Soviet African studies is still considered very young. However, it has its own traditions and very noticeable ones. Even the earliest stages of its development are already being written about a lot abroad .1 The Soviet Africanists themselves, in fact, did not deal with the history of the development of this science in our country , 2 and almost nothing has been published about its origin and initial periods so far. Now is the time to look back on the path we have traveled, evaluate the choice of goals and the effectiveness of methods.

But the history of science, especially at its origins, is usually the history of the scientists who created it. And if we talk about Soviet African studies, then its birth is inseparable from the names of D. A. Olderogge, I. I. Potekhin, E. Schick. A serious analysis of their activities should not only shed light on the history of this science, but also help to understand the prospects for its further development.

This article is dedicated to one of the organizers of Soviet African studies, the compiler of the first program for its development, the author of a number of works, and above all the first Marxist work on the history of the entire "Black Africa"3 , Endre Shik (Andrey Aleksandrovich Shik), who turned 80 on April 2, 1971. He lived in our country for thirty years - from 1915 to 1945. Like his compatriot, the Hungarian internationalist E. S. Varge, E. Schick

1 See, for example: "Soviet African Studies. 1918 - 1959. An Annotated Bibliography". By M. Holdsworth. Pt. I-II. Oxford University Press. 1961; Top Soviet Africanist. "Contact" (Cape Town), 1959, Vol. II, N 1; R. Italiaander. Schwarze Haut im Roten Griff. Dusseldorf. 1962; J. R. Hooker. Black Revolutionary. George Padmore's Path from Communism to Pan-Africanism. L. 1967; L. A. Holowaty. Selected Bibliography of the Works of I. I. Potekhin, Soviet Africanist, 1947 - 1964, "African Studies Bulletin" (Boston), 1969, Vol. XII, N 3.

2 We can only mention the article by G. A. Nersesov (G. A. Nersesov. The Study of Africa's History in the Soviet Union in the collection "Survey of African Studies in the Soviet Union" (M. 1969, published in English and French).

3 The sources for this article were not only the works of E. Schick and other Soviet Africanists, but also information obtained by the author in 1956-1970 during conversations with many veterans of Soviet African studies and Oriental studies, as well as with African public and political figures who studied under E. Schick at the Communist University of the Workers of the East (KUTV) in the 30s. The author is also deeply grateful to E. Schick himself for the information he provided in conversations in early October 1964, during his last visit to Moscow, and later in letters.

As you know, the expression "Black Africa" is not used now by Soviet scientists, although the equivalents found so far ("Sub-Saharan Africa" or "Western, Tropical and Southern Africa") are very cumbersome. Since the first Soviet Africanists used the expression "Black Africa" (without at all implying contempt for the peoples of the Negroid race), it can obviously be preserved in studies on the history of African studies.

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he became a major scientist during the years of his life and work in Moscow. Returning to his homeland after the defeat of Hitlerism and the fall of the Horthy regime, he was sent to the diplomatic field, became the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary, and now he is the chairman of the All-Hungarian Peace Council. E. Shik's public activity was highly appreciated: in 1968, he was awarded the International Lenin Prize "For Strengthening Peace among Peoples". In recent years, E. Schick has continued to study African' history'. In the 1960s, several editions in Hungarian, English , and French published two volumes of the History of Black Africa, 4 written by him while still in Moscow, and the third volume, devoted to the events after 1945, is being finalized.

The study of" Black Africa " in pre-revolutionary Russia was not systematic. This does not mean that little has been written about it. Information about the countries and peoples of this region was already available in Peter's Geographies5 . The first translated book on this subject appeared under Catherine II .6 For the first time, a large group of Russians - rebellious exiles from Kamchatka - sailed around Africa in the early 1770s. And the first original work about "Black Africa" was published in Russia at the beginning of the last century7 . Later, Russian travelers and scientists made a significant contribution to the study of Africa and its peoples-first of all, the research of E. P. Kovalevsky (1811-1868) in the Nile River basin, V. V. Junker (1840-1892) in the Congo River basin and in the upper Nile, A. K. Bulatovich (1870-1919) - In Ethiopia 8 . In our archives there are many interesting documents on this subject. Books and pamphlets about Africa were published not only in St. Petersburg and Moscow, but even in Borisoglebsk, Yuriev, Tiflis, Yekaterinoslav, Smolensk, and Grodno.

