Annual Newsletter of the Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University

S LAVICR ESEARCHC ENTER NEWSNo. 20February 2013

Remarks from the Director of the SRC
While the Slavic Research Center has a history of nearly
sixty years, the change during the last ten years has beenenormous. The SRC has become a very dynamic place witha number of project researchers, assistants, and graduate
students. The scope of research conducted at the center has
widened, as the center has been making efforts to develop
studies of the non-Russian countries of the former Soviet
Union, comparative studies of various regions of Eurasia(and even outside it), and joint studies with specialists inthe natural sciences. Cooperation with overseas researchers
and research institutions has grown both quantitatively andqualitatively.
Uyama Tomohiko
However, a turning point is imminent. Two major
projects, “Comparative Research on Major Regional Powers in Eurasia” and “Reshaping Japan’s Border Studies,” will end in March 2013 and March 2014, respectively.
We will have to tackle the difficult task of rearranging research activities and finding
appropriate funding. But this will also be a good opportunity to deliberate on thelong-term research agenda of the SRC and reconfirm its identity as a center of areastudies.
Traditional academia is divided into disciplines, and area studies are sometimes
marginalized. However, now that globalization is facilitating the spread of influenceof events in one region to other parts of the world, and that the West-centric worldorder is being shaken, area studies are becoming more important than ever for anunderstanding of the world. The SRC, with its experience in studies of the SlavicEurasian world as well as in comparative research and border studies, is eager to playa part in the Renaissance of area studies.

No.20 February 2013

Interdisciplinary Cooperation at the SRC: Part I

The Making of the PRC’s Borders: 1940s–1960s
Iwashita Akihiro (Political Science) and David Wolff (History)

Table of Contents<NORTH>
Sergey Radchenko
Carving up the Steppes: Borders, Territory andNationalism in Mongolia, 1943–1949
Sören Urbansky
A Very Orderly Friendship: The Sino-Soviet Border under the Alliance Regime,
1950–1960<SOUTH>
Pierre Grosser
Chinese Borders and Indigenous Parallels:France, Vietnam, and the “Korean Model”
Haruka Matsumoto
The First Taiwan Strait Crisis and China’s“Border” Dispute Around Taiwan<WEST>
Lorenz Lüthi
Sino-Indian Relations, 1954–1962
James G. Hershberg
Quietly Encouraging Quasi-Alignment: USIndian Relations, the Sino-Indian Border War of
1962, and the Downfall of Krishna Menon<RESEARCH NOTE>
Dmitri S. Ryabushkin
New Documents on the Sino-Soviet Ussuri
Border Clashes of 1969

No.20 February 2013

We are pleased to announce the publication of the special issue “China’s Post-Revolutionary Borders” in Eurasia Border Review. The new journal has certainly developed withgood qualified peer-reviewed articles and has already become a bi-annual journal thanks to
its many contributors. In addition, we recently decided to arrange special issues on critical,
but not well-known topics.
The first special issue is edited by David Wolff, a professor at the Slavic Research Center,in close cooperation between his broad Kaken project on Eurasian Cold War History and the
GCOE focus on border studies. The International Cold War history network is advancing
step by step from the US and Europe toward the former Soviet Republics and Asia. China
was undoubtedly a key player of the Cold War within the context of its relations with theUS, the Soviet Union, India, Korea, Japan and other concerned countries.
When we focus on China’s geopolitics and history, China’s presence has been truly
outstanding. China has long struggled with the stability and security of its vast borderlands,
along 22,800 kilometers of inland borders with Mongolia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India,
Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, and North Korea as well as Russia, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, in addition to its vast maritime frontier with Southeast Asia,
Korea and Japan. We often attempt to analyze China and its foreign policy from classic
points of view such as power politics and balance of power, but deep geopolitical analysis
suggests another dynamic logic to China’s existential activities, always heavily influenced
by the presence of its various neighbors and their long history together.
As World War Two drew to an end, great armies with the potential to capture wholecountries in just a few days using Hitler’s great invention, the Blitzkrieg, roved the faceof the earth. Russian and American armies in both Europe and Asia, combined long tankcolumns and thousands of artillery units for crushing bombardments of the enemy and his
cities. In all the waters of the globe the American Navy ruled supreme, grouped aroundfloating airbases, ready to take control of any given volume of air, over sea and coastal
areas, while sending protected bombers to destroy coastal cities. In China, too, millions ofmen were under arms, finishing off the Japanese Empire and lining up to continue the civil
war that had been interrupted by the World War. The potential for border change was nevergreater, except, perhaps, at the end of World War One, but the Republic of China, weakened
by civil war, was in no position to take advantage of the opportunities, even though it had
ostensibly won the war.
It was into this situation at the dawn of the Cold War that the People’s Republic of China
was born. Long years of American support for his arch-enemy Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang
Jieshi) more or less predicated that Mao would turn to the other side of the Cold War, where
Stalin ruled supreme. Ideological affinities, even if quite different, especially in the eyes ofideologically sensitive Communist leaders, also brought Stalin and Mao together. On July
1, Mao’s “Lean to One Side” speech was published, broadcasting to the USSR and the US,
where Mao stood.
In response, Stalin encouraged and helped Mao to set up his new government at Beijing,in the fall of 1949, and then invited him to Moscow to cement their alliance with the wholeworld looking on. It is this December 1949 moment of border-crossing, as Mao stepped into
the USSR and onto the world’s stage, that appears in Soren Urbansky’s study of the twinborder cities on the Trans-Siberian, Trans-Manchurian railroad. The rest of the articles go alittle earlier, back to the World War II roots of PRC borders, and forward to March 1969, when
Mao “crossed back” from his friendship with the Soviet Union, signaling to the Americans
that he was now ready to “lean to the other side,” a signal that was transmitted through themedium of Soviet soldiers’ blood sprinkled liberally on the ice of the frozen Ussuri River.
No.20 February 2013

The shock waves radiated across the Pacific. When
the Soviet’s made their angry announcement of the
March 2 incident, Mao’s signal to the Americans wascomplete. Even the doubters were silenced into believing that Sino-Soviet relations were no longer good. But
many basic facts remain unknown, including the Chinese
casualty count and the Soviet Union’s decision to use
saturation artillery, Fresh documentation on both ofthese issues is provided in Ryabushkin’s Research Note.
In this sense, what we have before us is a collection ofarticles building toward a multilateral history of China’s
border politics in the era of the Sino-Soviet alliance.
As pointed out above, China’s borders are immensely long. There is no way to cover the full extent,
including all neighboring countries and crossings, but
this special issue does have cases to all the points of thecompass, as well as border politics with both capitalist
and socialist countries, allowing for a range of comEBR Special Issue
parisons, as well as compilation. In some articles, suchas Pierre Grosser’s, the comparison is made explicit with parallels between the Indochina
and Korean Wars, both along Chinese borders and with Chinese “volunteers” involved.
Both military engagements and diplomatic negotiations are covered, although not equallyin all cases. Linkages to domestic politics come to the fore in different ways, with James
Hershberg pointing out that Krishna Menon’s departure from Nehru’s inner circle became
the price of American aid to India in 1962, while Sergey Radchenko evokes the Inner Asianethnic complexities of the Russo-Chinese borderlands, where new nationalisms sprouted
from earlier identities in the sheltering inaccessibility of mountains and deserts. The articles
in this collection make use of archival documents from China, both Beijing and Taipei, as
well as French, German, Indian, Mongolian, Russian and US archives. This points the way
toward a full international treatment of a fully international topic, in which the Cold War
imperative to “encircle” China, gives way to a global desire to understand and “encompass”
China, along all its borders and into all its borderlands.
This special issue is meaningful, probably the first of its kind, for featuring China in theCold War with an emphasis on border politics. It is also a good illustration of collaboration
between historical analysis and political geography. The research results suggest a newcontribution of the border studies school to international relations. Factually, the contributors
discussed the interaction between “border” and “alliance” in the Cold War order/re-ordering.
Border issues helped establish and destroy alliance, while alliances set new boundaries, someof which eventually became borders, de facto and de jure. In this context, new theoreticalchallenges arise and our discussion on the border and borderlands in Cold War history takes
on dimensions and directions toward a challenging new research frontier.
We hope the reader enjoys this historical tour of the PRC’s borders in the making, averitable journey in a journal.

