All-Ukrainian Learned Association of Oriental Studies

All-Ukrainian Learned Association of Oriental Studies (Всеукраїнська наукова асоціяція сходознавства; Vseukrainska naukova asotsiiatsiia skhodoznavstva). A scholarly society that was founded in Kharkiv in 1926 and had branches in Kyiv and Odesa. It had two departments: the department of politics and economics, with a Soviet section and a Far East section, and the department of history and ethnology, with art, archeological, linguistic, and historical-literary-economic sections. The association published a scholarly journal—Skhidnii svit (1927–30, called Chervonyi skhid in 1930–1)—and a series of works on the East. It organized a number of conferences (1927 and 1929), exhibitions, and expeditions, including an expedition to study the Greeks of the Mariupol region. Special attention was devoted to relations between Ukraine and Turkey in the 17th–18th century. In Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Odesa the association ran the school Ukrainian Courses of Oriental Studies, which by 1929 had an enrollment of over 250 students. The association was headed by Oleksander Shlikhter, O. Gladstern, Yan Riappo, and L. Velychko. In 1927 its membership was 152, and included such scholars as Pavlo Ritter, Vladyslav Buzeskul, Stepan Rudnytsky, Andrii Kovalivsky, Antin Syniavsky (president of the Kyiv branch), Aleksandr Tomson (president of the Odesa branch), Ahatanhel Krymsky, Fedir I. Myshchenko, and V. Bozhko. By 1929 there were 193 full members (83 in Kyiv, 60 in Kharkiv, and 50 in Odesa) and 158 associate members. In 1930 the association established the Ukrainian Research Institute of Oriental Studies, which had Turkish, Persian, and Arabic departments and commissions on Oriental ideology, national and colonial problems, and the history of Ukrainian-Turkish relations. The association was abolished in 1933, and a large number of its members suffered political persecution. (See also Oriental studies.)

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]