Soviet African studies was born within the framework of Oriental studies. "By the East we mean the entire colonial and semi-colonial world, i.e., not only the yellow continent, but also the black continent ..." 9 wrote Mikhail Pavlovich (M. P. Veltman), chairman of the All-Russian Scientific Association of Oriental Studies, established by the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of December 12, 1920. Of course, in the 1920s, the study of Africa could not have become as urgent a task as the study of Asian countries adjacent to Soviet Russia. Nevertheless, in the first years of Soviet power, works on Africa were published, both prepared in the pre-revolutionary years and written after the victory of the October Revolution. Most often they were articles about the nature of the colonial economy, the struggle for the redivision of the African continent in the magazine "New East", published by the Scientific Association of Oriental Studies, and the weekly "Life of Nationalities", which was the organ of the People's Commissariat for National Affairs.-

4 E. Sik. The History of Black Africa. Vol. I-II. Budapest. 1966.

5 " Geography or a brief description of the earth's circle. Printed by order of the Tsar's Majesty in the Moscow printing house of the Lord's summer of 1710 in the month of March", p. 84; " Amphibious circle brief description from old and new geography. Printed in Moscow, the summer of the Lord 1719, in the month of April", pp. 373, 382-384.

6 "The journey of G. Vaillant to the interior of Africa, through the Cape of Good Hope in 1780, 1781, 1783, 1784 and 1785". Vol. 1-2. Moscow, 1793.

7 "Journey on the sloop Diana from Kronstadt to Kamchatka, made under the command of the fleet of Lieutenant Golovnin in 1807-1811". Moscow, 1961. See chapters: "Sojourn at the Cape of Good Hope" and " Present state of the Cape of Good Hope colony, description of the waters surrounding it, and meteorological observations."

8 A scientific conference held in Moscow in May 1965 was devoted to historical relations between the peoples of Russia and Africa. Its materials were published in English and French: "Russia and Africa", Moscow, 1966.

9 M. P. Pavlovich. History and tasks of new Oriental universities (On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies). "New East", 1925, NN 10-11, p. X.

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There are 10 new features . Some of them are thematically connected with the works of M. Pavlovich "Imperialism and the struggle for the great railway and sea routes of the future" and " The Struggle for Asia and Africa "(in the first edition of 1918 it was called "World War and the struggle for the division of the Black Continent").11 . Many works continued traditional themes of Russian Oriental studies, such as the history, culture and religion of Ethiopia (reports and articles by B. A. Turaev , I. Yu.Krachkovsky 12, as well as a number of publications in the "New East"). It is especially necessary to mention the book of the artist and art critic V. I. Markov "The Art of Negroes", whose conclusions go beyond the purely art-historical framework and can be attributed to the entire history of "Black Africa": "Until now, there was a persistent opinion that Africa, with the exception of Egypt, is poor in terms of artistic antiquities; that it is without history, without legends, without riddles; poorer than fantasy can imagine; what... it has no past and therefore lacks poetic charm... But this opinion can now be treated with distrust. West Africa is rich, both in terms of history and in terms of art... Getting acquainted with the works of various expeditions, we are surprised by the legends, monuments, and antiquities that are discovered among the tribes of Africa. It turns out that even here there was a past - rich, strong, fabulous"13 .