No.20 February 2013

Interdisciplinary Cooperation at the SRC : Part II

From the “Deep Country” to Multinational
Harbin: Chemodan Films visits the SRC
Thomas Lahusen (University of Toronto), Mochizuki Tetsuo (SRC), David Wolff (SRC)
Chemodan Films is a documentary film production
company, created in October 2005 by Thomas Lahusenin Toronto, Canada. “Chemodan” (pronunciation key:“ch [like ‘church’]-eh-mo-dunn”) is the Russian word for“suitcase.” The word symbolizes motion, travel, and theinternational component of the group. One of the goalsof Chemodan Films is to produce documentary films
on Russia, other territories of the former Soviet Union,and other parts of the world, which can equip scholars
and the larger public with contents that help them to
explore the cultural, social, and political complexitiesof past and present. Chemodan Films privileges topics
reflecting on the “deep country,” including geographicaland social areas that are not part of the mainstream.
Besides producing documentaries, Chemodan Films is
also establishing an archival depository of original film
material, both contemporary and historical.
One of the first films produced by Chemodan Films
is The Province of Lost Film, a tribute to the power SRC Special Program with CHEMODAN
of Soviet cinema. The film is about the magic and FILMS on December 17, 2012
nostalgia of watching a film collectively: in a movie house; a workers’ club; or at night, on
an improvised screen hung in the village square. Employees of the former distribution andexhibition network, projectionists, and viewers from central Russia reflect upon the uniqueand already bygone experience of the Soviet experiment of”cinefication,” which sought to bring the screen to every cornerof the Soviet Union. Thus, the film captures one of the lost
opportunities of the socialist dream. From the collective-farmclassic of the Stalin-era Cossacks of the Kuban to the hugely
popular Indian film of 1955 The Vagabond, or the 1961 Soviet
technicolor extravaganza, The Amphibious Man, and archival
footage of the process of cinefication itself, the film reminds usof the immortal power of cinema and its place in the mind andheart of the individual.
One of the more recent films produced by Chemodan Films
is The Interim Country, directed by Thomas Lahusen, Gulzat
Egemberdieva, and André Loersch. This film chronicles the everdeepening chaos, into which Kyrgyzstan, a small, land-locked
The Province of Lost Film country in Central Asia, plunged after a popular revolt that led
was Chemodan Films’ first to the toppling of president Bakiyev and his clan in April 2010,
production and traces the culminating with large-scale inter-ethnic violence in June 2010.
almost-forgotten processof cinefication in the USSR The Interim Country reflects on the precarious political, social,No.20 February 2013

and economic situation in which many post-Soviet countries have found themselves after thecollapse of the Soviet Union. Most films produced by Chemodan Films have been screened
at international film festivals, academic conferences, and other venues. Current films inproduction include a documentary on the city of Harbin in North-East China, and its foreign
legacy, as well as a film documenting itinerant film exhibition in present-day China.
(Thomas Lahusen, University of Toronto)
This is not our first contact with Thomas Lahusen and his work. In the winter of 2006,
when we held the SRC biannual international conference entitled “Beyond the Empire: Imagesof Russia in the Eurasian Cultural Context,” we included in the program a special session“Russia on the Big Screen” with a film and talk by Thomas Lahusen. Unfortunately, due toa surgical intervention, we were unable to fulfill the plan as scheduled, but scholars from allover Japan and many other countries enjoyed Lahusen’s masterpiece “The Province of Lost
Film.” Since that time we have been looking for a chance to invite the director of the film
to Sapporo and share the screen together.
Finally, this winter after a six-year incubation, we were able to realize our cherisheddream and hold a SRC-Chemodan Films special program together with Thomas Lahusen
and Gulzat Egemberdieva, the director of other Chemodan features. On the first day wesaw “The Province of Lost Film” again, and then “Oh, My Communist Youth,” which was
focused on the festival of former Komsomol members in Kyrgyzstan. After each show
we had a lively discussion. Perhaps, I (Mochizuki) had a few more questions than others,
because as a student of Russian and Soviet literature I was also interested in Lahusen’s works
on Vasilii Azhaev, Soviet culture, and the concept of “deep country,” so resonant with myrecent project on the Volga region.
As for “The Province...” the audience was deeply impressed by the masterly depictionof Soviet provincial life, both historical and contemporary, as reflected on the screen throughvarious personal episodes concerning cinema. Some talked about the relationship between
cinema and nostalgia, some about the sense of solidarity when people see the same film inthe same place. Some were interested in the repertoire of movies in the Soviet provincial
theaters, e.g., why so many Indian films. As for the viewing of “Oh, My Communist Youth,”
the audience tried to imagine the present state of mind of the old Komsomol activists, who
got together for a nostalgic festival, long after the party had ended, so to speak. The different methodology of filming and interviewing compared with “The Province...” was also ofinterest for the audience.
On the second day we had a short program “Another Chemodan,” and saw a new film
“Harbin Echoes,” which is still in progress. The audience brought together nearly twenty
graduate students. David Wolff gave a brief lecture on the three different phases of the historyof Harbin after the screening. The discussion partly concerned the problem of the “local”
identity of Chinese cities in relation to the national (capital) identity of the nation. Having
visited Harbin last summer, I enjoyed the overlapping images of old and new Harbin very
much, blending old films, older photos and recent footage. I was also very much impressedby the working atmosphere around Thomas Lahusen, which seems to be always warmed upby his marvelous personality.
We sincerely hope that this first collaboration of the SRC and Chemodan Films will bea firm brick, on which we can build a tower of future cooperation.
(Mochizuki Tetsuo, Slavic Research Center)No.20 February 2013

In my course on the Cold War, I make heavy use
of film resources, so rich for the twentieth century.
In the first lecture, I explore the role of new weapons,in particular amphibious warfare, by showing two
film excerpts. One is a black-and-white news-clipof American troops landing unopposed in Normandy
on D-Day, 6 June 1944. Patriotic music plays in the
background and the American flag waves bravely.
The other selection comes from the famous 1998
movie with Tom Hanks, “Saving Private Ryan.” The
American troops are slaughtered in their amphibious
landing craft by well-positioned German machinegun nests.
I ask my students which image is true, the painless1945 news-clip or the bloody 1998 action film. Students
give different answers, illustrating how multimedia
and a wider range of sources can reveal historicalcomplexity. (Both images are true. Some beaches were
undefended. Others were killing grounds.)
Similarly, Chemodan Films captures conflicting
truths and ambivalent feelings. The Harbin project Russian and Chinese friends share
currently underway is typical. Harbin’s cross-cultural a bottle in the early days of Harbinbackground has made it deeply controversial for the former capital of “Russian Manchuria”
exhibits deep ironies, the very stuff of Harbin. Although many ethnicities lived side by sidein the “Paris of the East,” only three contended for supremacy at various times comprising the“triple irony” of Harbin.
The Russians, eager to include the Chinese in their Manchurian venture as both labor andcustomers, practiced tolerance and began the economic development of a wilderness. The
result was the rise of Chinese middle classes whose infection by nationalism would threaten
the Russians from the 1910s on. The Russians wished “progress” on the Chinese, but it took
a form they had not expected. This was the first irony: tolerance had led to nationalism.
The Chinese, gradually taking over the railroad and the city in several steps since 1917,
also practiced similar tolerance toward Russian inhabitants, but after 1927 put pressure on boththe political and economic interests of the Soviet and Japanese states. Both responded withundeclared wars, the Soviets in November 1929 and the Japanese in September 1931. Nationalism had provoked Japanese imperialism and the result was the puppet state of Manchukuo andan even heightened state of anti-Japanese nationalism that continues until the present. This
was the second irony: rights recovery had led to the loss of a whole Chinese region.
Finally, the Japanese arrived, following the “rising sun” flag toward the setting sun.
Taking over the military, political and economic dominance of Harbin from the Chinese, they
made life unbearable for the Russians as well. Even as the Japanese learned Russian andthe joys of Russian byt, the untranslatable joy of Russian daily life, the Japanese Imperial
state drove the Russians out, ending the great experiment in shared frontier development.
This was the third irony: imperialism had fostered, then ended cross-cultural interaction
and learning. Such are the complexities of Harbin’s contested history that can only elude
attempts to nationalize its narrative into a linear text written in one language. Film may be thenecessary tool to capture the full range of both harmonious and painful images, replicating theunforgettable ironic experience before death and time erase memory. We place our hopes in
the Chemodan and prepare for a voyage into the foreign, but familiar land that is history.
(David Wolff, Slavic Research Center)No.20 February 2013

Global COE Program “Reshaping Japan’s
Border Studies”
The Global COE Program “Reshaping Japan’s Border Studies” has finally established
an international core of border studies by organizing the BRIT XII conference.

1) BRIT (Border Regions in Transition) XII Fukuoka/Busan
Conference
The GCOE Program, afive-year-term program approved in July 2009, aims tocreate a network and community for border studies inEurasia and East Asia wherean “international” community on border studies isabsent. For this purpose,
we attracted BRIT, which
is one of the largest borderstudies networks concentrating on European issues.
BRIT Conference at Fukuoka
BRIT XII Fukuoka/Busan is
an epoch-making event forthis network, since this is the first East Asian BRIT and makes border studies a truly global
discipline. Also, the holding of a BRIT conference across two neighboring cities – Fukuoka
and Busan – and a field trip to Tsushima under the current tense Japan-Korean relations havebeen remarkable. Throughout the combined Fukuoka/Busan conference, two roundtables andover forty sessions were held with two hundred and twenty people from forty-seven countries.
However, more than anything, it was a significant opportunity for participants from Eurasia
and East Asia, particularly Japan, the Russian Far East, a, Singapore, Thailand, and India.
With this, we can say that Hokkaido University’s Global COE “Reshaping Japan’s BorderStudies” Program aims to fill the East Asian gap in border research.

