Suchergebnisse

Some Indian historians, as well as social and political activists believed before and believe now that democracy in India in general, and in Bengal in particular has very deep roots (according to these beliefs, in 7th–8th centuries A.D. Bengal suffered political and economic decline). Such great activists of "Bengal Renaissance" as R. P. Chanda, A. K. Maitreya, R. D. Banerji (Bandyopadhyay), and R. Ch. Majumdar were the first to express this idea and comprehend Bengal as a single entity. Meanwhile the idea in question was based on a single evidence, that was written in the genealogical part of two landgrant charters of Dharmapāla, the second king of the Pāla dynasty (ca. late 8th — the beginning of 9th centuries). However modern historians, analysing the Bengali sources of the period, note the fact that generally only Buddhist historical texts contain references to the mentioned political and economic disorder, while judging by inscriptions and excavations, there is no evidence of decline. Moreover, there is no proof that Bengal existed as a single entity in pre-Muslim period at all. Distribution of inscriptions of Pālas and their neighbours in Bengal territory shows that we can identify around six or seven cultural and political regions there. Thus we could conclude that the notion of deeply rooted Indian democracy is based on the prejudiced interpretation of available sources by the Bengali historians of the early 20th century.

In general, modernization in India follows the general laws of the formation transition: Individualism builds up pressure on collectivism in all areas of society, while the process of individualization of the individual intensifies. However, the dualism of structure-forming ties in Indian society leaves its mark on said process. Neither individualism, nor collectivism can prevail. There is a dynamic balance: Individualization of the individual occurs within the framework of collectivism, but for how long can this go on? Everything depends on the resource of collectivism, which is far from exhausted. In the study the author captures the reader's attention on three points. First: the radicalism of modernizing transformations must correlate with the degree of society's readiness (otherwise, even the most "progressive" reforms can be rejected by society). Second: of multiple modernization options, democratic is the most important for the destinies of the country and people, nationwide (it provides the least painful path of development, it is accompanied by the expansion of human rights and freedoms, and it helps to improve the lives of ordinary people. And the third: the importance of the personality type for the historical development of society requires a steady increase in the status of a person. Therefore, human rights movements, which are considered marginal in some countries, should be recognized as the most important system-forming factor in social progress. The legal base and the real scope of human rights, the tasks of human rights movements are becoming important indicators of the maturity of the country's civil society in the depth of modernization.

This paper evaluates the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on social and economic development of Israel. We begin with a short description of the state of affairs in Israel from social, economic and political points of view before the advent of pandemic. First, we analyze the role of ongoing Israeli political crisis in the current environment, describe leading political actors' reaction and list some politically-destabilizing factors. We proceed with an analysis of COVID-19 impact on various economic branches and on Israeli economy as a whole. We provide estimates of adverse impact of the coronavirus on some important industries, such as tourism, energy, diamonds and air transport, supplemented by Bank of Israel economic forecast for post-crisis development. Additionally, we describe how high-tech sector as one of the drivers of Israeli economy is trying to adapt to the new environment brought by the pandemic. Despite the negative shocks on exports and labor markets, Israeli high-tech sector is flexible and ready to reorganize itself to better react for changing market conditions. This has already been reflected in the way how entrepreneurs and researchers are channeling their efforts into high-demand areas such as medicine and telecommunications, which in itself suggests existence of positive trends in the industry. We conclude our paper with a brief summary and a forecast of the development of Israeli economy. Despite diverse opinions on the efficiency of anti-crisis measures adopted by Israeli government, we admit that the current crisis is a substantial challenge for Israeli society but we also maintain that COVID-19 pandemic will not pose any existential threat to Israeli national economy.

