Sinology during the Cold War

Antonina Łuszczykiewicz, Michael Brose, Antonina Łuszczykiewicz, Michael Brose

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000572360
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This volume provides the first study of the history of sinology (aka China studies) as charted across several communist states during the Cold War.

The People's Republic of China was created in the first years of the Cold War, with its early history and foreign policy intimately bound up in that larger geopolitical fight. All the seismic changes in China's geopolitical landscape—from its emergence and close relationship with the Soviet Union, to the Sino–Soviet split and the eventual rapprochement with the United States—resulted in a great deal of interest by journalists, politicians, and scholars. Yet, although scholars across the Soviet Bloc produced an impressive body of work on a range of sinological studies, with rare exceptions most of those scholars and their work remains unknown outside their own intellectual circles. This book redresses this dearth of knowledge of sinological scholarship, providing invaluable and unique glimpses of Soviet Bloc sinologists and their work during the Cold War, including cutting-edge research on lesser-studied communist states such as Poland, Hungary, Mongolia, and others.

International in scope, this book is ideal for scholars and researchers of modern history, Chinese studies, sinology, and the Cold War.

Part I Personal account

1 Sinology in Poland during the Cold War era The perspective of a graduate and practitioner

Jerzy Bayer

DOI: 10.4324/9781003193548-3

Introduction¹

Under communism in Poland, research in the field of sinology suffered many serious setbacks resulting mainly from non-academic premises. These obstacles and barriers were usually of systemic nature as the communist system tended to limit and restrict administrative and organizational arrangements and academic substance. As a graduate of sinology at the University of Warsaw, and a person with 50 years of experience in academic, journalistic, and governmental work related to China, I would like to provide a reflection on the state of sinological studies in Poland in the communist era from my own point of view. I begin with my “memoir,” providing personal comments from the perspective of my own experience, followed by my assessment of three generations of Polish sinologists from the Cold War period.

Sinology in the Cold War: a personal perspective

The mentality of the “Iron Curtain” stemmed from ideological suspicion against any contacts with the West, as they were generally believed to be “harmful” to the communist system and “contagious” for citizens of communist countries, and therefore inappropriate. As a result, Polish scholars experienced many barriers to their academic lives during the Cold War.

Political and administrative obstacles: a general background

The first type of barriers and obstacles faced by Polish sinologists might be simply labeled as financial limitations. For example, access to convertible currencies was restricted, and that barred many academics from attending conferences in the free world and participating in exchange programs with Western universities, research centers, and, in general, academic societies. From both the political and ideological points of view, it was much easier for Polish scholars to participate in scientific projects implemented in other socialist countries; however, academics in the entire “socialist camp” suffered from the same type of financial restrictions, which significantly limited cooperation among scholars even within the Eastern Bloc states.

The same limitation pertained to access to foreign literature, not only in the field of sinology but also in other areas of Oriental studies. Research and educational institutions did not have sufficient funds in convertible currencies to purchase books and periodicals for their libraries. With hardly any chance to go to the West and purchase new titles, research activity in many fields was paralyzed due to lack of access to relevant literature.

Obtaining a passport was another obstacle to productive scholars, as it was strictly controlled by the state authorities. During the Cold War, citizens of communist countries could not keep their passports at home as travel documents had to be deposited at local Internal Affairs Bureaus, i.e., under close surveillance of the security personnel, and issued only upon their approval. Issuance of passports could be withheld if an academic’s political allegiance and reliability were questioned or labeled as suspicious. Free thinking, i.e., presenting neutral and independent views, was a sufficient reason to get a scholar’s passport application or issuance rejected. Service passports were sometimes issued to high-ranking academics but persons of lesser status² were not eligible for such travel documents and had to apply for private passports.

All academic contacts were subject to strict surveillance and control by security services, which included clandestine informants among university staff. Marxist ideology was imposed on all scholars, and they had to insert proper quotations thereof into their works. Publications were approved only after meticulous screening by the Office of Press, Publications and Spectacles (a state censorship office). At the time of tensions in the relationship between Moscow and Beijing interference by censors was particularly frequent and perturbing. Academic trips to China, fellowships, and student scholarships could only be carried out under strict control by Polish communist authorities.

Under communism, all texts had to undergo a strict censorship check, which imposed immediate restrictions on freedom of research and speech. There was hardly any possibility to conduct objective and neutral research in the field of political studies, as all the analyses and prognoses had to follow the “correct” political line of the state. In the 1950s, scholars and educators were not allowed to say even a single critical word about China because the People’s Republic of China (PRC) enjoyed the status of a friendly socialist state with Poland. That changed in the 1960s and 1970s during the Cultural Revolution, when there was no way to say even one positive word about China because the state deemed it an “unfriendly regime,” and only vicious criticism could be heaped upon the country, its leaders, its system, and its politics by scholars in Poland. That politicized classification was also a precondition for research in any area within the subject of sinology, i.e., history, literature, social studies, arts, economics, and even linguistics (e.g., the use of the pinyin transcription system³).