For the first time in the history of Soviet Oriental studies, the problems of African studies began to be discussed on the pages of the journal "New East" 14: the works of foreign Africanists, primarily L. Frobenius, K. Meinhoff, D. Westerman and other German scientists, were critically considered. In an effort to identify the main trend of the then stage of development of African studies, Leningrad Professor of Ancient Philology B. L. Bogaevsky wrote: "There is a noticeable tendency in science to introduce the study of Negro culture into the system of knowledge that treats the culture of the peoples of Europe and Asia from the most remote prehistoric times to the present day. The desire to move Africa out of its isolated position in the general knowledge system is a sign of the times." Making this conclusion, Bogaevsky relied not only on the works of West Africanists, but also on the research of domestic scientists. He recalled that even B. A. Turaev in the" History of the Ancient East " repeatedly traced the connections of Ancient Egypt with the peoples who lived in ancient Egypt.-

10 In the English colonies of Tropical Africa. "Life of Nationalities", 1922, NN 6-7 (12-13); T. A. New French policy in the East. Ibid.; V. Dityakin. French colonies and their role in the economy of the mother countries. "New East", 1925, N 7; V. Balabushevich. Colored and white labor in South Africa. "International labor Movement", 1927, No. 42; G. Dashevsky. On the Black Continent. "World Economy and World Politics", 1927, NN 2-3; I. L. Popov-Lensky. The agrarian question and native politics in South Africa. "Novy Vostok", 1928, NN 20-21; it is the same. The agrarian question and British imperialism in East Africa. "New East", 1928, NN 23-24; V. N. Khudadov. French West Africa. Novy Vostok, 1929, No. 25.

11K. Troyanovsky. A new division of Africa after the Peace of Versailles. "New East", 1922, N 1; V. Kaisarov. Railways in Africa. "New East", 1924, N 6; V. Khudadov. Railways of Africa. "Novy Vostok", 1924, N 5; it is the same. Land and air routes across the Sahara. Novy Vostok, 1928, NN 20-21.

12 B. A. Turaev. Coptic manuscripts of the Asian Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Izvestiya of the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences, Vol. XIII, series VI, January-June, NN I-II, part 1, Fri. 1919; his. Coptic, Syriac, and Samaritan manuscripts. In: "Asian Museum at the Russian Academy of Sciences". Ptgr. 1920; I. Y. Krachkovsky. Ethiopian manuscripts. In: "The Asian Museum at the Russian Academy of Sciences. 1818 - 1918. Brief reminder". Ptgr. 1920; his own. Abyssinian magic scroll from the collection of F. I. Uspensky. "Reports of the USSR Academy of Sciences". Series of V. L. 1928, N 8.

13 V. Markov (V. I. Matvey). The art of Negroes. Ptgr. 1919, p. 17.

14 A. T. Rec. on the book L. Woolf. Empire and Commerce in. Africa. A Study in Economic Imperialism (1922, No. 1); B. Bogaevsky, Review of the book by L. Frobeni'us. Das Unbekanmte Afrika (1926, NN 10-11); his. The Negro and New Problems in African Studies ( 1924, N6).

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Marr emphasized the need to study the historical culture of the peoples of the Negroid race 15 .

But it would be wrong to associate the birth of Soviet African studies simply with an increased interest in the culture and history of Africa. It was caused primarily by a completely new approach to the present and past of the peoples of this continent. The main thing was to see and understand the revolutionary potentials of the African peoples, their place in the world revolutionary process. V. I. Lenin's telephone message of April 18, 1922, concerning the armed insurrection of the miners of the Transvaal, eloquently testifies to this. V. I. Lenin proposed to raise before the Executive Committee of the Comintern "the question of sending a special correspondent or several correspondents from the Comintern to South Africa to collect the most detailed information and the most complete set of local literature, both legal and illegal related to the recently suppressed workers ' uprising. This should be done as soon as possible... " 16 .