2) Organizing the International Summer School
The third GCOE International
Summer Program “Borders in
Asia: Central Asia, Southeast Asia,
Korea, and Japan” took place from
July 31 to August 8. Our third
Summer School was made up ofyoung researchers of nine nationalities. As the lectures focused on
Asia rather than the more familiar
European or US experiences, thespeakers were bombarded withquestions, particularly in thesession on border issues within

Dr. Iwashita’s lecture at summer schoolNo.20 February 2013

Japanese society. At the end of the
program, the participants received
certificates.
The Summer School serves
to not only help develop young
researchers, but also build networks, and we eagerly await theparticipants’ submissions to ourEurasia Border Review journal.

Group photo of summer school participants3) Museum Exhibition
This year, we produced two exhibitions at Hokkaido University Museum: “Spillover
Images: China in the Media” (Nov. 1, 2011 – May 13, 2012) and “Saami Culture in Borderlands” (May 25 – Dec. 27, 2012). The latter exhibition has a significant meaning for
Hokkaido since our university is enhancing academic cooperation with Finland by opening
an office in Helsinki.
Serial seminars were also held along with the exhibitions. The exhibitions and seminars
were open to the public and attracted many citizens who are interested in the indigenous
peoples issue since the Saami and the Ainu have common problems and have maintained
cultural exchange since the 1980s.
Fujimori Shinkichi

Museum exhibition “The Saami Culture
in Borderland”

No.20 February 2013

Grant-in-aid for Scientific Research on
Innovative Areas “Comparative Researchon Major Regional Powers in Eurasia”
1) Project Completion Report: “Comparative Research on Major
Regional Powers in Eurasia”
This project was adopted at the end of 2008 by the Ministry of Education and Science
as a five-year grant-in-aid for scientific research on innovative areas. It will be completed in
March 2013. In 2012, two international symposiums were organized for this project in Januaryand July (see news of them below). On January 26th, 2013, we have organized a concluding
symposium for this project, entitled “A New Image of the World through Comparison ofEurasian Regional Powers,” at Waseda University in Tokyo.
The accomplishments of this project will be published in six volumes in Japanese with
the Japanese publisher Minerva, starting from January 2013. Their English versions will be
published in one or two volumes in 2013.
This project has widened the horizon of the SRC’s activities. Having conducted thisproject, we have become used to looking at Russia in comparison with China and India. And
our cooperation with area study specialists in China and India has reached an unprecedented
level. We have contact with them in our daily work. We intend to continue these projects insome form. Some colleagues have applied for a grant-in-aid for scientific research on the topic
of comparison among Russia, China, and India intended to begin in April or May 2013.
Tabata Shinichiro2) Sixth International Symposium of Comparative Research on
Major Regional Powers in Eurasia “Comparing Modern Empires:
Imperial Rule and Decolonization in the Changing World Order”
On January 18–20, 2012,
the Slavic Research Center
hosted a Winter Symposium,
entitled “Comparing Modern Empires: Imperial Ruleand Decolonization in the
Changing World Order.” Itsmain organizer was Group 4(Imperiology) of the project“Comparative Research on
Major Regional Powers inEurasia.” The major Eurasian regional powers, namely
Group photo of Symposium participants
China, India, and Russia, aresometimes called new or rising powers, but they have rich and ancient histories related toempires and colonies. This symposium aimed at comparing modern empires’ rule of theirdiverse populations, their interaction with each other and other political entities, and theirfall, legacies, and reemergence as regional or global powers. The papers dealt not only with
Russia, China, and India, but also with Japan, the Ottoman Empire, Iran, and the UnitedStates.
10No.20 February 2013

The symposium opened with the keynote lecture by Prof. Jane Burbank, who summarizedempires’ “politics of difference” from ancient times and their transformation in the nineteenthand twentieth centuries. After that, five sessions followed: “Imperial Rule: Structures andTechnologies,” “Empires and the ‘Others’: Mutual Relationships and Perceptions,” “The Fallof Empires and State Reconstruction: Legacies and Changes,” “Decolonization: Regionaland International Implications,” and “New Empires? The United States and China.”
One of the focuses of the discussion was local mediators or “collaborators,” who played
crucial roles in determining the character of imperial expansion and rule. The participants
held hot and fruitful debates on a number of issues, for example, whether postwar economic
development of India was made possible by skillfully utilizing the legacies of the British
Empire and foreign assistance, or by overcoming the harmful influences of imperial rule.
On January 18, three foreign fellows of the SRC (Drs. Taras Kuzio, Nona Shakhnazaryan,
and Vladimir Shishkin) gave pre-symposium lectures. After the symposium, on January 22,
most of the foreign guests attended workshops in Tokyo. Overall, the international teamof scholars who participated in this series of events proved the usefulness of comparativeimperial studies for understanding both the historical backgrounds of the Eurasian regional
powers and the multipolar but hierarchical structure of the modern world.
Uyama Tomohiko

Speakers at the Symposium (January 18–20, 2012)
Taras Kuzio (University of Toronto, Canada / SRC) “Ukraine at Twenty: Post Soviet or Neo-Soviet?”
Nona Shakhnazaryan (Kuban Social and Economic Institute, Russia / SRC) “‘Homo Sovieticus’ through the
Armenian Diaspora’s Prism: Representations, Stereotypes, and Images”
Vladimir Shishkin (Institute of History, Siberian Division, RAS / SRC) “Rebooting the Russian Empire,
1917–1922: Wars and Revolutions as a Factor of Modernization”
Jane Burbank (New York University, USA) “Empire and Transformation: The Politics of Difference”
Maria Misra (University of Oxford, UK) “Aristocracies and Modernities: India after the Great Rebellion”
Willard Sunderland (University of Cincinnati, USA) “Russian Ways of Empire, From the Kazan Conquest
to 1917”
Asano Toyomi (Chukyo University, Japan) “Nation State System and the System of Empire in Modern
Japan”
Uyama Tomohiko (SRC) “Invitation, Adaptation, and Resistance to Empires: Cases of Central Asia”
Kawashima Shin (University of Tokyo, Japan) “The Image of Traditional World Order and Tribute Relationsin Min-kuo China”
Rudi Matthee (University of Delaware, USA) “Zar-o Zur: Gold and Force: The Late Safavids as a Tributary
Empire”
Fatma Müge Göçek (University of Michigan, USA) “The Ottoman Imperial Legacy”
Ikeda Yoshiro (Tokyo University of Science, Japan) “Toward an Empire of Republics: Transformation of
Russia in the Age of Total War, Revolution and Nationalism”
Aditya Mukherjee (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India) “Un-structuring Colonialism: The Nehru Years andNon-alignment”
Akita Shigeru (Osaka University) “Economic Diplomacy of Jawaharlal Nehru Administration after Decolonization of South Asia”
Zhai Qiang (Auburn University at Montgomery, USA) “Road to Bandung: China’s Evolving Approach to
De-Colonization”
Kan Hideki (Seinan Jo Gakuin University, Japan) “The Making of ‘an American Empire’ and Its Reponses to
Decolonization in the Early Cold War Years”
Rob Kroes (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) “America: An Empire Among Empires?”
Tsai Tung-Chieh (National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan) “Is China Becoming an Empire? Strategic
Tradition and the Possible Choice for Contemporary China”

