Criticism and bibliography. Reviews

Ed. by A. B. Davidson. Moscow: Nauka Publ., 2003, 390 p.

The book under review is dedicated to people who passed away long ago or very recently, scientists-pioneers of Russian African studies, their contribution to science, as well as those "who soon followed them". Its authors - scientists from Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Estonia-knew many of them personally. But not all of them. Especially sad is the fate of those who started exploring Africa in the 1920s and 1930s, but were thrown out of science for non - Proletarian origin or for some other "sin", and in the worst case-disappeared in GULAG camps. Until recently, little was known about them, and their works remained forgotten in our historiography.

It is difficult to overestimate the painstaking work done by the authors ' team to find articles of repressed scientists in private and state archives, to establish their real names (sometimes they were known or published under pseudonyms), and information about their lives. Several decades ago, A. B. Davidson, executive editor and author of several articles in this collection, started collecting the material. Today, it would hardly be possible to find out the facts from the biographies of the first Africanists that were received in the 1960s from their relatives and colleagues - there were already few of them, and even then they preferred to remain silent about their connections with the repressed people.

The publication of the book is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of two founders of our African studies - Dmitry Alekseevich Olderogge and Ivan Izosimovich Potekhin. The first of them is often referred to as the creator of the "Leningrad school" of African studies, but since the study of the distant continent in the 1920s and early 1930s began in Leningrad, he should rightfully be considered the "patriarch" of Russian African studies. The main achievement of I. I. Potekhin was the formation of a large scientific center in Moscow-the Institute of Africa.

The book begins with the biographies of two scientists: the art critic V. I. Markov and the venerable orientalist B. A. Turaev, whose lives and works do not fit into the chronological framework indicated in the title of the book. In Russia, they were the first researchers of African problems, and after them, already in Soviet times, Egyptologists, specialists in early Christianity, who created Ethiopian studies, came to African studies. Russian African studies grew out of classical Oriental studies, which explains its rapid development. Leningrad became a center of academic training for Africanists, which was based on the study of the history, ethnography, culture and languages of the peoples of Africa. Leningrad also had an impact on the second center for African studies that later emerged in Moscow, created on the basis of the Comintern and related institutions. Here, the main objects of research are the political, social and economic problems of African countries that are relevant to the ideologists of the world proletarian revolution. The misfortune of Moscow researchers was not only the greater ideological pressure, but also the lack of scientific training, or even just proper education. Some, however, managed to close this gap through self-education and great diligence. The advantage of working in the Comintern was the opportunity to receive foreign literature and communicate with foreign communists and Africans.

D. A. Olderogge and I. I. Potekhin represent these two (academic and ideological) trends in our African studies. Two articles are devoted to them, which, in my opinion, give a thorough and objective assessment of their indisputable scientific and organizational contribution to the development of Russian African studies. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that these and some other articles are provided with unusual documentary appendices (a personal leaflet on personnel registration, an Autobiography, Party surveys, a report on a foreign business trip, a certificate of rehabilitation, a statement to the party bureau of the executive committee of the Comintern about the factional activities of a group with Trotskyist - Zinovievist views, dealing with Africa, etc.), years, the conditions in which scientists had to work. In 1936, I. I. Potekhin was excommunicated from studying Africa and was able to return to it only in 1946, and the head of the first center for African Studies, A. Z. Zusmanovich, had a similar break for two decades, and he was quite dashing, having spent more than two months on death row. It is no accident that D. A. Olderogge, who, unlike I. I. Potekhin and A. Z. Zusmanovich, tried to stay away from politics, from 1937 to 1946. not a single article was published.

Restoring the good memory of those who died in Stalin's dungeons or suffered from repressions, A. B. Davidson notes that " the authorities did not set out to strike specifically at Afri-

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canistike. Africanists simply shared the fate of the Russian intelligentsia of Stalin's, and not only Stalin's time... If the destinies of these people had not been forcibly interrupted, who knows what contribution they would have made to the national African studies - to the humanities in general. Right now, we can only".. to appreciate in a broken string its unreleased sounds " (p. 9).