There were no opportunities to send representatives of the Comintern to African countries in the early 1920s. But from 1920 to 1921, figures of the workers ' and national liberation movements began to come from Africa to Moscow to join the Comintern. Contacts with workers ' and anti-colonial political organizations in African countries contributed to the development of Soviet African studies. An important role was played by the reports and articles delivered by delegates from Africa, for example, D. A. Jones (1883-1924), who in 1921 became the first representative from Africa in the Executive Committee of the Comintern. 17 One of the articles written by Sidney P. Bunting, a delegate of the Communist Party of South Africa to the Fourth Congress of the Comintern (1873-1936), V. I. Lenin, according to Bunting himself, read in manuscript 18 . The New East magazine published an article by S. P. Bunting in 1922, and an article by E. S. Sachs, a representative of South Africa, in 1926 .19 Among the first popular pamphlets that the Scientific Association of Oriental Studies decided to publish in 1922 was D. A. Jones 'pamphlet" Negroes of Africa and America " 20 . The study of "national revolutionary movements on the black and yellow continents" was considered one of the main tasks that the Association of Oriental Studies should undertake first21 . The N. N. Narimanov Institute of Oriental Studies, established in 1921,22 had to deal with the same problem. When studying the liberation movements of Africa, Soviet scientists faced great difficulties. It is no coincidence that only a few serious studies were published in the early and mid-1920s, and only the most recent developments were considered in them23 .

15 B. Bogaevsky. The Negro and new problems in African Studies, p. 377, 384 - 385, 387, 389.

16 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 54, pp. 242-243.

17 and. Jones. What we in South Africa knew about the October Revolution. "Red Petrograd. 4th anniversary of the October Revolution". Ptgr. 1921; D. A. Jones. Workers ' revolt in South Africa. The Communist International, 1922, No. 21. The Miners ' revolt. Red International of Trade Unions, 1922, No. 4 (15).

18 See: S. P. Bunting. Lenin: Personal Impressions. "The International" (Johannesburg). 25.I.1924.

19 Banning. White and Black Workers in South Africa (1922, No. 2); E. S. Sachs. The Union of South Africa (1926, NN 13-14).

20 See S. V. Activity of the Scientific Association of Oriental Studies. Novy Vostok, 1922, No. 1.

21 Mih. Pavlovich. Tasks of the All-Russian Scientific Association of Oriental Studies. "New East", 1922, book 1, p. 11.

22 M. P. Pavlovich. History and tasks of new Oriental Universities, p. VIII.

23 Larger studies were devoted to the events in North Africa, and in particular to the Rif tribal uprising in Morocco (1921-1926). Among the numerous works about this uprising is a book written by M. V. Frunze: M. Mireki. European Civilizers and Morocco, Moscow, 1925.

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A vigorous turn to the study of Africa dates back to the late 1920s and early 1930s, when permanent cadres of Soviet Africanists began to form. This was due to the intensification of the anti-imperialist struggle, the emergence of national liberation organizations throughout the colonial world, and in particular in African countries, and the strengthening of their contacts with the international labor movement. This is evidenced by the participation of African delegates in the work of the International Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism (Brussels, February 1927), as well as the activities of the Anti-Imperialist League created at this congress.

The development of Soviet African studies was strongly influenced by the decisions of the Sixth Congress of the Comintern (1928), which adopted the theses "The Revolutionary Movement in colonial and semi-colonial countries". KUTWe, the Research Association for the Study of National and Colonial Problems (NIANKP), the International Agrarian Institute, and a number of scientific institutions in Leningrad (the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Leningrad University, and the Institute of Language and Thought) attached great importance to the study of the political life of Africa, as well as ethnographic and linguistic problems of this continent.