11No.20 February 2013

3) “From Empires to Regional Powers, Between States and Non-States”– Holding of the Seventh International Symposium under the Aegis of theComparative Research Project “Major Regional Powers in Eurasia”
The large-scale project run by
China, India, and Russia specialists
in Japan to compare China, India,
and Russia is approaching its finale
in March 2013. Its last large-scaleinternational event, the International Symposium entitled “FromEmpires to Regional Powers,
Between States and Non-States”
was held at the SRC on July 4–6,
2012. It was mainly two researchgroups, focusing on “Domestic
Politics” and “Society and Human
Mobility,” who took responsibility
for this symposium. The event
was opened with a special lecture
A scene from one of the sessions
by Theodore Weeks, Professor ofSouth Illinois University and Visiting Professor at the SRC in 2012, on the history of Vilnius City.
This was followed by the International Workshop for Young Scholars. Three papers presented
at this workshop analyzed the issues of unrecognized states and the autocephaly of Orthodox
churches and were in line with the topics examined during the main part of the symposium.
The guiding concept for the three sessions held on July 5th was transnationalism, representing the idea of the research group on “Society and Human Mobility” that the strengthof regional powers cannot be measured by their domestic political, military, and economic
resources. Instead, researchers should pay attention to regional powers’ cooperation withtransnational actors. Nine papers were presented at three sessions, entitled “Empires andPolitical Geography,” “Religious Politics and Transnationalism,” and “Conflicts Spanning
the Regional Powers’ Peripheries and ‘Near Abroad’.”Three sessions held on July 6th examined the issues of authoritarianism, scrutinized by the
research group on “Domestic Politics” during the last four years. China still keeps its classic
authoritarian regime, while competitive authoritarian regimes have emerged in Russia and manyother post-Soviet countries. The democratization approach, prevalent in the 1990s, underestimatedthe transition from classic to competitive authoritarianism as a deviation from the right course,
but today, political scientists recognize competitive authoritarianism as an independent subjectof empirical research. Nine papers were presented at three sessions, entitled “Competitive Authoritarianism: Theoretical Challenges,” “Regime Change or Regime Dynamics? A Comparative
Study of Backlashes,” and “Authoritarian Leaders and Discourse of Regional Powers.”
The presenters of the papers, including the workshop, can be broken down by country(according to workplace, not citizenship): ten from Japan, seven from the United States,and one each from Germany, Israel, Romania, Ukraine, and Australia. Regrettably, a paper
presenter scheduled to come from Pakistan canceled her talk. This is one of the reasons for theunderrepresentation of South Asia at this symposium, to which only three papers referred.
After the symposium, most of the foreign guests traveled to Tokyo and Osaka to give
additional talks at Waseda and Osaka Universities.
Matsuzato Kimitaka
12No.20 February 2013

Speakers at the Symposium (July 4–6, 2012)
Sato Keiji (Hokkaido University, Japan) “Social and Political Movements in South Ossetia, Southern Moldova (Gagauzia), and Transnistria at the End of the Soviet Era: A Prelude to Violent Conflicts along Ethnic Lines?”
Dareg Zabarah (Humboldt University, Germany) “Autocephaly: A Delayed Transition from Empire to National
State?”
Nikola Mirilovic (University of Central Florida, USA) “A Preliminary Theory of Contested International
Recognition of New States: the Case of Kosovo”
Theodore Weeks (Southern Illinois University, USA/SRC) “City, Cultures, Empire: Vilnius in the Russian
Empire and SSSR”
Charles King (Georgetown University, USA) “Can Seas Have Histories?”
Noda Jin (Waseda University, Japan) “Empires and the Steppe: A Comparative Study on Qing and Russian
Empires”
Moshe Gammer (Tel Aviv University, Israel) “Land Made of Copper, Men Made of Steel. Empire and Mountains:
the Case of Russia and the Caucasus”
Naganawa Norihiro (SRC) “Drawing Russia as a Muslim Power? The Hajj from Tatarstan and Daghestanin the Post-Soviet Era”
Dumitru Cotelea (Babes-Bolyai University, Romania) “The Issue of the Russian Canonical Territory between
Ecclesiology and Geopolitics”
Tsurumi Taro (SRC) “Defending Monarchism for a Plural Society: Daniel Pasmanik, a Russian Jewish
Transnationalist”
Arsene Saparov (Michigan University, USA) “Arbitrary Borders? The Logic of the Bolshevik Boundary-Making
in the South Caucasus 1921–1925 Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh”
David Brophy (Australian National University) “Russian Muslim Writing on Xinjiang in the Pre-revolutionary
Period”
Nakamizo Kazuya (Kyoto University, Japan) “Peripheries Creating the ‘Indian’ Nation: Border and Minority
Questions Revisited”
Barbara Junisbai (Pitzer College, USA) “Unpacking the ‘Competition’: Variation in Political Opposition underCompetitive (and Not-So-Competitive) Post-Soviet Authoritarianism”
Suzuki Ayame (Fukuoka Women’s University, Japan) “Strong Institutions and Weak Incumbents: Asian
Competitive Authoritarianism as an Exception?”
Tahara Fumiki (University of Tokyo, Japan) “Competitive Client, Faithful Agent, or Lonely Principal? The
Political Implications of Village Leadership in India, Russia and China”
Cory Welt (George Washington University, USA) “Institutional Reform and Single-Party Rule in Georgia”
Olexiy Haran (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Ukraine) “From the Orange Revolution to
Russian Model of ‘Stability’?”
Uyama Tomohiko (SRC) “Party Politics and Premier-Presidentialism in Kyrgyzstan after the Second Revolution: Order in Disorder”
Tang Liang (Waseda University, Japan) “One Party System’s Strategy for Survival: Promotion and Screeningof Political Elites in China”
Gulnaz Sharafutdinova (Miami University, USA) “The Limits of Political Realism and Cynicism in Contemporary Russia”
Ogushi Atsushi (Osaka University of Economics and Law, Japan) “The Limitation and Failure of Dominant
Party Building: Russia and Ukraine in Comparative Perspective”

Foreign Visitors Fellowship Program
The SRC selected the following scholars as foreign fellows for 2013–14.
Name: Jane Burbank
Position: Professor, Department of History, New York University
Research Topic at the SRC: The Legal Life of the State: Russian Sovereignty in the Kazan
Judicial District, 1890–1917
Term of Stay: June 10 – October 31, 2013
Name: Oleg Manaev
Position: Professor, Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Belarusian State
University13No.20 February 2013

Research Topic at the SRC: Peculiarities of Post-Soviet Authoritarianism and Its Influenceon the Region (the case of Belarus in comparison with Russia and Ukraine)
Term of Stay: June 1 – October 31, 2013
Name: Ilya Zaytsev
Position: Leading Researcher, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences
Research Topic at the SRC: The Russian State and the Muslims of European Russia and Siberia
in the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries: Imperial Indifference or Orthodox Tolerance?
Term of Stay: June 1 – October 31, 2013
Name: Konstantin Bogdanov
Position: Senior Researcher, Institute of Russian Literature [Pushkin House], Russian
Academy of Sciences
Research Topic at the SRC: Understanding of Human Rights in Soviet and Post-Soviet
Language Culture: Between the Key Concepts and Key Emotions
Term of Stay: November 1, 2013 – March 31, 2014
Name: Aftandil Erkinov
Position: Professor, Department of Classical Philology of the Orient, State Institute of Oriental
Studies, Uzbekistan
Research Topic at the SRC: Islam “versus” Islam: Process of Turkicization in the Turkestan
General-Governorship
Term of Stay: November 1, 2013 – March 31, 2014
Name: Bakhtior Islamov
Position: Professor, Economic Theories Department, Tashkent Branch of Plekhanov Russian
Economic University, Uzbekistan
Research Topic at the SRC: The Central Asian States Twenty Years After: Achievements
and Failures
Term of Stay: November 1, 2013 – March 31, 2014
This academic year (2012–2013), one of our expected guests, Bekus-Gonczarowa, was notable to come. By proxy, we invited the following researcher.
Name: Vadim Zhdanov
Position: Chair for the Study of Religions and Mission Studies, Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen and Nuremberg, Germany
Research Topic at the SRC: The Discourse of “Religion” in Putin’s Russia: Social Constructions of “Religious” in Russian Contemporary Film and Television
Term of Stay: November 1, 2012 – March 31, 2013
Osuga Mika

Our Current Staff
Ieda Osamu: Professor, Economic History of Eastern Europe; Modern Hungarian History;
Environment in Slavic Eurasia
Iwashita Akihiro: Professor, Russian Foreign Policy; Sino-Russian Relations
Matsuzato Kimitaka: Professor, Politics in Post-Communist Countries; Imperial Historyof Russia
Mochizuki Tetsuo: Professor, Russian Literature
Naganawa Norihiro: Associate Professor, Modern History of Central Eurasia; Muslim
Policies of the Russian Empire
14No.20 February 2013

Nomachi Motoki: Associate Professor, Slavic Linguistics; General Linguistics
Tabata Shinichiro: Professor, Russian Economy and Comparative Economic Studies
Uyama Tomohiko: Professor, Central Asian History and Politics; Comparative Imperial
Studies; Director of the SRC
Wolff, David: Professor, Russian, Soviet, and Emigre; Siberia and the Far East; The Cold
War; Northeast Asian Region Construction
Yamamura Rihito: Professor, Comparative Economics; Agrarian Economy in SlavicEurasian Countries

Assistant Professors:
Fujimori Shinkichi: Ukrainian Politics; CIS Relations
Goto Masanori: Cultural Anthropology; Religious and Scientific Recognition andPractices
Kiyama Katsuhiko: Archaeology of Northeast Asia
Koshino Go: Russian and Belarusian Literature

