Libmonster ID: IN-1486
Author(s) of the publication: R. V. VYATKIN

American Oriental studies have grown markedly over the past quarter-century. Today, courses on Oriental studies are taught in at least a hundred universities and colleges, there are about 60 Oriental libraries or corresponding departments in general libraries, and research on Oriental problems is conducted in many scientific institutes and organizations. The total number of researchers, teachers, librarians, graduate students and undergraduates involved in the study of Asian and African countries is likely to reach several thousand.

The reasons for this increased interest in the history and modern life of the East are not difficult to understand. The formation and growth of the world socialist system, the rise of the national liberation movement in the East after World War II, the collapse of the colonial system and the emergence of new independent states on the Asian and African continents, the defeat of the American intervention in China and the victory of the Chinese revolution - all this radically changed the role of Asian and African countries in the modern world. This led the ruling circles of the United States to strongly encourage research in Oriental studies. Dozens of departments and institutes were organized with large allocations from the federal government, state authorities, and various foundations (Ford, Rockefeller, Mellon, and others), Oriental book collections were replenished, and in some places re-created, and, most importantly, large individual and collective research was launched. It should be noted that many universities, institutes and departments at the same time performed and perform direct government tasks. On the other hand, the turbulent events in the East caused an increased interest of American youth in the history, economy and culture of the countries and peoples of this region, which resulted in an increase in the number of students and postgraduates engaged in orientalism. All this, taken together, led to the growth of Oriental studies in the United States.

The ideological and social picture of American Oriental studies is very complex and diverse. It fully reflects the current state of American society. In the ranks of Orientalists, there are also openly reactionary figures, representatives of irreconcilable anti-communism, and a large, perhaps even the predominant group of liberal-minded scientists who are very different in their methodological approaches and views, and, finally, the radical wing, in which, along with representatives of the democratic and anti-war movements, as well as individual Marxist-minded scientists, there are carriers of the ultra-left views. It should be noted that it is the liberal direction that is the main one for Oriental studies in the United States. Its members are scholars whose worldview differs from the Marxist one, and they create works that reflect the face of modern American Oriental studies.

The acuteness of social conflicts in the United States itself, the proletariat's actions, the struggle of Negroes, and the mass protest against US aggression in Indochina could not but affect American Orientalists, although to varying degrees. This has particularly affected their middle and young generations. Even a cursory reading of publications on the East shows this. Along with openly anti-communist books and pamphlets, or with works that sympathetically describe the regimes in Taiwan, South Korea, South Vietnam, and Thailand, there are many works that attempt to more or less objectively analyze the social processes in Asian and African countries, their ideological systems, and international relations in the East. Some works to varying degrees

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they criticize the imperialist policy of the United States. Of course, we should soberly assess the specific weight of these publications. The US book market is dominated by literature produced by large publishing firms that serve the interests of the financial oligarchy. The authors of these books-military men, politicians, publicists, and scientists-most often speak under the banner of anti-communism, both openly and to varying degrees disguised as "liberalism"and" objectivism."

The XXII Annual Conference of the American Association for Asian Studies, held in San Francisco from April 3 to 5, 1970, was also a barometer of the trends noted above. The author of these lines also happened to be present at it. The conference brought together about one and a half thousand delegates. Its program included 46 plenary and breakout sessions with presentations and discussions on interesting and topical issues of politics, history, economy, culture and ideology of Asian countries. The largest number of meetings were devoted to South and South-East Asia (19) and China (10). The first group discussed the following topics: the social history of India in the 19th and 20th centuries; the significance of the August Revolution of 1945 in Vietnam; modern governments in South Asia and their policies; race, elections and politics in Malaysia; Islam in modern India, etc. Topics on China include: features of modern economic policy in the PRC; Americans and China in 1945-1949; history of China's post-war foreign policy; religion and politics in peasant society, and others.

