results of this was the creation of a large center for African studies in the renovated Institute of Oriental Studies. And the second is the return from the GULAG of those orientalists who still managed to survive, having gone through all the horrors there. From these people, we, who came to African studies in the late 1940s and later, learned about a previously unknown period in the history of our workshop. We learned that the true birth of African studies took place much earlier than we could have imagined. And they understood why it was hidden from us.

Now all this is no longer a secret. But then, in the late 1950s and 1960s, it was amazing, sensational. So much so that it was hard to believe right away. And those who survived did not tell us very willingly, rather letting it out rather than speaking out loud.

What were you talking about?

That the birth of Soviet African studies occurred in the late 1920s. A landmark event is the Sixth Congress of the Comintern, its preparations, and its decisions to increase attention to the East and Africa.

Of course, there were also some independent-minded people who were interested in Africa even without those decisions. But, nevertheless, it was as a result of the activities of this congress that the first center for African studies was created in our country: the Department of Africa at the Comintern KUTWe (Communist University of the Workers of the East) and the African Cabinet closely associated with it - the department for collecting information about Africa at the NIANKP (Research Association for the Study of National and Colonial Problems), also a Comintern an institution.

In this center - in the department and in the office - there were very different people. Both in terms of social background, and the degree of education, and, perhaps, in terms of views.

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The oldest in age was the Hungarian Endre Shik - in the USSR he was called Andrey Aleksandrovich Shik. He studied at the Jesuit College in Budapest, and then graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University of Budapest. He had a doctorate in law and knew Latin.

George E. Gerngros, the son of a general who at one time headed the General Staff of the Russian Imperial War Ministry, collaborated with this African center, although he was not an employee of the Comintern institutions. Georgy Yevgenyevich also received a good education, could read literature in several Western European languages. Philologist Georgy Konstantinovich Danilov's education helped him quickly move on to mastering African languages.

Alongside these people worked those whose education was limited to provincial schools and short-term courses of party and political training. But we must pay tribute to all these people - they worked hard.

The goal of the Comintern was to study the possibilities of Africa's participation in the world revolutionary process. This task was considered quite broadly. It was believed that it was necessary to study not only socio-economic and political problems, but also the languages of African peoples.

The sources of information were not only the rich foreign literature that came to the center (the Comintern allocated financial resources for this), but also unique information: stories from people from many African countries who came, often secretly, to study at Kutva and the Lenin School.

The center's employees sent the results of their research to the Comintern leadership in the form of reports and analytical materials, and also published them in the form of books and journal articles. The opportunities for publishing were very rich. The magazine Revolutionary East was published, as well as numerous collections of Materials on National and Colonial Problems, and The Negro Worker, an English-language magazine in which Soviet Africanists published articles, usually under pseudonyms.

The intensity of the work can be judged at least by the fact that in 1932-1936 I. I. Potekhin published more than 20 articles in Russian, and, in addition, several articles in English.

All this work was carried out in line with the ideas of the Comintern. But the level of professionalism of these first Soviet Africanists was rapidly increasing. The scope of their interests expanded. The first meeting they held (in 1934) was called the Conference on African Languages. In addition to Muscovites, G. K. Danilov and Pyotr Savvich Kuznetsov, invited speakers from Leningrad included Nikolai Vladimirovich Yushmanov, Igor Leontievich Snegirev, and D. A. Olderogge. Learning African languages, which had started from scratch, was rapidly gaining momentum.

A. A. Shik not only developed and published a program for the development of African studies in 1930, but also published a book containing an analysis of racial theories in the same year [Rasovaya problema..., 1930].1 Then he published several major articles on agricultural problems in Africa, and later, while in Moscow, wrote two volumes of the History of Black Africa. Many years later, when he returned to Hungary, he published them in Hungarian, English, and French [SiK, 1964; Sik, 1966].

G. E. Gerngros (under the pseudonym Yug) published the book "Imperialism on the Black Continent" in 1929, and two books at once in 1931: "British Colonies in East Africa" and "The Union of South Africa" - all using documents and the latest Western literature.

Of course, the vast majority of the works of the then Africanists did not stand the test of time, and could not stand it. But, still, we must give them to the authors

1 After the Second World War, it was also published in Hungary - in Hungarian.

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They were among the first scientists in the world to study the social transformation of African societies, the emergence of new urban social strata and new political organizations among the African population.

And those Africans who studied at Kutva and Lenin School? Of course, they were inspired by the political slogans of that time. But at the same time, they also received some general education.

One way or another, the birth of Russian African studies was underway. But the time allowed for this process was very short-from the end of the 1920s to 1937.

It began with the Comintern, and ended with the Comintern. Officially, the Comintern was dissolved in 1943, but in fact it was crushed by Stalin in the mid-1930s. Although it would seem that the Comintern was an effective tool for spreading Bolshevik ideas, something else was more important for Stalin. The leaders of the Comintern were Zinoviev and, after him, Bukharin. Trotsky was involved in the creation of the Comintern. So Stalin regarded the Comintern with great distrust. The persecution began in 1934 and 1935. At the same time, those who headed the Eastern and African directions in the work of the Comintern were also shot: P. A. Myth, L. Magyar, G. I. Safarov.

And in 1937, the Comintern in its former form no longer existed. Of course, African studies was not the main target of repression, but it also got it. They shot G. E. Gerngros, G. K. Danilov, N. M. Nasonov and political emigrants from South Africa - the Richter brothers. Another political emigrant from South Africa, Lazar Bach, died in a concentration camp. Gaivoronsky was arrested and tortured. Then they released him, and he died in the first battle in the Patriotic War. His wife told me that he was looking for death. The fate of Ilsa Karlovna Richter and the German political emigrants who collaborated with the Moscow Africanists could not be clarified. Most likely, they suffered the same fate. They arrested Kirill Nikolaevich Luknitsky, a Leningrad resident who was a specialist in the problems of Ethiopia (in the mid-1930s, in connection with the Italo-Ethiopian war, much attention was paid to them - both in politics and in the press).