The organization of research on African problems at NIANC and the International Agricultural Institute, as well as the teaching of relevant courses at KUTVe, was entrusted to E. Schick, who headed the Department of Africa at KUTVe and the African Cabinet at NIANC. The choice was not accidental. E. Shik by that time had a wide range of experience in political and scientific activities. In 1915, as a captured officer of the Austro - Hungarian army in a prisoner-of-war camp in Transbaikalia, after the October Revolution, he decided to give his strength to the struggle for the victory of socialism. Even in his youth, he was influenced by socialist ideas and the labor movement. He vehemently opposed the persecution of strikers. In 1913, during the rise of the strike movement in Hungary, he wrote a pamphlet entitled " Is the Strike Persecuted?" In the same year, he defended his doctoral dissertation "The Strike and Hungarian Criminal Law". On the eve of the war, E. Schick was engaged in journalistic activities and literary translations in Budapest. In addition to Hungarian, he knew Russian, English, French, German, and Latin. During the difficult years, he earned a living by teaching these languages. The first years of E. Shik's life in Soviet Russia are similar to the fate of Ya. Hasek and many other internationalists who gave their strength to strengthen the revolutionary power in Siberia. E. Shik joined the RCP (b) in March 1920. He worked in Verkhneudinsk (Ulan-Ude), Chita, Irkutsk and several other Siberian cities, edited the Hungarian newspaper Forradalom published in Irkutsk, led the foreign department of the newspaper Sovetskaya Sibir, and was a member of the Revolutionary Tribunal of the Far Eastern Republic24 . In the early 1920s, E. Shik moved to Moscow, graduated from the Institute of the Red Professorship, worked in the Comintern, taught in Kutva, in the Lenin and Higher Party Schools, from 1925 he taught classes with Black students who came from America, and closely studied the racial problem. His commitment to the ideas of socialism and internationalism, combined with his excellent abilities, broad education, considerable experience, and already well-established interest in the problems of colonial oppression and the national liberation struggle, gave him a good reputation.

24 E. Shik devoted one of the volumes of his memoirs to the Siberian period of his life (see E. Shik. Years of Testing, Moscow, 1969).

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a framework for a systematic study of Africa's problems from a Marxist perspective.

Still, the task was extremely difficult. If the study of China, India, Iran, or Egypt had a long tradition, then for "Black Africa" it was necessary to start by identifying the problems that need to be studied.

E. Shik has an important contribution to the development of the first Soviet program for studying Africa. He completed this work in a very short time, literally within a few months. The program was presented on April 13, 1929, for discussion by the research circle created at the NIANKP to study the socio-economic problems of Black Africa. A significant part of E. Schick's report, entitled "Towards the formulation of a Marxist study of the socio-economic problems of Black Africa", was then published in the NIANKP organ, the journal "Revolutionary East".

E. Schick assumed that the study of Africa was of great political importance, since " Black Africa is one of the most likely sites of future clashes between imperialist powers, as well as one of the most likely hotbeds of revolutionary uprisings of oppressed peoples against imperialism in the near future."25 The program is based on socio-economic problems. This corresponded to the tasks assigned to KUTV and NIANKP. "Our task is to study the socio-political problems of modern Black Africa. But in order to understand the present, we must first study the past. " 26 Thus, E. Schick took the side of those Orientalists and historians who protested against the very widespread, nihilistic attitude to the study of history in those years, and emphasized the need to analyze those deep historical layers in which the most important problems of social relations, economics, and politics are rooted. E. Schick wrote about the tasks of studying African history: "In the field of studying the history of Black Africa, we have a lot of work to do. Our task is to study and write the history of Black Africa for the first time, for the whole "science" of Black African history has so far been the science of justifying its conquest by white colonialists... Not only do we have no objective science about the history of Black Africa in general, but there is not even an objective study of a single moment in this history."27 . In 1929, this thesis was extremely important, since the study of the social life of Africa was just beginning.

E. Schick did not confine himself to stating the situation. He was the first in Soviet historical science to outline an approximate periodization of the history of Africa and specific tasks for studying each period. He proposed the following periodization: 1) the history of Black Africa before the invasion of the first conquerors; 2) the era of conquest and colonization by capitalists (before imperialism); 3) the era of imperialism. The last period of e. Chic was divided into two sub-periods-before and after the First World War. To study the period before the invasion of Europeans, Schick outlined two main groups of questions: "(a) The history of the ancient Negro states and their cultures, the reasons for their emergence, rise and decline - (c) refutation of the fables about the inferiority of Negroes and their inability to culture, and (b) The history of migrations, mixing

25 A. Shik. Towards the formulation of a Marxist study of the socio-economic problems of Black Africa. "Revolutionary East", 1930, No. 8, p. 86.