The article presents a historical overview of Israeli studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies RAS in the first two decades of the 21st century. The paper demonstrates the main research fields and publications of the Department for the Study of Israel and Jewish Communities, as well as the list of its heads and research fellows. The article shows how, having successfully overcome the difficulties of the 1990s that were rather hard on Russian Academy as a whole, the staff of the Israeli Studies Department in their numerous publications, speeches at Russian and international academic forums tried to respond to the new challenges in a scholarly way. In the 2000s the number of works published on the history of relations between the USSR / Russia and Israel increased, and this trend continued in subsequent years. Access to the archives for the first time made it possible to analyze the formation and development of Soviet-Israeli relations before the break (in 1953). The department expanded the directions of its academic activity. Its topics included such directions as the study of the collective memory of Jews in modern Russia, cultural identity, cultural memory, religious and secular identity of Russian Jews, attitude towards disability and people with disabilities, study of youth communities in Israel, Russia and Europe, the impact of the US-Israeli relations on the US Jewish community. Development of basic methodology for researching the state of Jewish charity in Moscow was one of the new tasks for the fellows of the Department to solve. The novelty of the tasks also included new methodology of researching the economic and socio-political development of Israel using social networks data. The Department continued to study all aspects of the life of the State of Israel — economic, socio-political and cultural processes developing in the Israeli state, including new features in regional policy and the concept of Israeli security. At present, members of the department's, in addition to their current activities, are implementing a number of promising projects aimed at strengthening the department's position as the leading center of Israeli studies in the post-Soviet space.

The article covers the proceedings of the IV International Academic Conference 'Historical, Cultural, Interethnic, Religious and Political Relations of the Crimea with the Mediterranean Region and the Countries of the East', which was held on October 6–10, 2020 in Sevastopol on the basis of the Sevastopol State University and the State Historical and Archeological Museum-Reserve 'Chersonesos Taurica'. Talks on given problems were distributed through several areas of research — marine archeology, data from written sources, history, international affairs, historiography and cartography, archeology, numismatics, and others. Particular attention was paid to the interdisciplinary and complex research.

The research expedition of the Institute of Oriental studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences has been working in Mali since 2015. Since 2017, it has been attended by employees of the State Museum of the East. The task of the expedition is to study the transformation of traditional Dogon culture in the context of globalization, as well as to collect ethnographic information (life, customs, features of the traditional social and political structure); to collect oral historical legends; to study the history, existence, and transformation of artistic tradition in the villages of the Dogon Country in modern conditions; collecting items of Ethnography and art to add to the collection of the African collection of the. Peter the Great Museum (Kunstkamera, Saint Petersburg) and the State Museum of Oriental Arts (Moscow). The plan of the expedition in January 2020 included additional items, namely, the study of the functioning of the antique market in Mali (the "path" of things from villages to cities, which is important for attributing works of traditional art). The geography of our research was significantly expanded to the regions of Sikasso and Koulikoro in Mali, as well as to the city of Bobo-Dioulasso and its surroundings in Burkina Faso, which is related to the study of migrations to the Bandiagara Highlands. In addition, the plan of the expedition included organization of a photo exhibition in the Museum of the village of Endé and some educational projects. Unfortunately, after the mass murder in March 2019 in the village of Ogossogou-Pel, where more than one hundred and seventy people were killed, events in the Dogon Country began to develop in the worst-case scenario: The incessant provocations after that revived the old feud between the Pel (Fulbe) pastoralists and the Dogon farmers. So far, this hostility and mutual distrust has not yet developed into a full-scale ethnic conflict, but, unfortunately, such a development now seems quite likely.

The article gives historical outline of Israeli studies in the Institute of Oriental Studies RAS (former IOS SAS) since the end of 1950th till 1990th. Main research topics and publications of Israel Department are reviewed and analyzed; its chairs and researchers are listed. Israeli Studies in the USSR overcame the difficult and complicated way, suffered recessions and revivals. At the beginning of the 1970's Soviet Party leadership set a task "to struggle against the Zionist ideology". In 1971 Israel Department was set up in the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences headed by Arabic scholar V. I. Kiselev. The valuable contribution to the development of Soviet Israeli Studies was made by G. S. Nikitina, who was the author of numerous publications and the first fundamental scientific monograph "The State of Israel. The Peculiarities of Economic and Political Development" (1968). During the Soviet period researchers had to use in their publications such expressions as "reactionary essence of Zionism" and criticised Israel as an "aggressor", "the agent of American imperialism", etc. In spite of the ideological pressure on the study of the State of Israel, some researchers began to digress from propagandist "cliches" in order to analyse the facts more objectively. The shortage of academic literature and the lack of contacts with Israeli scientists and Hebrew-speaking specialists complicated research activities. At the same time in 1986 the first academic Reference book "The State of Israel" was published, where the authors sought to analyse the peculiarities of Israeli society. Israel Department got over several structural reorganizations, changes in leadership, and after the restoration of Russian-Israeli diplomatic relations (1991), continued complex study of the State of Israel in the post-Soviet period.