The Center for African Studies in Kutva and NIANKP was headed first by Nikolai Mikhailovich Nasonov, then, after his arrest and execution, by Alexander Zakharovich Zusmanovich (from the beginning of 1934 to the beginning of 1936). After Zusmanovich was expelled from the Comintern system (March 1936), by I. I. Potekhin. After the dismissal of Potekhin (October 1936) - A. A. Shik.

Zusmanovich and Potekhin were lucky not to be arrested. Both of them then went through the whole war. Zusmanovich graduated as a colonel, deputy commandant of Budapest. In 1949, he was finally arrested, sentenced to death by firing squad, then commuted to either a life sentence or a 25-year sentence, and rehabilitated in 1956. From the fall of 1956 until the summer of 1965, when he died, I worked with him in the same department, first at the Institute of Oriental Studies, then at the Institute of Africa.)

In 1937, it was Shijk's turn. Although he had been persecuted before, the Africanists themselves treated him with respect. In those years, he was regarded as a patriarch. In 1933, Zusmanovich and Potekhin published their book and presented it to Shik, writing: "To the long-suffering African scholar from the beginning." In a collective photo of the Afrikanists in 1934, Schijk sits in the center, between Snegirev and Olderogge. And in 1937, he was expelled from the party and arrested. True, he was later released, but he was already booked for his previous job.

How can you not remember the words of Vladimir Vysotsky:

Teachers were devoured by a sea of lies
and splashed out near Magadan.

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* * *

After the defeat of the Comintern, only a few Africanists remained alive and at large. Of those who continued to work in the field of African studies, only N. V. Yushmanov, D. A. Olderogge, I. L. Snegirev, P. S. Kuznetsov and T. P. Tyutryumova, an Amharic language teacher, remained. But N. V. Yushmanov died in 1946, I. L. Snegirev, having fought in the Patriotic War, nevertheless ended up in the GULAG and died in the same year, 1946. P. S. Kuznetsov moved away from African studies. T. L. Tyutryumova never claimed any leadership role. So it turned out that in 1948, when I, as a student, decided to go to African studies, it was presented by one name - D. A. Olderogge. I. I. Potekhin, although he had already returned to this path, it still took some time to strengthen himself on it after a long break.

But why did D. A. Olderogge and I. I. Potekhin prefer not to talk about that first period? And after all, not only did they not spread, but they simply kept silent. In the detailed, extensive bibliography of the Peoples of Africa, the names of countless foreign studies are given, but none of the approximately 30 articles published by Potekhin in 1932-1936 are mentioned. It also omits the book" The Labor Movement and Forced Labor in Black Africa", which was published in 1933 by Potekhin and Zusmanovich in collaboration with the leader of the Communist Party of South Africa, Zulu Albert Nzula (he took the pseudonym Tom Jackson). There is not a single article by D. A. Olderogge published in those years. Not only are there no works, but the names of Gerngros, Schiik, and all those associated with that stage in the development of African studies are not even mentioned. There is not even a mention of the first African studies center. There are no names of those numerous African students who studied in Kutva and in the Lenin School. Publications and journals related to African studies in the 1920s and 1930s are not mentioned.

How tenacious were the consequences of the terror, if those who published the volume "Peoples of Africa" hid all this, although the book was published at the turn of 1954 and 1955, when Stalin was already almost two years dead. How, even then, publishers, censors, and authors themselves continued to be afraid!

Because of the silence of the witnesses, it was very difficult to subsequently collect materials about that first period. A lot has already been done [first of all: Stanovlenie..., 2003; Afrikanskoe yazykoznanie..., 1998]. But is it enough?

* * *

In order to remember all this now, in 2009, there is another important reason - not only the approaching 50th anniversary of the "Year of Africa".

Eighty years ago, on April 13, 1929, the first national program for the study of Africa was proclaimed. This took place at the organizational meeting of the research circle for the study of socio-economic problems of "Black Africa" (there was one!). The circle originated within the framework of the same Research Association for the Study of National and Colonial Problems (NIANP). The program is formulated in the report "Towards the formulation of a Marxist study of the socio-economic problems of Black Africa", prepared and read by A. A. Shik and later published in the journal "Revolutionary East" (1930, No. 8).

The program is detailed, well thought out and certainly fruitful for that time. It sets out the tasks of studying all periods of African history, including ancient history, the tasks of studying the social transformation of African societies and even "overcoming the theory of supraclass racial solidarity" (what is now called "anti-racial racism"). I won't go into too much detail on

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this is a very interesting document-it was reproduced in our magazine 20 years ago [First Program..., 1989].

There are different ways to relate to African studies in the 1920s and 1930s. But, whatever your attitude, was it possible to completely cross out this period? This is also part of the history of science. History of politics. History of our country. And given the participation of dozens of Africans in these studies-and the history of Africa.

This is how African studies was born in our country - twice.

list of literature

African linguistics in Russia. 30s / Introductory article and comm. by N. V. Gromova, Moscow: MSU, 1998.

The first program of Soviet African Studies / / Peoples of Asia and Africa. 1989. N 4.

Race and Marxism. M.: Publishing research Association for the study of national and colonial problems, 1930.

Formation of national African studies. 1920s-early 1960s / Ed. A. B. Davidson, Moscow: Nauka Publ., 2003.

Sik E. Fevete-Afrika fortenete. Vol. 1 - 2. Budapest, 1964 / English translation: Sik E. Fevete-Afrika fortenete. The History of Black Africa. Vol. I-II. Budapest, 1966.

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