Foreign Visitors Fellows 2012 (June) – 2013 (March)
Arkady Blyumbaum: Aleksandr Blok: Literature and Politics (1905-1921)
Pang Dongmei: Countering the Crimes Committed by Nationals of the PRC on the Territoryof the Russian Far East
John Round: Coping with the Uncertain Everyday: Everyday Life in Contemporary Russia
Sergey Ryazantsev: Ethnic Migrations and Formation of Diasporas in Frontier Regions in
a Context of National Security of Russia
Theodore Weeks: Vilna, Wilno, Vilnius: History of a Multicultural City, 1795-2000
Vadim Zhdanov: The Discourse “Religion” in Putin Russia: Social Constructions of “Religious” in Russian Contemporary Film and Television

Research Fellows:
Cheng Chierh: Acoustic Phonetics; Prosodic Modeling; Speech, Hearing, and Phonetic Sciences
Chida Tetsuro: Soviet History
Hanamatsu Yasunori: International Law
Hirayama Akihiro: Modern and Contemporary History of Vietnam
Honda Akiko: Soviet Art and Architecture
Hoshino Masashi: Chinese Economy; Development Economics; Regional Disparity
Itani Hiroshi: Architectural History of Sakhalin and Karafuto
Kikuta Haruka: Cultural Anthropology; Muslim Society in Central Asia; Saint Worship in
Uzbekistan
Komatsu Hisae: Hindi Literature; Indian Cultural Studies
Komoto Yasuko: Comparative Culture; Modern Japanese History
Nakayama Taisho: Migration History of Northeast Asia: Modern and Contemporary Historyof Sakahlin/Karafuto
Maeda Shiho: Russian Literature
Miyazaki Haruka: Polish Nationalism and the Catholic Church
Miwa Hiroki: Comparative Politics, Politics in India
Morishita Yoshiyuki: Central and Eastern European History
Takahashi Minori: International Relations, Area Studies (Denmark, Greenland, and the Arctic)
Tateishi Yoko: Historical Science in the Soviet Union
15

No.20 February 2013

Library and Information Service Staff:
Osuga Mika: Research Associate, Publications
Tonai Yuzuru: Associate Professor, SRC Head Librarian

Ongoing Cooperative Research Projects
Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, excluding“Grants-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows” and “Grants-in-Aid for Publication of Scientific Research Results(Scientific Literature)”

Scientific Research on Innovative Areas
Headed by Tabata Shinichiro: “Comparative Research on Major Regional Powers inEurasia” (2008–12)
Scientific Research A
Headed by Wolff, David: “Northeast Asia in the Cold War: New Materials and Perspectives” (2009–12)
Scientific Research B
Headed by Hara Teruyuki: “Modern History of the Sakhalin Island (Karafuto), as a
Borderland Colony: Wars, States, and Regions” (2010–13)
Headed by Ieda Osamu: “Destruction and Reconstruction of Human and Natural Environments in Post-catastrophe Areas: Chernobyl, Ajka, and Fukushima” (2012–15)
Headed by M atsuzato Kimitaka: “Comparing Competitive Authoritarianisms”(2012–14)
Headed by Uyama Tomohiko: “Comparative History of Empires in the Contexts ofModernization and Globalization” (2009–12)
Scientific Research C
Headed by Kiyama Katsuhiko: “Archaeological Research on the Mohe Tribes in the Far
East” (2008–12)
Headed by Komoto Yasuko: “An Examination of ‘Lamaist’ Visual Materials in Modern
Japan” (2012–16)
Headed by Naganawa Norihiro: “Empire and the Hajj: A View from Russia’s Muslim
Regions, 1865–1914” (2010–12)
Headed by Tonai Yuzuru: “Development of Theology in the Russian Orthodox Church
and Filaret (Metropolitan of Moscow)” (2010–12)
Challenging Exploratory Research
Headed by Koshino Go: “Comparative Study on War Narratives in Belarus, Ukraine,and Sakhalin” (2012–14)
Grants-in-Aid for Young Scientists B
Headed by Hanamatsu Yasunori: “Integrated Management of Land and Ocean in the
Amur-Okhotsk Ecosystem, and the Applicability of the Ramsar Convention” (2012–13)
Headed by Hirayama Akihiro: “A Historical Study on the Construction of the General
Mobilization System in Northern Vietnam under the Influence of the Cold War Politics during
the First Indochina War Period” (2011–13)
Headed by Inoue Satoko: “A Comparative Study of the Polish Literature in the PolishGerman Borderlands and the Polish Migrant Literature in Germany” (2011–14)
Headed by Komatsu Hisae: “‘Modernity’ in Magazines: The Representations of Modern
India in Hindi Women’s Magazines” (2010–13)
16

No.20 February 2013

Headed by Kusano Kayako: “The Ruling Bureaucracy and Local Self-Government inImperial Russia: Organization and Activities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs before the1905 Revolution” (2010–12)
Headed by Maeda Shiho: “Gender Studies on the Representations of War Memory in
Russian Culture in the Latter Half of the Twentieth Century” (2012–14)
Headed by N omachi Motoki: “A Comprehensive Study of Kashubian Syntax”(2010–12)
Research Activity Startup
Headed by Honda Akiko: “The Role of the Media in Totalitarianization of Soviet
Architecture” (2012–13)
Headed by Kato Mihoko: “Russia’s Asia-Pacific Policy since 2000: From the Perspectiveof Response to a Rising China” (2011–12)
Headed by Sato Keiji: “The Issue of Unrecognized States in the Territory of the PostSoviet Sphere” (2011–12)
Headed by Tateishi Yoko: “Politics of Memory in the USSR” (2012–13)

Visitors from Abroad
Elmira Nogoibaeva (Analytical Center “Polis Asia,” Kyrgyzstan), January-March 2012:
Comparative Analysis of Political Elites of Kyrgyzstan and JapanLi Ting (Graduate Student, East China Normal University), April-October 2012: History
Memory and Territorial Dispute between Japan and Russian: An Analysis Based on Indigenous
Knowledge of Hokkaido
Sharyl Corrado (JSPS Fellow from the USA), May-December 2012: The “End of the
Earth”: Sakhalin Island in the Russian Imperial Imagination, 1849–1925
Venelin Tsachevsky (Japan Foundation Fellow from Bulgaria), May-November 2012:
Energy Management Policies in Southeastern Europe
Batsaikhan Ookhnoi (Japan Foundation Fellow from Mongolia), August 2012: RussoJapanese Agreements in the 1910s and Mongolia
Anna Śledzińska-Adamczak (Japan Foundation Fellow from Poland), September 2012
– February 2013: Japanese Foreign Policy toward the Russian Federation in the Post-Cold
War Era

Guest Lecturers from Abroad
Antonina Akimova (Sakhalin State University, Russia), “Художественное своеобразие
‘Дневкиков’ Николая Японского,” February 14, 2012.
Matthew Light (University of Toronto, Canada), “Reform of the National Police in the
Republic of Georgia since 2003: Causes, Consequences, and Lessons,” February 22, 2012.
[Indo-Japanese Dialogue on Eurasia II: Relations with China] Nandan Unnikrishnan(Observer Research Foundation, India), Kulbhushan Warikoo (Jawaharlal Nehru University,
India), Sanjay Pandey (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India), Rukmani Gupta (Institutefor Defence Studies and Analyses, India), Yang Cheng (East China Normal University,
China), “International Relations and Political Alignment”; Arun Mohanty (Jawaharlal
Nehru University, Eurasian Foundation, India), Chalapurath Chandrasekhar (Jawaharlal
Nehru University, India), Christopher Len (Institute for Security and Development Policy,
Sweden), “Economy and Regional Order”; H. S. Prabhakar (Jawaharlal Nehru University,17No.20 February 2013

