Articles

Vladimir Tyurin. Soviet Orientalism: ideology, policy and the study of Southeast Asia in the USSR: Introduction and Commentaries

Vostok/Oriens '2017, №6

DOI: 10.7868/S0869190817060115

 
The paper publishes two previously unpublished archival manuscripts written by Soviet and Russian historian Vladimir Tyurin (Vladimir Tiourine, 1933–2015): “Soviet Orientalism: ideology, policy and the study of Southeast Asia in the USSR” and “Ideology and interest: a Soviet view of Southeast Asia”. They were composed in the mid1980s, as evidenced by their contents. The “Soviet Orientalism” traces the study of Southeast Asia in the Russian Empire and the USSR as a process deeply influenced by the “triad” of politics, ideology, and objectivity. The “Ideology and Interest” views the same process by means of dichotomy “ideology versus private interest of the scholar”. The manuscripts both reflect the translation of the Russian concept “Vostokovedenie”, i.e. Oriental Studies, by the English term “Orientalism”, a rather unique approach of Tyurin who made use of the term “Russian Orientalism” as a name for Soviet Oriental Studies in his earlier papers [Turin, 1967; Tiurin, 1970].

Keywords: Soviet Oriental Studies, Southeast Asia, historiography, politics, ideology, objectivity, private interest

Pages: С. 118–142