Доклады Международного конгресса ИИСАА. Т. 1

540 Proceedings of the International Congress on Historiography and Source Studies of Asia and Africa.Vol. I. 2020 Tatiana I. Vinogradova (Russian Academy of Sciences Library, St Petersburg, Russia) V. M. Alekseev and his Chinese Mentors (New Archive Data) Summary: Vassily Mikhailovich Alekseev (1881–1951) was an outstanding Russian sinologist, translator, and a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Since his studies in China in 1906–1909, he had a rich experience in attract- ing Chinese mentors (xiansheng) for learning the Chinese language, ancient and modern (reading newspapers), studying classical literature, popular beliefs and arts. The mentors participated in the V. M. Alekseev’s phonetic experiments, helped him to study his collections of popular print nianhua. Quite a lot of the scholar’s notes about working with Chinese mentors can be found in his published diaries, but a lot of valuable materials still remain in the archives. First of all, it concerns the Fund 820 of the St Petersburg branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (academician V. M. Alekseev’s fund). Among peculiar archival sources is the so-called Sinological File stored in the Library of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, viz. the thematic catalogue of all Alekseev’s papers, which he compiled himself. Xiansheng ’s materials are also stored in the archives of the museums, where the academician’s collections are kept. The main goal of this article is to put together as much information as possible about the documents concerning the Chinese mentors from various Saint Petersburg institutions and to discuss ways of using these valuable materials. Short entries from the Sinological File contain information that is not available in the scholar’s diaries and official reports. First, there are the mentors’ names in the original hieroglyphic writing, which gives us a chance to learn something about these people from Chinese sources. Scattered information from the Sinological File and Archive materials makes possible to restore programmes of studies, which he compiled for himself, and later made them the basis of the programmes of his own University teaching. Very interesting are many evidences of personal relationships between the student and mentors — private correspondence, gifts and verses exchanges. Vassily Alekseev continued to receive letters from some of his teachers many years after the end of his studies in China. Special attention deserves the handwritten heritage of the Chinese mentors — their comments on the subjects of the Chinese popular prints. More than two thousand handwritten documents of V. M. Alekseev’s xiansheng are held now in the State Hermitage, State Museum of the History of Religion and St Petersburg branch of theArchive of the RussianAcademy of Sciences. Until now only a small part of these materials has been published. The least known are manuscripts from