The reports presented at the conference and the discussion materials give a well-known idea of the range of scientific interests of American specialists in Asia. I would like to emphasize the noticeable updating of the topic. It is significant that the list of topics did not include the usual "classical" topics in antiquity, philology, and textual studies for such conferences in the past. The main attention was paid to the political, socio-economic, and ideological problems of Asian societies. Thus, the India section heard reports on economic issues: on the industrial development of Gujarat, on agriculture in South India in the XIX century, on the attitude of private capital to economic planning, reports on the ideas of Indian nationalism. At the Japan section, several posts were devoted to the analysis of forms and methods of social protest (report by J. R. R. Tolkien). Bickle on the social and religious movement in Japan after 1921, D. Dator - on Soka Gakkai and the reasons for its success, T. Havens on the Japanese nationalist Kato Kenji). Researchers of the history of South Asian countries have paid much attention to national and ethnic problems. A special symposium was dedicated to the problems of Buddhism in Asia. Topics on the history of China were very sharply formulated. From its recent history, the following issues were brought up for discussion: Jiangxi and Yan'an - some comparisons and contrasts; diplomats, militarists and foreign powers in republican China; the Chinese Revolution. A number of reports, such as "Jiangxi and Yan'an", provided an incomplete picture of events and internal processes in these liberated areas. At the same time, the criticism of US policy in China in 1945-1949, which was made by some scientists, retired diplomats and advisers who once lived in China, is of some interest. Many of them described this policy as a chain of ill-conceived steps. D. Melby, for example, argued :" If we had studied the sad experience of those years, we would not have been involved in this wild and unnecessary war in Vietnam." Yet for all the harshness of these speeches, which often contained many interesting details, they did not really provide an objective analysis of the US imperialist policy in China and the reasons for its defeat during the people's revolution.

A special symposium was devoted to the expansion of international and, in particular, scientific ties with socialist countries. Speeches by R. Byrnes, J. Lindback, and J. Backman, as well as a report presented by State Department official P. Kreisberg, addressed issues of scientific exchange with the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, as well as considered the prospects for resuming ties with the People's Republic of China.

During the conference, various regional councils (South-East Asia, North-East Asia, China and Central Asia) and committees (Korean studies, East Asian libraries)were held,

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various societies (Asian and comparative philosophy, Tibetan, and the study of Dohan China).

One of the plenary sessions was devoted to an important topic: "Political and intellectual responsibility of scientists and their professional organizations". There was a lively discussion about the image of a scientist, his relations and connections with government policy, and the relations of universities with government institutions (speeches by G. Rozovsky, L. Pai, and R. Robinson). A significant response was caused by the question of the work of scientific institutions on the tasks and orders of the government and its bodies. This problem has been debated in American universities for several days. The progressive public demands a reduction in official assignments for universities. Although the Columbia University Bulletin reported on January 16, 1970, that by 1969 the percentage of secret research funded by the government had decreased, 1 Nevertheless, on the eve of the conference, new facts became known about the involvement of scientific institutions in secret work on behalf of government agencies, and this also applies to a number of social sciences, including including Oriental studies. Students and professors at the University of California at Berkeley found documents about contracts concluded by many universities with intelligence agencies. So, for example, a group of scientists, specialists in Thailand, was assigned to study the insurgency in this country and develop measures to combat it. The article about this was published by the student newspaper "Student Mobilizer". At the conference itself, a letter from the Student Mobilization Committee for the End of the Vietnam War was distributed, which provided information about this agreement and, in particular, said:: "Scientists from many American universities knowingly and secretly (or semi-secretly) serve as a tool of the US government in carrying out its plan to fight the uprisings in Thailand..." The speech of the head of the Thai project, who tried to deny these facts, sounded unconvincing. A number of panelists (for example, Professor R. Murphy) strongly demanded that this practice be stopped.

