Articles

In 2024, we celebrated the 220th anniversary of the birth of the prominent scholar G.S. Sablukov (1804–1880), who occupied a special place in the history of the Qur’anic studies in Russia. His main academic achievement — the first published translation of the Qur’an from the Arabic into Russian (1877) — became an important step in the development of Russian Oriental science. The article investigates the stages of formation of G.S. Sablukov as an expert on Islamic issues, contains an overview of his works dedicated to the Qur’an and analyzes the assessments of his translation of the Holy Muslim Book, which have changed over time. However, there is no doubt that with his translation of the Qur’an, G.S. Sablukov made a significant contribution to Russian Islamic studies by strengthening its scholarly foundations.

This article examines the foreign trade of Kazakhstan during three decades of its independent development. A special attention is paid to the analysis of structural characteristics of exports and imports. Changes in trade volumes with main partners as well as the number of commodity names in trade are of particular interest. Based on foreign trade indicators, it can be concluded that in the early 2020s, similar to the 2000s and 2010s, Kazakhstan’s exports were dominated by hydrocarbons, with metals, minerals, chemicals and crops still accounting for a significant share of export trade. Imports were dominated by manufactures, particularly electrical machinery and equipment, as well as transportation. During the 2000s and 2010s, the main consumers of Kazakhstan’s exports often included China, Italy, France, Russia and the Netherlands. During the same period, the main importers were Republic of Korea, Germany, Russia, Italy, USA and Ukraine. The results of the paper may be useful for the planning of public policies and for the long-term development strategies of commercial enterprises; the results can also be used to prepare educational programmes on Central Asian economies.

The article is devoted to the theory, policy and practice of PRC’s science diplomacy in the modern era. Having studied scientific works of scientists from different countries, official documents of the Chinese government and media reports, the author reveals the definition of the concept, achievements and inadequacies of contemporary science diplomacy of PRC.

This paper studies the cycle of works by one of the outstanding Chinese writers of the “root-seeking” literary movement- Ah Cheng. The research includes his works “The King of Chess”, “The King of Children” and “The King of the Tree”, where the main theme is the comparison of the past and the new world order. The main purpose of this work was to study the axiological conceptosphere of these works, namely, to identify the features of depicting the values of Taoist philosophy as a classical ideology and the Chinese cultural revolution as a new ideology. As a result of the study, it was found that in the works of Ah Cheng, these ideologies coexist both in society as a whole and in each individual person. Among the main values of Taoism, the author highlights the following: life in harmony with nature, the representation of the world as a single whole (organism), the principle of non-action and the cult of honor of ancestors, authorities. Also, among the new values of the cultural revolution, such as the practical use of natural resources, the perception of man as the crown of creation, the idea of human independence, independence from external forces, and the denial of previous stereotypes were identified. It was revealed that these values are mainly revealed through the dialogues of the characters, as well as their internal monologues, which often include rhetorical questions addressed to the character and to the reader. In addition, metaphors and implicitness play an important role in the depiction of values, which is especially characteristic of Taoist philosophy as an eastern tradition, where the main ideas are conveyed allegorically, with hidden meanings. In addition, it was found that the values of Taoism are also realized in the description of landscapes, since one of the foundations of Taoism is the connection of man with nature.

The book by the leading Russian scholar in Oriental and Literary studies academician A.B. Kudelin “The Life of the Prophet as a monument of medieval Arabic literature” sums up the author’s long-term involvement with one of the most famous literary achievements in Arab-Muslim culture. The book introduces the reader to this work, the history of its writing and editing, its content, composition and poetics. The narrative, which is a fusion of hagiography, historical writing and poetry, has always been a subject of interest to Islamic scholars, historians and, to a lesser extent, literary critics. The book by A.B. Kudelin combines all these approaches to the text, but the main emphasis is placed on the literary side of this masterpiece. This is the novelty of the reviewed book. The new approach allowed the author to make a number of observations and conclusions. This is, firstly, the formation of a long prose narrative in historical and adab works, arising on the basis of a mosaic of isolated brief testimonies and stories, and secondly, the growth of elements of fiction within functional prose. Thirdly, the chosen angle of view allowed the author to re-evaluate the role of poetry in the structure of “Biography”, which was previously often perceived as a purely decorative, ornamental element, to see in it a continuation of pre-Islamic oral literature, which was characterized by prosimetry. The conclusions drawn by A.B. Kudelin go beyond the scope of the topic and highlights a number of important theoretical and methodological issues. The book is useful to anyone interested in Arab-Muslim culture and literature, students of Oriental studies, not to mention researchers on a wide range of issues.