26 Ibid., p. 89.

27 Ibid.

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and wars between different tribes of Negroes, as well as between Negroes and other peoples-in refutation of legends about the purity of the Negro race, fables about "racial feeling and racial hatred" and theories justifying the invasion of colonizers. Special attention should be paid to the history of South Africa, which was falsified by the British to justify their conquests. " 28 For the" era of capitalist conquest and colonization of the pre-imperialist period", Schick considered it most important to study the history of the emergence, "flourishing" and elimination of the slave trade; the history of the re-emigration of American Negroes to Sierra Leone, Liberia and other countries of West Africa; the history of the imperialist "division" of the African continent. the resistance of native tribes to the capitalist seizure of their territory, the history of native riots and uprisings, about which bourgeois historians are either silent or give falsified information and completely distorted ideas. " 29 More detailed and specific tasks were set for researchers of the events of the XIX-XX centuries. and especially recent history.

E. Chic urged to see the diversity of Africa: "Black Africa" is not a single whole. Oma includes many different countries, each of which has its own special history, special economy, special social relations. " 30 Emphasizing the multi-complex nature of the economy of a number of African countries, he took this into account when formulating the tasks of their study. A special section of the program was devoted to the connection "that exists between the study of Black Africa and the study of the Negro question in other countries." He believed that "the study of Africa is extremely important and necessary for solving the Negro problems of other countries," and "on the other hand, the need to study the American Negro question for African Negroes is no less obvious." It is interesting to note that he was already paying attention to the germs of Negro-African "racial chauvinism". He wrote that "to refute Black racial chauvinism (Garvey)" it is necessary to study the history of the migrant colonies in Sierra Leone and Liberia, where, as is known, the displaced Negroes did not mix with the aborigines. And "to overcome the theory of supra-class racial solidarity of oppressed African peoples, it is necessary to study the class differentiation of American Negroes." 31
Looking at this program now, more than four decades later, we can say that for the first time it set out the tasks of studying the history of Africa based on proletarian, anti-imperialist, and consistently anti-racist positions. Most of the propositions formulated by E. Schick in 1929 remain relevant to this day32 .

The first Soviet Africanists did not initially specialize exclusively in the study of history. In Leningrad, D. A. Olderogge simultaneously studied the problems of linguistics and ethnography. Another Leningrad scholar, I. L. Snegirev (1907-1946), studied "Black Africa" as a linguist. The Leningrad linguist N. V. Yushmanov (1896-1946) also dealt exclusively with language problems. Moscow's Africanists, united around the African Kabi-

28 Ibid., pp. 90-91.

29 Ibid., p. 91.

30 Ibid., p. 97.

31 Ibid., pp. 99-100.

32 Some of the issues discussed at the time were undeservedly forgotten, such as the relationship between African studies and the study of the Negro question in the Americas.

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There is no NIANKP, a closely related Department of Africa in KUTVe and the International Agrarian Institute, and from 1936 to 1937, when these institutions and organizations were abolished, around the corresponding institutes of the USSR Academy of Sciences, focused their attention on socio - economic and political problems. Simultaneously with E. Schick, Yu. V. Gerngross began studying Africa. Under the pseudonym "South", he has published several nonfiction, popular science and research books, pamphlets and articles on socio-economic and political issues in Africa .33 Among those who came to African studies in the early 30s were I. I. Potekhin (1903-1964), later, at the turn of the 50s and 60s, the first director of the Institute of Africa of the USSR Academy of Sciences, A. Z. Zusmanovich (1902-1965), F. S. Gaivoronsky (1904 - 1941).

In the 1920s and 1930s, Moscow Afrikanists were able to collaborate on a daily basis with African students who came to study at KUTV in 1928-1937. The NIANCP Africa Cabinet received a vast and diverse body of literature, published both in the West and in Africa itself. The Cabinet received not only the largest newspapers (like the Star or Cape Times), but even the provincial Natal Mercury. In the Africa Office, extensive abstract work was carried out: summaries of current events, press reviews, and bibliographies were compiled .34 The Cabinet staff prepared articles and materials for the Revolutionary East magazine and the collections Materials on National and Colonial Problems, and provided assistance to The Negro Worker magazine, an organ of the International Committee of Negro Workers, published from the late 1920s until 1937, initially in Hamburg, and then after the Nazis came to power, in Copenhagen, Antwerp, New York, and Paris. Many of the works were created in collaboration with leaders of the workers ' and national liberation movements of African countries who were studying at Kutva and the Lenin School. Similar work was carried out at the International Agrarian Institute, but it focused mainly on the problems of agriculture and agrarian crises.