India), Zhao Gancheng (Shanghai Institute for International Studies, China), “Strategic
Perspective and Future Dynamism,” February 27, 2012.
Engseng Ho (Duke University, USA), “Muslim Diasporas and Western Empires:
Precedents to Bin Ladin,” March 2, 2012.
Ray Taras (USA), “Russia’s Identity in International Relations: Images, Perceptions,
Misperceptions,” March 13, 2012.
Mikhail Malko (Institute of Energy, Belarus); Evgeniia Stepanova (Research Center for
Radiation Medicine of Ukraine), “Let’s Take a Lesson from Chernobyl,” April 7, 2012.
Rickie Solinger (Independent Scholar, USA), “Crossing Borders for Babies: The Global
Geography, Economics, and Politics of Motherhood,” April 11, 2012.
Johan van der Auwera (University of Antwerp, Belgium), “Yiddish Indefinite Pronouns:
In Between Slavic and Germanic,” April 19, 2012.
S. Anandhi (Madras Institute of Development Studies, India), “Dalit Feminist Literature
in South India,” April 28, 2012.
Boris Lanin (Academy of Education of Russia), “Alexandr Evlakhov: A Forgotten
Genius,” May 16, 2012; “Эстетические и политические итоги литературы третьей
волны,” July 14, 2012.
Tamara Nikonova (Voronezh State University, Russia), “Особенности литературного
процесса русского зарубежья 1920–1930-х гг.,” July 14, 2012.
Ol’ga Berdnikova (Voronezh State University, Russia), “Творчество И. Бунина вконтексте литературы русского зарубежья 1920–1930-х годов,” July 14, 2012.
Irina Kuznetsova (Kazan Federal University, Russia), “The Formation of Social Capital
amongst Muslims in Kazan: The Role of Charities,” August 20, 2012.
Stepan Sivtsev-Dollu (State-owned Company “Sakha Film,” Russia), Praskov’ia
Sivtseva-Maksimova (North-Eastern Federal University, Russia), “Национальное кино илитература в Республике Саха,” October 8, 2012.
Jana Kuzmikova (Institute of Slovak Literature, Slovakia), “The Character of the Russianin Slovak War-themed Literature,” October 16, 2012.
Ronelle Alexander (University of California, Berkeley), “Accent Shifts in South Slavic
Dialects: The Significance of Retraction,” November 5, 2012.
Alessandro Stanziani (Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, France), “Beyond
World-system and Economic Backwardness: Russian Serfdom and Its Aftermath Revisited,”
November 7, 2012.
[Hokkaido University & Seoul National University: 15th Joint Symposium Satellite
Session “Political Situation in Post-Soviet Countries”] Chung Jaewon (Seoul National
University, Korea), “Civil Society in Russia under the Authoritarian Regime in the Era of
Neoliberal Globalization”; Jeong Sarang (Seoul National University, Korea), “Russia’s
Foreign Policy toward the United States under Putin’s Presidency: The Issue of the US Forces
in Central Asia,” December 8, 2012.
Thomas Lahusen (University of Toronto, Canada, Chemodan Films), Gulzat Egemberdieva (University of Toronto, Canada, Chemodan Films), “SRC & Chemodan Films
Special Event: Yesterday, Soviet Union,” December 17, 2012 (Please refer to the essay onp. 5).

18

No.20 February 2013

A Tale of Two Cities: Writing about Vilnius
in Sapporo
Theodore Weeks (Southern Illinois University, USA/Foreign Fellow, SRC, 2012)
tadeusz@siu.edu
Few people in Lithuania, I
imagine, could accurately pointout Hokkaido on a map and probably few Sapporo-ites know muchabout Vilnius. So why choose
Sapporo to begin writing a longdelayed book about the Lithuanian
capital? The reasons are many:
personal, professional, and practical. For an American born on another Japanese island (Okinawa),
the opportunity to live for a few
months in Japan was immensely
attractive. The Slavic ResearchCenter of Hokkaido University
Monument to Gediminas, Grand Duke of Lithuhas an excellent internationalania, who founded Vilnius in 1323
reputation and a number of former
stipend-holders praised the center,
pointing out how much work they had gotten done there. And when I mentioned the possibilityof spending time in Sapporo to historians in Warsaw, they all knew that Norman Davies had
written part of a book there. A high recommendation indeed!
And in fact, my expectations for the SRC were fulfilled and – to use the Soviet phrase– over-fulfilled. Both colleagues and office staff went out of their way to make my visit
easy and pleasant, countering Japanese bureaucracy (yes, it exists) with wonderful Japanesepoliteness (happily, that stereotype is also true). The library proved to be truly excellent,even for some Lithuanian publications which I did not expect to find in East Asia. Praise also
must go to the warm and friendly teachers led by Professor Yamashita at the International
Student Center of Hokkaido University who help foreign students (and others, like me) learn
Japanese.
My research on Vilnius looks at a city where until the mid-twentieth century no one
ethnic group formed the majority of the population. I am interested in how state power,
ethnic identity, and city development worked together (or clashed) in the long period 1795 to2000 (perhaps to 2004 when Lithuania joined NATO and the European Union). The crucial
importance of the city for Jews, Poles, and Lithuanians (and for the Russians before 1914) isalso a major theme of my research. In the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire attempted
to place at the least a Russian “veneer” on the cityscape of Vilnius (for them, “Vil’na”) by
giving streets Russian names, constructing Orthodox churches, and – in particular fromthe 1880s onward – by putting up monuments to Russian cultural (Pushkin) and political(Catherine the Great) figures. In the end, though, when the German army entered the city
in September 1915 Wilna (as the Germans call the town) remained a Polish-Jewish city andtraces of over a century of Russian rule were soon erased.
19

No.20 February 2013

In the twentieth century, Vilnius changed hands a number oftimes: German occupations in thetwo world wars, Polish rule inthe 1920s and 1930s, within the
USSR from the 1940s, and finallyas capital of an independent Lithuanian republic since 1990. With
each change of political regime,
the city was also directly affected,
from street names to public art tothe privileging of one ethnic groupover another. Most tragically,
nearly the entire 1939 populationof the city was either murdered (inSt. Anne’s Church (Vilnius)
the case of Vilnius’s once vibrant
Jewish community) or expelled(the Poles) during World War II and its aftermath. The building of a Soviet Lithuanian capitalis also a fascinating episode but one that most present-day Lithuanians tend to shun, preferring
to see the entire Soviet period as repressive and russifying. To be sure, there is something tothat view, but at the same time the communists were also eager to encourage certain aspectsof national culture – after all, the leadership in Soviet Lithuania was mainly Lithuanian by
ethnicity and we should not forget that in the late 1980s the Lithuanian communists wisely(if possibly cynically) cut their ties to Moscow and embraced Lithuanian sovereignty. Since
1990 Vilnius has gone from an officially bilingual Soviet Lithuanian capital to a mainlymonolingual (though tolerant, with plenty of Russian and Polish still heard on the streets)
city. Once again street names and public monuments to key figures of the Lithuanian culturaland political past have been erected. This is, in a nutshell, the story that I wish to tell andthat I began writing in Sapporo.
Before coming to Sapporo, I knew that this was a city very different from Vilnius. Like
most Americans of my generation, I knew of Sapporo mainly in the context of the 1972 winterOlympics and as Japan’s northernmost big city. I did not realize, however, just how young
the city is. It came as a surprise to me to learn that even after 1945 Hakodate (I will admitthat I had not even heard the name of that charming town) was more prominent. The nameWilliam S. Clark was also unknown to me. Having studied and worked at European and
Israeli universities, I was surprised to find a university campus very much like at home. And
there were even Poplar and Elm Streets, just like in Carbondale, Illinois. In fact, the entire
city reminded me much more of an American than a European city and not just because of
the frequency of convenience stores with American names (Lawson, 7-11 ...).
Looking back at my five months in Sapporo, I am both astonished that my fellowshipperiod sped by so quickly and pleased (though never, of course, entirely content) with thework that I managed to get accomplished. I left Sapporo with some kind of version of every
chapter in the future book, from one on “historical beginnings” (to 1795) all the way to aconsideration of the end of Soviet rule and the creation of a Lithuanian nation-state’s capital(1980–2000). I met a number of pleasant colleagues in Sapporo and at talks I gave in Kyoto,and I have a much better idea (though of course still very superficial) of how higher education
and research institutes in Japan work.
At my own home university during a normal semester, I spend far more time on teaching
than research. One course I inevitably offer every year (sometimes every semester) is World20

No.20 February 2013

History 1500–2000. My stay in Hokkaido allowed me to read a few dozen books on Japanese
history, to learn a bit more about the Ainu people, and to learn a bit about the Japanese
language. I am grateful to Yamamoto-san at the SRC for showing me how to type phonetically (“にほん”) and get kanji (日本！) to pop up. For an American, Japan is a perplexing
combination of the familiar (“バター”, “ガールフレンド,” boys in baseball uniforms) andthe very foreign (signs in kanji, traffic on the “wrong” side of the road, completely baffling
packaged foods at the grocery store). In my five months, I learned to like eating “fried sea
monster” (as I called it), learned at least hiragana and katakana (though still confusing シ andツ withソ), and used the phrase “お願いします” a great deal. Perhaps most importantly, I
learned just how ignorant I am about history, culture, language, and everyday life in Japan.
As I repeatedly say to students, education begins with a question. After five months at the
Slavic Research Center of Hokkaido University, I know enough about Sapporo, Hokkaido,
and Japan to have many, many new questions.
Vilnius – a city founded nearly a millennium ago and claimed by diverse national-ethnicreligious groups – could hardly be more different from Sapporo, as a major city not a century
old, overwhelmingly populated by ethnic Japanese and never ruled by a foreign power. After
five months at the SRC, though, both cities are part of my own life. I return to Vilnius in a
few days to finish up some research and I hope to get back to Sapporo before too long. Afterall, it is difficult to find おにぎりand fried sea monster for lunch in Lithuania.

