About the School
The School of Asian Studies is one of Russia’s leading centers of East Asian and Middle Eastern studies. The school promotes a comprehensive approach to the study of Eastern countries, and its most important mission is to provide initial training in the fundamental principles of East Asian and Middle Eastern studies, followed by specialisation in the historical, cultural, religious, socio-economic, and political development of the traditional and modern East, as well as Russia’s interaction with Eastern countries. The school offers an intensive programme of both classical and modern Eastern languages, combining the teaching of the academic fundamentals of Eastern studies with practical skills for working with countries in East Asia and the Middle East.
Project of the School of Asian Studies
The Mediterranean Region in the Context of Political Processes in the Middle East and North Africa →
Administration
Larisa Zeltyn
Deputy Head of the School
Alexandra Sizova
Deputy Head of the School
Publications
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Book
The Russian Koreans in the 1920s and 1930s. An Ethnic Community in the Face of Soviet Power
This book offers the first comprehensive exploration of the history of Soviet Koreans (1920s-1930s), focusing into their experiences in the USSR. It examines the impact of Stalin's foreign and domestic policies on
Soviet Koreans, their role in the socio-economic development of the Far East, and their contributions to the Red Army, as well as the cultural and educational aspects of their lives. Key themes include the political repression of Soviet Koreans during Stalin’s era and their subsequent rehabilitation in the Russian Federation.Brill, 2025.
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Article
HISTORICAL AND IDENTITY CHARACTERISTICS OF KOREAN DIASPORA LITERATURE IN RUSSIA AS UNIFICATION AND MULTICULTURAL LITERATURE: FOCUSING ON THE SAKHALIN LITERATURE WORK “WHEN I BECOME THE SEA”
ABSTRACT
Multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multilingual global cities have emerged due to the movement of modern global capital, labor, and technology, and free international migration through networks is giving rise to a new concept of diaspora. In a modern sense, diaspora can be defined as a concept encompassing international migration, refugees, migrant workers, ethnic community, cultural differences (multiculturalism), and identity, and in a classical sense, it has the meaning of ethnic dispersion and national separation originating from Jewish and Greek history. The purpose of this study is to examine the possibility of locality research as a unified and multicultural literature education based on the classical and modern concepts of diaspora in Russian Koryo Korean diaspora literature. At the same time, this study examines the differences in identity formation among Koryo-saram in Central Asia and Sakhalin Koreans, stemming from their respective historical backgrounds. It proposes that diaspora literature written in foreign languages, encompassing Korean identity and ethnicity, should be translated into Korean and included within the category of K- literature. Furthermore, through an analysis of Viktoriya Tsoi's contemporary diaspora literary work, When I Become the Sea (translated by this author), this research aims to demonstrate its potential function as a literary work for inter-Korean unification and as a text for multicultural education in the contemporary multicultural era.Scientific culture. 2026. Vol. . No. Vol. 12. P. 6827-6837.
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Book chapter
The Partition of 1947 and the Phenomenology of Violence
Phenomenology as a method allows the person to understand the historical facts along with an emotive structure. History as a fact does not hold meaning of it can’t be related to the time period which it describes. Human emotion feelings are on of the best guides for a comprehensive structure to understand the events as important as the partition of India in 1947. It was not just political or geographical movement to be scaled it was a human tragedy which can’t be completely captured by the facts, it needs essence of the entire event to be understood in terms of violence and displacement and the feelings associated with all these factors. The political, cultural shift that was witnessed in the 20th century in India was a water shed event as it led to the creation of the two separate trends of cultural and sociological interpretations which viewed the event in terms of its effects and causes. The paper tries to view the historical event from the prism of phenomenology and locate all variables from the phenomenological perspective to have better grasp of the facts and the emotions.
In bk.: Война и мир: вооруженные конфликты в Южной Азии и пути их разрешения. M.: 2026. P. 180-196.
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Working paper
Extended Family Structures Exert a Causal Influence on Fertility
Research of the impact of kin alloparenting on reproduction mainly focuses on mother’s parents and parents-in-law. The impact on fertility of extended families and the alloparental help with childcare they can provide has received much less attention. Moreover, there is an important lacuna in the existing studies of this problem, as it is mostly approached through correlational studies, while the presence of a causal link remains unclear. Using an instrumental variables approach, we demonstrate that prevalence of extended family structures exert a causal influence on fertility. A one standard-deviation increase in prevalence of extended families is associated with approximately 1.07 additional children per woman. These results highlight that family structure is not only statistically significant but also demographically consequential in shaping fertility outcomes.SocArXiv. Soc. SocArXiv, 2025