The role of E. Schick, both as a scientist, as a teacher, and as an organizer of science, was very great in all this. He was associated with all Moscow organizations and institutions that studied socio-economic and political problems in Africa. The main place of his work in 1929-1933 was the International Agrarian Institute, and in 1933-1936-the editorial and publishing department of the Comintern. In addition, in 1928-1930. he led scientific and educational work on African problems in KUTWe and NIANKP, in 1928-1930 and in 1932-1937 he gave lectures to African students in KUTWe, and also collaborated in the eastern secretariat of the Comintern and in the Lenin School. Among the Moscow Africanists, E. Schick rightfully occupied a leading position. He spoke on the most difficult issues, wrote the largest works, around which heated discussions were tied. In 1930, his large study "Ra" was published.-

33 Yug. Imperializm na Chernom kontinent [Imperialism on the Black Continent], Moscow, 1929. The Union of South Africa in the post-war years. "World Economy and World Politics", 1930, NN 8-9; his. British colonies in East Africa. Moscow-L. 1931; his. South African Union. Essays. M.-L., 1931; his own. Imperialism and Colonies, Moscow, 1932. The Gold Coast in 1934. "Materials on national and colonial problems", No. 3 (27). Moscow, 1935; his. The Italo-Abyssinian War and imperialist contradictions. "Materials on national and colonial problems", No. 7 (31). Moscow, 1935.

34 The nature of the work of the African Cabinet can be judged not only from the printed publications and memoirs of its employees, but also from its working materials, preserved, in particular, in the personal archive of I. I. Potekhin.

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the racial problem and Marxism " 35, in which the main racist theories were criticized and the racial problem was considered in detail for the first time in Soviet scientific literature as a social problem. In the early 1930s, a number of Schick's works appeared on agricultural problems in Africa .36
The main merit of the Soviet Africanists of that time was that for the first time in world science, they considered African peoples in their works as a subject (and not just as an object) of the historical process. They assumed that the African peoples should play an active role in the world revolutionary movement, and sought to understand how this role could manifest itself. Therefore, they put forward completely new topics for their research work. These were primarily the problems of the disintegration of traditional society and the formation of classes, including the proletariat, the organization of the struggle for social and national liberation; the impact of the world economic crisis of 1929-1933 on the life of African countries. As for the ways to solve these problems, they were determined by the breadth of horizons, scientific training, and research skills of each of the scientists. Some tried to draw fundamental conclusions based on the analysis of only the most recent events, while others believed that the correct answer can only be given as a result of studying a large historical layer.

E. Shik paid the greatest attention to the study of history. This was evident not only in the program for the development of African studies discussed above and in the lecture course on the history of Africa, but also in his works devoted to various problems. From the standpoint of historicism, he also considered the question of the possibilities of developing a revolutionary movement in Africa .37 In an effort to provide "a real explanation of the emergence and application of various ways of colonial exploitation by the imperialists of the peoples of Black Africa," 38 he drew on extensive historical material about the formation of the colonial economy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Gradually, the study of the history of Africa became E. Schick's main occupation. From 1937-1938, he became an employee of the Institute of History and later the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences. E. Shik, as a professor at Moscow State University, first taught a course on African history at the Faculty of History in 1939/40. He gave a systematic account of the history of Tropical and Southern Africa, which was included in the university textbook "New History of colonial and dependent Countries" (M. 1940). E. Shik actively collaborated with A. A. Huber, I. M. Reyoner, V. B. Lutsky, N. M. Goldberg and other leading Soviet Orientalists in the author's team of this textbook. Together with the leading Soviet historians, E. Shik participated in the preparation of the "World History"in the pre-war years.