Впечатление о Саппоро в целом
Pang Dongmei (Heilongjiang University, China/Foreign Fellow, SRC, 2012)Раньше я только по телевизору, через Интернет
либо по рассказам знакомых знала, что в Японии
находится остров Хоккайдо и на острове Хоккайдо
имеется красивый город Саппоро. Однако я никогда не была в Японии, поэтому не было шанса
посещать этот город. Неожиданно судьба даламне возможность побывать в Саппоро. И вот якак приглашенный исследователь буду работать вЦентре славянских исследований при университете
Хоккайдо целых 5 месяцев. Хотя я прибыла в Саппоро только полмесяца назад, но сам город Саппорои его местные жители произвели на меня глубокое
впечатление.
Встреча в аэропорту
31 октября 2012-го года я прилетела в Саппоро. В аэропорту меня встретил Такара, который
обучается в магистратуре университета Хоккайдо.
Несмотря на то, что он почти не говорит по-русски, аФото авторая плохо понимаю по-английски (и вообще не говорю
по-японски), мы с Такарой все-таки по дороге поговорили по-английски. У Такары яузнала, что он занимается историей, раньше учился 4 года в Токио, у него две сестры:одна из них говорит по-китайски, но сейчас она работает в другом городе. Всю дорогумы разговаривали о том о сём, мне было очень весело поболтать с этим талантливым
парнем. Очень приятно познакомиться с Такарой!
21

No.20 February 2013Знакомство с Центром славянских исследованийНа одном очередном собрании
Центра славянских исследований
Хоккайдо университета нас, троих
иностранных приглашенных исследователей (я из Китая, Вадимиз Германии и Аркадий из России)познакомили с работниками Центра.
Профессора и сотрудники, которые
работают в Центре, очень по-доброму
относятся к нам, иностранцам. Чувствую здесь себя как дома. Мне сразуже понравился Центр, где находится
библиотека с богатыми коллекциями
книг. Уверена в том, что здесь, вЦентре славянских исследований,мы обязательно добьемся больших
успехов в своих собственных исследовательских сферах.
Красивый и многообразный
кампус университета ХоккайдоВ начале ноября кампус университета Хоккайдо очень красив: везде
деревья с разноцветными листьями изеленая трава. Особенное впечатление
Гинкговая дорога
оставили гинкговая дорога и Вторая
ферма при университете Хоккайдо. Каждый день я хожу мимо Второй фермы на работу.
Все дома во Второй ферме, в отличие от обычных зданий, построены из дерева. Этидеревянные дома, стильные и естественные,внушают мне чистое и спокойное чувство.
Что касается гинкговой дороги, то можно
сказать, что мне больше всего нравитсяэта чудесная дорога. По обеим сторонами
дороги растут высокие и аккуратные
гинкго, которые как часовые защищают
прохожих. На деревьях еще жёлтые листья,которые светятся под солнцем как золото идарят прохожим хорошее настроение. Мнеговорили, что листья гинкго не только удивляют людей красотой, его сушенные листья
могут применяться как противокашлевое,противоастматическое и болеутоляющее
средство. Кроме того, плоды гинкго ещеочень полезны для здоровья.
Помимо природных красот кампус
университета Хоккайдо дает мне духовную
поддержку, потому что в кампусе стоит памятник Кларку, основателю университета. Памятник W.S. Кларку
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No.20 February 2013Слова Кларка «Be Ambitious» как девиз университета Хоккайдо все время вдохновляют
меня идти вперёд и преодолевать трудности. Такой он, мой любимый красивый иразнообразный кампус университета Хоккайдо!
Питание, горячий источник и будущий праздник снежных скульптур вСаппоро
Говорят, что построенный в самом
начале эпохи Мэйдзи (70-е гг. XIX в.) наберегах р. Тоёхира, Саппоро был спроектирован по образцу старой части Киото,и поэтому до сих пор план города напоминает решетку, где все улицы пересекаются под прямыми углами. Мне нравится
аккуратная планировка улиц Саппоро, гденевозможно заблудиться. В свободное
время я одна либо с друзьями постоянно
гуляю по городу. В Саппоро имеется множество ресторанов и кафе, предлагающих
блюда японской и европейской кухонь, эторешает все проблемы с питанием. Уставот прогулки, мы с друзьями постоянно
проводим время на горячих источниках,занимаясь исключительно своим телом.
Кроме того, мне говорили, что впарке Одори в феврале года проводится
Снежный фестиваль, собирающий скульпторов, которые создают причудливые
композиции изо льда. Я с нетерпениемжду наступления февраля для того, чтобы Осенняя красота во Второй ферме
своими глазами увидеть всемирно известный праздник снежных скульптур.
Гостеприимные жители Саппоро
Гостеприимные жители Саппоро оставили прекрасное впечатление. Однажды мыс подругой договорились, что встретимся у входа ботанического сада при университете
Хоккайдо. Дело в том, что в то время я плохо знала дорогу к ботаническому саду,поэтому по пути я спросила одного японца, который гулял со своим сыном, как мнедобраться до ботанического сада. Тот мужчина заботливо проводил меня к выходу изуниверситета и указал мне дорогу к саду. Когда я прошла вперед примерно 200 метров,вдруг меня догнал мальчик, который только что с папой вместе гулял по университету.
Повернувшись, я заметила, что тот мужчина, которого я спросила дорогу, бежал ко мне.
Он, запыхавшись, подбежал ко мне и сказал, что в тот день ботанический сад, может
быть, закрыт (но по какой причине я плохо поняла из-за языкового барьера). Я емус сыном выразила искреннюю благодарность и сказала, что моя подруга меня ждет увхода в сад, поэтому я должна туда идти. Поступки этих японского отца с сыном меняочень тронули. Я навсегда запомню данный теплый момент.
Эти незабываемые и драгоценные впечатления о городе Саппоро, его жителях иуниверситете Хоккайдо глубоко запали мне в душу!

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No.20 February 2013

Five Months in the SRC and Wintry Sapporo
Taras Kuzio (University of Toronto, Canada/Foreign Fellow, SRC, 2011)
Our five month visiting fellowship in the Slavic
Research Center (SRC), Hokkaido University, has cometo an end and it is time to return home from Japan. I
am grateful to the SRC fellowship for permitting me
to complete my 1,000 page manuscript on Ukraine. A
Contemporary History from 1953 to the present. The
manuscript is currently under review with a University
publisher in North America.
Our time at the SRC could not have been productive without the assistance of three factors.
Firstly, we will leave with fond memories of thehelpfulness and devotion to duty of the office staff,
particularly Mika Osuga, and of course the hospitality of the Director Professor Tetsuo Mochizuki. We
will cherish the memories of different SRC parties at
Christmas, Graduation and other events where Professor
Mochizuki ensured our glasses were always full with
the Japanese elixir of life, sake.
I would like to add a personal thank you to Professor Kimitaka Matsuzato, Japan’s leading expert on
The author
Ukraine and the non-Russian republics of the former
Soviet Union, for supporting my application to be a visiting fellow at the SRC.
Secondly, it would of course have been impossible for representatives from sevendifferent regions of the former Soviet Union to complete the five month visiting fellowshipwithout the guidance and leadership of the elder brother. In this case the duty of elder brotherleadership fell to my office neighbor Professor Vladimir Shishkin.
As we know from our common Soviet history, the leadership of the Russian elder brotheris essential to ensuring the direction, fulfillment, commitment and productivity of the nonRussian peoples of the family of Soviet nations. During our visiting fellowship we toasted
on numerous occasions “po bratski” [as brothers] in the full knowledge our elder brotherwould obtain two thirds of the bottle but nevertheless, happy in the knowledge a third would
be left to be divided among seven non-Russians.
Thirdly, the long Hokkaido winter would have been less bearable without the assistanceof Professor Nona Shakhnazaryan. Her buoyant optimism and zest for life, her fantastic
Armenian cooking, coffees and teas, as well as her generosity in offering her office for afterwork informal drinks and introducing us to her two sisters, facilitated an informal and collegial
atmosphere on the 5th floor of SRC. Professor Shakhnazaryan brought three speakers to the
SRC who added to the vibrancy of the intellectual exchange and discourse of the Center.
Sapporo, which I have likened to a smaller “Japanese New York,” is only one part of the
fascinating history of Hokkaido which in the nineteenth century played the double role ofan American-style “Manifest Destiny” Wild West and British-style Sydney, Australia, whereconvicts were sent. As the Rough Guide to Japan says, the Susukino district of Sapporo is
the best entertainment district in Japan north of Tokyo and therefore, after working our usual
12 hour days in the SRC, there was always plenty to fill our time in the wintry evenings.
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No.20 February 2013

Visiting fellows were able
to experience other partsof beautiful Japan, in mycase with my wife Oksana
who spent Christmas andthe New Year in Japan. Big
and crazy, but incredibly
vibrant, Tokyo, the spiritualand more laid back Kyoto
and, in my case, also Shizuoka and spending New
Year’s Eve in the Japanese
Alps sleeping on a floor ina ryokan (traditional Japanese Inn) in Takayama.
We will all leave Japan
with fond memories that
we will cherish for a longtime.