Institutionalized academic contacts

After the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, official relations were established between the new Chinese state and communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. On October 4, 1949, Poland recognized the PRC as the fourth communist country after the USSR, Bulgaria, and Romania. Contacts were set within a framework of official agreements as all activities had to be strictly formalized under the communist system. Poland was the first Central European country to sign a cultural cooperation agreement with the PRC on April 3, 1953. The agreement referred to various forms of academic, research, and educational cooperation; exchange of professors, lecturers, and students; translation of scientific reports and publications; as well as language teaching and training.

The Department of Sinology at the University of Warsaw seized the opportunity to establish and develop contacts with academic and educational institutions of the new Chinese state in the early 1950s. Students from the University of Warsaw participated in study tours and attended scholarships in China. Small groups of students were also sent every year to various Chinese universities and cities for full-time studies not only on languages and Chinese culture but also on technical subjects. Chinese lecturers started coming to the University of Warsaw to teach Chinese language in the Department of Sinology, which was a major step forward in Chinese studies.

As a result, first translations of Chinese classical and modern literature soon appeared in Poland. Some literary works were translated from Western languages and from Russian, but most of them were prepared by Polish sinologists. Over the time span between 1950 and 1965, more than 50 titles of Chinese literature were published in Poland and their combined issue amounted to approximately 1 million copies.

In exchange, over 120 Polish literary works by some 70 authors were published in China with 500,000 copies between 1950 and 1965. These translations were prepared by Chinese translators, based not on Polish originals but on earlier translations into other languages (English, German, French, Russian, Japanese, Esperanto). The main criterion for translation into Chinese was not only the value of Polish cultural heritage but also ideology as publications presented to Chinese readers had to fit into correct ideological norms of the Chinese communist state. That is why some titles included had no or very little literary value and today seem completely forgotten.⁴ Moreover, among Chinese translators there were not only men of letters (e.g., Wu Yan, born Sun Jiajin, 1918–2010, and Shi Zhecun, born Shi Depu, 1905–2003) and professional translators (such as Sun Yong, 1902–1983, Yu Sheng, Hua Junhao, Jin Xixia, Fei Mingjun, 1911–1972) but also unqualified people, and that evidently affected the level of translation.⁵ Nevertheless, cultural, educational, and academic exchange between Poland and China was very dynamic and prolific, and contributed to mutual dissemination of knowledge in a very short period of time.

In the mid-1960s, however, things abruptly changed due to the ideological and political rift that developed between China and the Soviet Union in the second half of the 1950s over divergent concepts of socialism and domination in the communist world, and culminated in 1960 with fierce mutual criticism, and a subsequent ideological split and tensions.⁶ Moscow then started exerting pressure on Warsaw and its Eastern European allies, demanding limitation of contacts with China in each and every field. At the same time, China was becoming more and more suspicious of contacts with Eastern Europe due to Beijing’s turn to radical ways of running the country according to Mao Zedong’s (1893–1976) ideas. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which began in mid-1966 and continued all through 1976, brought disruption of almost all cultural, educational, and academic contacts between China and the outside world, including Eastern Europe.

It was only in the early 1980s that slight changes ensued in relations between China and communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. In 1984, a new agreement was signed between Poland and China focused on cultural, scientific, and technical cooperation. Exchange programs between universities, research centers, and academic societies resumed, including visits, short- and long-term scholarships, language courses, and full-time studies.

My adventure with sinology

My interest in sinology started in childhood when I became interested in numismatics. As a very young person, initially I found it difficult to decipher the coins’ scripts that were different from Latin. But it soon turned out that deciphering coins from Muslim countries, India, Tibet, South East Asia, or Caucasus was not so difficult, as encyclopedias and coin catalogs contained alphabet tables and other information on identification marks. However, with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean coins, it was much more complex because not every character was explained even in the most informative catalogs. Under those circumstances, I decided to learn Chinese and Japanese. The only opportunity to accomplish my goal was provided by the University of Warsaw, as it was the only university running courses in both languages.

Enrollment in both departments was conducted every two years. In 1969, when I finished ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of editors
• List of contributors
• The framework of sinology in the Soviet Bloc
• Part I Personal account
• Part II Sinology in domestic and international perspectives
• Part III Sinologists and their research interests
• Index