The paper deals with the first digital corpus of texts in the Koraput Munda languages (Sora, Gutob, Bonda), which became available online in Spring 2020. Koraput Munda are spoken in India on the border between states of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh and they all are more or less endangered. Texts in these languages were collected during four expeditions to the state of Odisha in 2016–2018. Koraput Munda speakers live in communities, which differ in religions, traditional occupations, dialects and are influenced by various official languages depending on the state. For example, Sora speakers belong to more than six religious communities and use four types of writing. Therefore, one of the main tasks of the corpus is to present texts of various genres and different social conditions of language usage. At the moment, the corpus includes oral and written texts, poetry and prose, religious, folklore and traditional everyday content. Oral texts are presented both in phonological transcription and in audio and video recordings. The sub-corpus of written texts presented in various scripts contains both texts related to a particular handwritten genre, as well as samples of printed materials. The texts are provided with morphological markup and translation into Russian and English. Each text is accompanied by detailed sociolinguistic and genre-specific information. One of the most special features of the corpus is the system of tags including text format, speaker's gender, script, genre, topic, religion etc. This project is intended not only to make linguistic materials of the Koraput Munda languages accessible for the global linguistic and anthropological studies, but also to be useful for teaching and preserving cultural heritage, in particular within the framework of the Multi-Language Education government program.

The article analyzes the situation in Pakistan's economy under the new government of the country, formed after the parliamentary elections in July 2018. It is observed that in 2018–2020 the rates of economic growth have slowed considerably. The government has faced problems of acute fiscal and current account deficits and was forced to agree to large doses of foreign financial assistance. The economic situation by the beginning of 2020 has somewhat improved, but the dependence of the economy on external factors remains, causing risks which do not allow to argue that the crisis and stagnation would be overcome in the nearest future.

The article centers around the life and social activities of Ali Khan Arshad od-Doule Sardar Arshad, prominent revolutionary of 1905–1911 in Iran. Dramatic details of Ali Khan's private life show that Iranian society was not as bigoted and stagnated as it may seem today, but there were certain social elevators in it, and a person of rather humble origin could even marry the Shah's daughter, provided there was love. Ali Khan's socio-political status evolved from a supporter of the Constitutional Revolution to a staunch defender of Iranian absolutism, who laid down his head for Mohammed Ali-shah and his version of the good for his country. More broadly, the fate of Sardar Arshad illustrates another specific feature of the Iranian society, distinguished by extreme instability. A guarantee of security for members of the political elite lay in personal loyalty and family-clan ties. For Iranian politicians, these ties have always been stronger than their obligations to the party, or their ideological views. However, the Constitutional Revolution brought some new tidings, such as the extreme bitterness of the political confrontation. This happened because during the revolutionary events the number of revolutionaries formed the so-called "small nation". For this "small nation" everyone who did not share their views was alien. A vivid example of this process was the public execution of the prominent Iranian religious authority Sheikh Nuri, prosecuted for his support of absolutism.

The article is based on the author's impressions of the East West Jazz exhibition in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow in the fall of 2019. The exhibition was quite notable, and especially attractive due to the fashionable way of exhibiting the works of art, deliberately erasing the established boundaries between genres, styles and trends. The originality of the exposition was manifested in a paradoxical comparison of two artistic traditions, standing far from each other in all respects — chronologically, territorially, ethnically, religiously, and culturally. But the main and interesting feature was the opposition of two types of arts — decorative and applied art pieces and easel painting. The first are the artifacts of folk art of Central Asia of the 19th — early 20th centuries in the form of magnificent examples of oriental silk-weaved traditional robes (from the private collection of Alexander Klyachin); the second — a number of paintings and drawings by European abstract artists of the mid-20th century (from the collections of the Jean Claude Gandur Foundation in Geneva, the Pompidou Center and the Applicat-Prazan Gallery in Paris). The samples selected on both sides, located in the exposition side by side in "pairs", clearly demonstrated ornamental and coloristic analogies in dressing gowns and abstract paintings. However, the idea of the organizers of the exhibition (according to the catalog) was not simply to compare them, but to show different types of abstraction, equally expressing the "idea of freedom", which in the West is often symbolized by jazz music. The author of the article develops this idea, believing that the underlying cause of these similarities is the use of the main ("jazz") principle — improvisation within the canon, originally inherent in any sphere of both ancient, and modern "oral" pieces, not only musical, but also visual.