National Education as an Instrument of Imperial Colonization of Asian Russia in the Discourse of National Oriental Studies of the mid ХIХth – early ХХth centuries
Национальное образование как инструмент имперской колонизации Азиатской России в дискурсе отечественного востоковедения середины ХIХ – начала ХХ вв.
Apasheva S.N. Churkin M.K. Kartbaeva S.M. Churkina N.I.
1 September 2024Cherkas Global University Press
Bylye Gody
2024#19Issue 31238 - 1248 pp.
The article attempts to deconstruct the discourse of national education in the scientific works of Russian orientalists. The hypothesis is formulated that the discourse of national education, represented in the works of Russian Orientalist scholars, performed a significant function of forming the perceptions of the authorities and society about possible scenarios of integration of national minorities of peripheral territories into the all-imperial space, based on modern scientific knowledge delegated to the empire the right to make responsible decisions in the field of national and imperial construction. The paper notes the paradoxical construction of the discourse of national education as a tool for integrating the Asian periphery into the all-imperial. On the one hand, orientalists, as carriers of knowledge about the East, associated the achievability of the results of integration of non-ethnic communities with the overcoming of cultural differences and the formation of a big Russian nation in Asian Russia. On the other hand, the Eurocentric attitudes and provisions that developed in the intellectual environment of the late Enlightenment era produced such ideas about the possibilities of incorporation of the peripheries, in which the motive of cultural distance between the man of knowledge and culture and the colonial subaltern remained unchanged. In the course of the research, the perceptions of Russian orientalist scholars about the Asian periphery of the Russian Empire as its own east at different stages of research activity in the broad chronological boundaries of the 19th – early 20th centuries were revealed. It is established that the problem of the formation of national education in the peripheral regions of the empire was an integral part of the discourse of integration of national minorities into the all-Russian social space, within which the framework of interaction between the imperial authorities and the indigenous population of the peripheries was set. In the discourse of the first generation of Russian Orientalists, the issues of incorporation of the territories and the indigenous population of the peripheries were considered in the context of Eurocentric attitudes, and national education was labeled as an instrument of Christianization of nomadic nomads. In the spirit of conservative romanticism, theorists and practitioners of Orientalism constructed scenarios of a national school, in the coordinate system of which the use of the native language in education was a decisive factor in overcoming cultural differences. The evolution of Russian Orientalism in the following years, which consisted in overcoming the templates of Eurocentrism, did not fundamentally change the general content of the discourse, adjusting only the methods of its implementation in the sphere of national education while maintaining the rhetoric of moral superiority and paternalistic logic in relation to the peoples of Asian Russia. Copyright
Asian Russia , discourse , imperial colonization , integration of indigenous peoples , national education , national orientalism
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Zhumabek Akhmetuly Tashenev University, Shymkent, Kazakhstan
Tobolsk Complex Research Station of the Ural Branch, the Russian Academy of Sciences, Tobolsk, Russian Federation
Omsk State Pedagogical University, Omsk, Russian Federation
Zhumabek Akhmetuly Tashenev University
Tobolsk Complex Research Station of the Ural Branch
Omsk State Pedagogical University
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