East Asian Studies in Russia1

Russia has an extremely rich and diverse background in East Asian Studies. After briefly introducing its historical roots, we will turn our attention to major organisa-tions, including journals. Afterwards, we will discuss strengths and weaknesses as perceived by us. The beginnings of East Asian Studies in Russia are closely related to the first con-tacts of Russians with the countries of East Asia and the advance of the Russians into Siberia, which started under the reign of Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible, 1530-1584). The development of oriental studies in Russia benefited from the educational re-forms under the reign of Peter the Great (1672-1725), who considered it necessary to study oriental languages. The conclusion of the Nerchinsk treaty with China in 1689 and the development of the Kamchatka peninsula by Russia were another demon-stration of her political and trade interests in the Far East. So, it was not purely by chance that the Russian government decided to stimulate the study of East Asian languages. Thus, language schools, teaching East Asian languages in Russia, existed as far back as the 18th century, with publications on East Asia, such as A Description of Japan in 1734, based on translations of S. Korovin-Sinbirenin and I. Gorlitsky, or A His-tory of the Japanese State from Reliable Sources by I. Reichel, a professor of Mos-cow University, in 1773. The year 1803 saw the establishment of an Academy of Sciences. Among its first members was G. Bayer who wrote one of the first Euro-pean grammar books of the Chinese language. 1 The paper is an outcome of a project of the Institute of East Asian Studies (InfO) of Duisburg-Essen University on the situation, prospects and potentials for scientific co-operation with institutions in East Asian studies in Central and Eastern Europe, which was made possible by a generous grant o