ИЗУЧЕНИЕ ЭТНОГРАФИИ МОНГОЛЬСКИХ НАРОДОВ В ТРОИЦКОСАВСКО-КЯХТИНСКОМ ОТДЕЛЕНИИ ПРИАМУРСКОГО ОТДЕЛА РГО: ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТЬ Я.С. СМОЛЕВА
Authors: О.Н. ПОЛЯНСКАЯ , Ю.В. КУЗЬМИН 
Published: November 2024

Статья посвящена деятельности одного из подразделений Русского географического общества (РГО) - Троицкосавско-Кяхтинского отделения Приамурского отдела РГО. Расположенное на границе России с Китаем, оно было призвано изучать особенности исторического и культурного многообразия трансграничного региона. Членами общества и его отделений могли быть как известные ученые, так и краеведы-энтузиасты. Одним из них был Яков Степанович Смолев - этнограф, фольклорист. Он собрал и подготовил к публикации сказки и легенды бурят, занимался археологическими раскопками. Однако исследовательская деятельность Я.С. Смолева, как и его биография, в научной литературе отражена недостаточно полно. Цель публикации - реконструкция биографии Я.С. Смолева, изучение опубликованного его наследия. Через творческую биографию исследователя-этнографа показана роль РГО и его отделов в развитии отечественной школы монголоведения.

Studies in the culture of the Mongolic peoples in Russia have rich history and traditions. Systematic study began in the late 1920s with a scientific expedition of Kazan University staff members O.M. Kovalevsky (1800-1878) and A.V. Popov (1808-1865) to Eastern Siberia, Transbaikalia. On returning home, they created fundamental works, with O.M. Kovalevsky heading the first department of the Mongolic language in Europe (1833). Various scientific societies played a significant role in the study of the peoples of “Asian Russia” and Siberia as an outlying area of Russia, most of which opened in the second half of the 19th - early 20th century. The Imperial Russian Geographical Society (1845) made a significant contribution to this study, largely thanks to the extensive network of its divisions founded in the regions of Russia. Just in the territory of Siberia, there were several Departments of the Russian Geographical Society: the East-Siberian Department of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society in Irkutsk (1851), Chita and Troitskosavsk-Kyakhta branches of the Amur Department, opened in 1894, and others. All the mentioned divisions of the Russian Geographical Society studied the Mongolic peoples. In the 130th anniversary of Troitskosavk-Kyakhta and Chita branches of the Amur Department, which were located on Russia’s border with China and Mongolia and studied the peculiarities of the cross-border region, it is important to address the research work of its members who continued the tradition of studying the Mongolic peoples of Russia and adjacent territories. One of them was Yakov Stepanovich Smolev, whose research activities and biography are not sufficiently discussed in academic literature; besides, the years of his life are indicated inaccurately. The article is aimed at reconstruction of the biography of the full member of Troitskosavsk-Kyakhta branch of the Amur Department of the Russian Geographical Society Ya.S. Smolev, as well as at studying his activities in collecting Buryat folklore, archaeological excavations, and at consideration of the role of the Russian Geographical Society and its departments of “Asian Russia” in the development of the domestic school of Mongolian Studies through the ethnographer’s creative biography.