Peaceful moment after the working time

Publications (2011–2012)
Uyama Tomohiko, ed., Asiatic Russia: Imperial Power in Regional and International
Contexts (London: Routledge, 2011).
The chapters in this book originated from the SRC Winter International Symposium,
held on December 5–7, 2007. The authors (Ricarda Vulpius, Hamamoto Mami,
Gulmira Sultangalieva, Matsuzato Kimitaka, Anatolii Remnev, Sergei Abashin,Noda Jin, Robert D. Crews, Kimura Satoru, Nikolay Tsyrempilov, Salavat Iskhakov,
James H. Meyer, and Uyama Tomohiko) include both scholars of Russian history andspecialists in Oriental and Islamic studies. They explore the interactions between
power and people in Central Asia, Siberia, the Volga-Urals, and the Caucasus fromthe eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, drawing on a wealth of Russianarchival materials and Turkic, Persian, and Tibetan sources. The variety of topics
discussed in the book includes the Russian idea of a “civilizing mission,” the systemof governor-generalships, imperial geography and demography, roles of Muslim
and Buddhist networks in imperial rule and foreign policy, social change in the
Russian Protectorate of Bukhara, and Muslim reformist and national movements.
The book portrays the Russian Empire neither as a “prison of nations” nor as abenign protector of its subjects, but as a space where representatives of official andunofficial institutions, and local people of every stripe, interacted with each otherin an asymmetric manner.

Slavic Studies no. 59, 2012, refereed journal of the SRC (in Japanese with summaries
in English or Russian).
Acta Slavica Iaponica vols. XXXI and XXXII, 2012, refereed journal of the SRC (inEnglish and Russian).
Mochizuki Tetsuo, ed., “The Volga as a Cultural Sphere,” Slavic Eurasia Papers no. 4(Sapporo: SRC, 2012) (in Japanese).
Tabata Shinichiro and Ebuchi Naoto, eds., “Environment and Economy in the PanOkhotsk Region,” Slavic Eurasian Library no. 11 (Sapporo: Hokkaido University Press,2012) (in Japanese).
Osuga Mika, ed., List of Researchers in the Field of Slavic Eurasian Studies (9th edition)(Sapporo: SRC, 2012) (in Japanese).
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No.20 February 2013

Publications by the project “Comparative Research: Major Regional Powers in Eurasia”
Uyama Tomohiko, ed., “A Kaleidoscope of Comparative Imperial Studies: Interim
Report of Group 4,” Comparative Studies on Regional Powers no. 7 (Sapporo: SRC, 2012)(in Japanese).
Wolff, David, ed., “The Alliances and Borders in the Making and Unmaking of Regional Powers,” Comparative Studies on Regional Powers no. 8 (Sapporo: SRC, 2012) (inJapanese).
Uyama Tomohiko, ed., “Empire and After: Essays in Comparative Imperial andDecolonization Studies,” Comparative Studies on Regional Powers no. 9 (Sapporo: SRC,
2012) (in English).
This volume collects papers presented at conferences and workshops related to Group 4(Imperiology) of the project “Comparative Research on Major Regional Powers in Eurasia.”
The first two chapters by Alexander Morrison and Uyama Tomohiko try to theoreticallycontribute to comparative imperial studies mainly using the examples of Russian Central Asia
and British India. Fukuda Hiroshi’s article analyzes survival strategies for small nations inCentral Europe located between empires, focusing on the Slovak statesman, Milan Hodža.
The other five papers by Akita Shigeru, Penny Von Eschen, Niu Jun, Sergey Radchenko, andMridula Mukherjee shed light on various aspects of decolonization and the Cold War in the
1950s and 1960s. In particular, they demonstrate how the postwar international order in Asia
was woven by the internal politics of the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and India,
and by their ambitious battles for hearts and minds in newly independent countries.
All the chapters are available in PDF format on the SRC’s website: http://src-h.slav.hokudai.
ac.jp/rp/publications/no09/contents.html.

Sato Takahiro, ed., “The BRICs as Regional Economic Powers in the Global Economy,”
Comparative Studies on Regional Powers no. 10 (Sapporo: SRC, 2012) (in English).
This issue was the subject of ten papers presented at the fifth Indo-Japanese Dialogue on“The BRICS as Regional Economic Powers in the Global Economy,” held at Jawaharlal
Nehru University in India on December 26 and 27, 2011. They covered a wide rangeof aspects, including international economy, political economy, industry, productivity,
macro economy, and inequality in the BRICs. In particular, K onno Yugo compared
trade liberalization in Russia, China, and India, and H oshino Masashi comparedregional growth convergence across the BRICs. They tried to examine economic
development peculiar to these countries through a comparative analysis of them.
All the chapters are available in PDF format on the SRC’s website: http://src-h.slav.hokudai.
ac.jp/rp/publications/no10/contents.html.

Mochizuki Tetsuo and Maeda Shiho, eds., “India, Russia, China: Comparative Studies
on Eurasian Culture and Society,” Studies on Regional Powers no. 11 (Sapporo: SRC, 2012)(in English).
The 11th issue of “Regional Powers, Cross-Disciplinary Studies,” a non-periodic publication,
has been published. India, Russia, China: Comparative Studies on Eurasian Culture andSociety by Mochizuki Tetsuo and Maeda Shiho is a compilation of 12 reports from thereport “Comparative Aspects on Culture and Religion: India, Russia, China” submitted at theinternational symposium held by the Bangalore Cultural Society Research Center (Bangalore,
India) from September 15 to 16, 2011 in Group 6 “Culture.” The symposium has participating
researchers from India and Japan, but also from Great Britain, Germany and the United States,
giving it an international flavor. A heated debate occurred at the site, the results of whichwere reflected in the journal. We closed in on the various cultural identities of modern India,
China and Russia in the multifaceted section on approaches (intellectual property, gender) fromthe Asian perspective on societal roles, art & national identity, intercultural understanding &interaction, the issue of identity in popular culture as well as universal issues. The minutesof the meetings can be downloaded from the Slavic Research Center website.
All the chapters are available in PDF format on the SRC’s website: http://src-h.slav.hokudai.
ac.jp/rp/publications/no11/contents.html.

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No.20 February 2013

Publications by the Global COE Program “Reshaping Japan’s Border Studies”
Eurasia Border Review vol. 3, nos. 1 and 2, 2012, refereed journal in English.
Eurasia Border Review vol. 3, special issue, “China’s Post-Revolutionary Borders,
1940s–1960s” (Please refer to the essay on p. 2).
Japan Border Review no. 3, 2012, refereed journal in Japanese with summaries inEnglish.

The Library1) Completion of Renovation of the Building of the University Library
The renovation work of the building of the University Library was completed in March
2012, and relocation of its library materials was undertaken up until October 2012. So all
library materials are available at the University Library.
We would like to point out that books in Latin script in the “Slavic Collection” havebeen absorbed into the European books on the fourth floor and only “Cyrillic Books” and“Dissertations” remain as separate sections in the University Library.

2) Digitized Old Maps of Sakhalin
The Library has developed a small website and opened to the public two atlases ofImperial Russia and other materials from 2009. We modified and expanded it a little in
September 2012. Four old maps of Sakhalin from 1865 to 1921 were newly included in it,
and visitors can see them in detail and download files from the website.
The URL of the site is: http://srcmaterials-hokudai.jp/

3) Introduction of the Integrum Database
In April 2012, the Integrum Database was introduced. It covers many newspapers,
periodicals, and other materials of Russian and former Soviet Union countries. It is available
within networks of Hokkaido University campuses.
Tonai Yuzuru

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No.20 February 2013

Some scenes from the year-end party (December 14, 2012)

Various homemade dishes are on the table

Singing a song titled“I want to be a cat”

Essays“Do you know where Santa Claus’
homeland is?”Professors, graduate students, and manykinds of staff are altogether

Iwashita Akihiro and David Wolff
Interdisciplinary Cooperation at the SRC: Part I: The Making of the PRC’s
Borders: 1940s–1960s ................................................................................. p. 2
Thomas Lahusen, Mochizuki Tetsuo, and David Wolff
Interdisciplinary Cooperation at the SRC : Part II: From the “Deep Country”
to Multinational Harbin: Chemodan Films visits the SRC............................. p. 5
Theodore Weeks A Tale of Two Cities: Writing about Vilnius in Sapporo............................... p. 19
Pang DongmeiВпечатление о Саппоро в целом.............................................................. p. 21
Taras Kuzio
Five Months in the SRC and Wintry Sapporo.............................................. p. 24

Slavic Research Center
Hokkaido University
Kita-9, Nishi-7, Kita-ku, Sapporo, Japan 060-0809
Telephone: (81) 11-706-2388
Facsimile:(81) 11-706-4952
E-mail: src@slav.hokudai.ac.jp
Internet home page http://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/				index-e.html

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