These words are connected with another problem considered by the authors - the consequences of a generational gap in African studies. Yes, the damage to science was huge. The new generation had to start a lot from scratch, there were not enough highly qualified scientific supervisors, but after reading this, in general, sad book, there is no feeling of hopeless pessimism. And the point is not that "nothing is forgotten", but rather that the hope for the revival of broken ties between generations does not disappear, if at least a few keepers of knowledge and traditions remain alive in science. The fewer such people, the slower the return to true science, the goal of which is the search for truth. Is that why it was so difficult in Soviet African studies? The last articles of the book deal with concepts and theories that were developed by Soviet Africanists for a long time. Some of them, such as the "path of socialist orientation", which had the status of priority, turned out to be untenable, because scientific integrity and the search for truth in them were sacrificed to the social order.

It is surprising that Africanists, put in the most difficult conditions, deprived of the opportunity to visit Africa, managed to be ahead of their Western colleagues in the study of a number of, as it turned out later, the most important problems of the development of the African continent. First of all, it concerns the national liberation movement and the ethnic issue. The authors of the book see the reason for this breakthrough in the integrated approach of scientists to the phenomenon under study, which is traditional for Russian Oriental studies, and in the fact that they considered events in any country in Africa not in isolation from the outside world, but in a global context, i.e. in connection with the processes taking place on the continent and I would like to mention one more thing. Unable to compete with their Western counterparts in the search for factual material, Russian Africanists could (or were forced to) to contribute to African studies only in the form of a theoretical understanding of second-hand facts.

The book was compiled as a biographical reference, so most of the articles are not problematic in nature. However, no matter how interesting the information about the life vicissitudes of the pioneers in African studies is, the authors focus on their contribution to science. A critical analysis of the works, ideas, and discussions of that time is given, and although the further development of the African continent showed the fallacy of many of the theoretical views of that time, the articles do not contain the spirit of arrogant superiority of people ("we are smarter") who look down from the height of the achievements of today's science on those who worked before and could not. This impression is created because when evaluating the activities of their predecessors, the authors proceed from the state of African studies at that time and very limited opportunities for research due to ideological censorship restrictions, lack of contacts with world science. However, according to I. I. Filatova, " it was the theoretical constructions of the 1930s and 1950s, which now seem so primitive to us, that left the most noticeable trace in the world of African studies." Their authors "were able to find real gaps in the research of their Western colleagues. How much of Russian African studies today is destined to have such a long life?" (p. 331).

Interesting is the authors ' attitude to the characterization of scientists as individuals, to the conflicts that are apparently inevitable in any field of activity, between them. But in the 1920s and 1930s, and in subsequent times, scientific disputes took on the character of theoretical "showdowns", fraught with dramatic, and even fatal consequences for the participants. Did they understand this by resorting to ideological arguments? The question remained unanswered in the book-those who could have given it have passed away. Not everyone, like D. A. Olderogge, managed not to sacrifice their conscience and civic position in the troubles of those terrible years. The unsightly pages of the history of African studies are attested by the surviving documents, but they are accompanied not by angry comments from the authors of the collection, but only by a sad statement of facts. Without denying the personal responsibility of a person for their actions, the authors do not seek to pose as judges passing sentences, because we do not know all the details of what happened and are not given to fully understand the psychology of people who lived in the era of terror and widespread fear. Quoting the lines of Anna Akhmatova, "... fathers and grandfathers are incomprehensible", A. B. Davidson raised the question, the essence of which is as follows: can we categorically judge the generation of Akhmatova and Olderogge? (p. 55).

In conclusion, I will quote from an article about one of the first experts on Arab Africa, G. A. Nersesov, in which his speeches dedicated to deceased colleagues are called a model of "how to preserve the memory of older comrades, study their experience, continue their traditions" (p. 271). I think these words can be applied to the whole book.

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