Review of the book: Сhang Jisŏng. Hangug-ŭi Hwahweyŏngmohwa [Korean Painting of Flowers, Birds, and Animals]. Seoul: Ankhŭphiksŭ, 2020. 419 p., ISBN: 978.89.7059.1 (936000). (In Korean).

The article analyzes the scale, dynamics, and structure of incorrectly issued trade invoices, which are a key channel for illegal cash flows in the Arab region. International trade increasingly occurs within complex supply networks and value chains. In such circumstances, misreporting and incorrect invoicing can occur at any stage. Due to incorrect issuance of trade invoices in 2008–2015. in the Arab region, $482.7 billion were “missed,” which is equivalent to a fifth of total GDP in 2016. Every year, $60.3 billion “went into the shadows.” However, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Jordan accounted for 80% of illegal cash flows in the region associated with trade misinvoicing. Countries not primarily involved in the export of natural resources are more susceptible to misinvoicing practices (10.4%) than countries with resource-dependent economies (7.4%). Informal cross-border trade is a major challenge for customs authorities in some Arab countries. It represents the largest part of the trade flow on Sudan’s border with Ethiopia and Eritrea.

With the expanding influence of China, the competition between the PRC and the US is intensifying. As an important regional organization in the Asia-Pacific region, ASEAN has close economic ties with both China and the U.S., and the conflict between China and the U.S. inevitably occurs in Southeast Asia, which has made ASEAN once again face direct competition from major powers. Under the current regional situation and to maintain the stability and development of the Southeast Asian region, ASEAN countries have chosen a more rational strategy of balancing the great powers in their foreign policy.

The process of studying modern Iranian literature has just begun. This article is the first attempt in Russian and foreign Iranian philology to systematize and analyze a representative block of modern women’s prose works. The scale of this phenomenon, which got a special impetus for development in the republican period, deserves to be in the focus of research, taking into consideration both the vector of development of Iranian literature and its non-literary role as an important social factor. The main features of women’s prose are the expansion of the thematic range and expressive means used by the authors. The stylistic diversity of women’s prose (social realism, fiction, magical realism) is combined with the similarity of its topic — the denial of the woman’s image in its traditional interpretation.

In this article we study gestures and facial gestures as cultural-specific elements of a foreign culture in translation. When translating kinetic idioms, which are verbal description of gestures, facial gestures or postures and simultaneously emotions and feelings they express, a translator chooses the most adequate strategy which depends on existence of full or partial equivalents, absence of equivalents or existence of gaps in target language and culture. Ways and techniques used in every separate case, in the whole coincide with those described in the theory of translation.

The article examines the peripheral actants in Japanese utterance on the degree of expression of their prototypical agentive characteristics: volition, affectedness, ability to control, individuality, etc. The research was based on the material of author’s parallel Russian-Japanese fiction corpus. While analyzing cases of permutative voice in Japanese it is revealed that cases of anthropo-oriented impact of an inanimate subject are characterized by a focus shift from a human as a causation object and bringing him to the syntactic periphery with the raising of a means/instruments or somatics to an object position. A specific type of syntactic transformation is revealed: the movement of the possessor from the original dative to the attributive non-agentive position in possessive constructions, which contributes to the proof of the theoretical thesis about the restriction of the dative coding of the external possessor in Japanese. As a result of a complex study of the agentive potential of peripheral actants it is confirmed that the processes of actant-predicate interaction are largely determined by the semantic features of not only the core, but also of the peripheral syntactic and semantic participants.

After gaining independence from Great Britain in 1947, the territory of Hindustan still encompassed small colonial enclaves — French and Portuguese. The issue of their joining India was a matter of time. French possessions included Chandernagore in Bengal; Pondicherry, Yanaon and Karikal on the east coast; and Mahe on the west coast. Population of the French-owned territories was basically represented by Bengalis, Tamils and Malayalis; their ethnic identity played a decisive role in the integration of the former French possessions into the Republic of India. This article examines the stages and ethnocultural nuances of the integration process.