M.T. Stepanyants and the traditions of Russian Oriental studies

Abstract

The article dedicated to the anniversary of the outstanding philosopher and orientalist Marietta Tigranovna Stepanyants discusses the traditi¬ons of Russian oriental studies, commonly referred to as the “Lazarev school of Orientalism”, associated with the names of the Armenian philanthropists, the Lazarevs, who founded the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages in Moscow. Many members of the Muscovite-Armenian Kara-Murza family also belong to the “Lazarev” tradition of orientalism. Sergei Georgievich Ka¬ra-Murza (1878–1956), my grandfather, arrived in Moscow from Simferopol and studied first at the Lazarev Institute’s boarding school, and then in special classes leading to higher education. Having com¬pleted the full course of study at the Lazarev Institute with honors in 1899, he also graduated from the law faculty of the Imperial Moscow University in 1903. The eldest son of S.G. Kara-Murza, the uncle of the author of this article, Georgy Sergeevich Kara-Murza (1906–1945), also became a prominent orientalist. He graduated from the Chinese department of the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies in 1927 and later taught there. G.S. Kara-Murza wrote several monographs and textbooks on the Chinese language and mentored a generation of Soviet sinologists. During the Great Patriotic War, he served as a political officer in the Far East and died in August 1945 in Manchuria. The author of this article followed in the footsteps of his illustrious relatives. In 1978, he graduated from the African Studies Department of the Institute of Asian and African Countries at Moscow State University, defended his PhD dissertation there in 1981, and in the 1980s and 1990s, he worked in the “Oriental” sector of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences under the supervision of M.T. Stepanyants, about which he shares his grateful memories.