The President of the Association, a well-known American sinologist, Professor T. DeBary (Columbia University), was also forced to address the problems of civil responsibility of scientists and their public position in his keynote speech at the official reception of the conference participants. His speech was very characteristic, as it reflected the attempts of the Association's leadership to formulate the position of Orientalists in the difficult conditions of modern America. It was marked by a certain duality. On the one hand, the acuteness of the political problems facing scientists, the impossibility of avoiding them, was recognized, the question was raised about "a clearer and more decisive definition of our positions", and on the other hand, it was strongly emphasized that the Association should stand outside politics, since it is supposedly designed to be a kind of intermediary in the collision of different views, polar political positions. DeBary emphasized that "science should be kept at a certain distance from the political struggle of our time", and at the same time warned the Association against "moral neutrality"2 . This ambivalence and caution were apparently intended not only to obscure the class character of the Association, but also to somehow counter criticism of its leadership by left-wing elements. However, the agenda itself, not to mention the practical activities of universities, testified to the close connection of American Oriental studies with politics, although this connection is sometimes carried out in a complex, indirect form. So, in the reports on Korea, there was an apology for the South Korean regime, and some speeches about Taiwan, Thailand, and Soviet foreign policy were just as biased. It is no coincidence that many speakers tried to avoid big questions of principle and focused their efforts on small facts.

At the same time, I would like to note very informative speeches and reports on a number of topics included in the agenda, for example, on the history of Japanese nationalism, the Indian economy, the military history of the Ming Dynasty, and others. In general, the conference was dominated by the views of the so-called liberal school, which

1 "Columbia University Senate Bulletin", 1970, N 1.

2 See the report of the meeting in the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle, 5. IV. 1970, p. 3.

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He does not accept Marxism, but at the same time very cautiously and narrowly criticizes the vices of American politics, standing methodologically on the positions of bourgeois objectivism. The Conference of American Orientalists, of course, is not adequate to all that is being done in US Oriental studies. Nevertheless, it reflects the main processes taking place among this group of American intellectuals.

The Second Annual National Conference of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, established in 1967 to protest the American policy of genocide in Vietnam, was held in San Francisco in parallel with the conference of the Association for Asian Studies in San Francisco. she refused to discuss the matter. The aim of the Committee is to promote research that can provide answers to the most pressing problems of today. The Committee leaders consider it wrong to conclude that " science and teaching have no political significance." "We do not believe,"they say," that the link between politics and science is artificial, but rather that it is a real logical and necessary link." One of the leaders of this Committee, R. Kagan, as early as 1969 exposed the essence of the political line followed by representatives of the liberal trend. He emphasized that there are forms of pressure on scientists in the United States and that "the seeds of McCarthyism are growing in the American scientific community." 3 At the same time, the Committee adopted a policy statement that emphasized the anti-war and anti-imperialist nature of the organization's activities, which opposed the US-Japanese "security treaty", opposed racism and US imperialist intervention in Vietnam, supported the recognition of the PRC and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam and the termination of US military and economic assistance to the Kuomintang government. The hot war in Laos and Cambodia, imperialism and undeveloped countries, Asia in the Third World system, who makes American politics - bureaucracy or business, "cultural imperialism" and others caused heated and heated discussions at the conference of this organization. Individual participants of the conference often strayed to ultra-left positions. At the same time, the conference of the Committee of Scientists Interested in Asia was one of the forms of protest of the left wing of Orientalists against the course of official science.

After the conference in San Francisco, there were new active speeches by American Orientalists against intervention in Indochina. In May 1970, orientalists at the University of Michigan sent Nixon a telegram protesting the intervention. Later, more than 1,300 Orientalists signed an appeal to the government demanding an end to the Vietnam War, and on May 26, 1970, more than 350 orientalists from dozens of US universities gathered in Washington and held an open anti-war forum and meetings with congressmen. The forum's message read: "As scholars involved in Asian affairs, we feel a special responsibility to speak out publicly against American intervention in Southeast Asia. Based on our professional knowledge of Asia and our deep moral distaste for a war that destroys Asians and Americans alike, we firmly believe that the intervention of the United States must be stopped. " 4 At the forum, well-known scientists criticized the US policy in Asia: the head of the East Asia Institute at Harvard University, J. R. R. Tolkien. Fairbank, a Japanese scholar at Columbia University. Barton, Stanford University Professor M. Mancall, and others. In October 1970, a group of leading Sinologists at Harvard University published an open letter in the New York Times to the US government demanding recognition of the PRC and restoration of its rights in the UN.

We can foresee that the process of political activation and polarization of forces among Orientalists in the United States will continue.

3 "Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars. 2th Annual National Conference". San Francisco. 1970.

4 "Asia Scholars to End the War". 1970.

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