The great work of E. Schick on the history of Africa can be judged from the materials stored in the Archive of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Here are numerous manuscripts of his articles, brochures, brochures, programs,

35 See Proceedings of the Research Association for the Study of National and Colonial Problems. Issue VI. Moscow, 1930. A Hungarian-language edition of this book is currently being prepared in Budapest.

36 A. Shik. The agrarian policy of the imperialists in the Black African colonies. "Agrarian problems", 1932, NN 5-6; his. The agrarian crisis in Negro Africa. "Agrarian crisis". Book 4. M. 1933; his own. The agrarian question in the Southern Administrative Region. Collection of articles "Agrarian question in the East", Moscow, 1933.

37 A. Shik. Black Africa on a revolutionary path. "Revolutionary East", 1930, N 8.

38 A. Shik. Agrarian policy of the imperialists in the Black African colonies, p. 99.

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plans and sections written for World History and other major collective works. Among them are the long essays "Tropical and Southern Africa after the World War", "Tropical and Southern Africa at the beginning of the XX century", the pamphlet "Italian imperialism in Abyssinia", articles about British South Africa, British East Africa, British West Africa, French Equatorial Africa, Madagascar, Cameroon and Togo, the Belgian Congo, Portuguese possessions in Africa, Spanish Guinea, Liberia, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Eritrea. In these works, E. Schick sought to fulfill the program of research on the history of Africa, which he himself formulated back in 1929. At the same time, he primarily sought to show the past of African peoples, and not only the affairs of the "white" person on the" black " continent, On the basis of these works, the "History of Black Africa"39 was later created, which covers the period from pre-colonial times to the beginning of the Second World War. at the end of the war, working at the Institute of Ethnography. It was supposed to be his doctoral dissertation.

Schick's work is characterized by the breadth of coverage of events (chronological frames - several centuries, geographical-dozens of countries and many peoples), depth and originality of revealing the problems of African history. E. Schick shows that the development of African peoples was determined by the same laws as the development of peoples of other continents, that African peoples cannot be considered "non-historical", because they have their own rich, interesting past. Unique material was collected by E. Schick on the history of African revolutionary movements of the XX century. Now this monumental work of E. Schick is widely known. In a number of African countries, this work is recognized as a training tool40 .

One can only marvel at the high level of knowledge of Africa that E. Schick was at during the Moscow period of his life, if his work, even after being published almost two decades late, retains its scientific significance. The authors of reviews of this work, as a rule, do not even imagine that these volumes were written long before the period when interest in Africa sharply increased around the world and African studies began to develop rapidly.

E. Schick has not only the honor of creating the first Marxist generalizing work on the history of Africa. He was the first to study the history of Russian African studies. One of the results of this work is an article that appeared in the journal" Soviet Ethnography " after E. Schick's return to Hungary. Entitled "From the History of Russian African Studies", it is dedicated to the famous Russian traveler E. P. Kovalevsky, who in 1847-1848 explored the upper reaches of the Nile. E. Schick noted that the facts and observations given by E. P. Kovalevsky (we are talking about the work of E. P. Kovalevsky "Journey to Inner Africa". Vols. I-II. St. Petersburg, 1849) "are of great value for elucidating the ethnographic profile and historical past of a particular African people, for solving this or that general problem in the ethnography of Africa"41 . E. Schick especially emphasized the anti-racist orientation of E. P. Kovalevsky's book. "The significance of Kovalevsky's work, its great value from the point of view of ethnographic science, does not lie in the fact that it is written by the author... in the narrative chapters of his book, and in the remarkable seventh chapter of volume II, which bears the name of

39 For reviews of Soviet authors, see the journals Voprosy Istorii (1969, No. 4) and Peoples of Asia and Africa (1969, No. 3).

40 See Izvestia, 14. XI. 1964.

41 A. A. Shik. From the history of Russian African Studies. "Soviet Ethnography", 1946, N 2, pp. 174-175.

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the title is "Negroes". This chapter provides an unprecedented critical analysis of the racist view of Negroes"42. E. Schick compared the information provided by Kovalevsky about African peoples with various racist "theories" and showed how these theories are refuted by specific observations of E. P. Kovalevsky.

Of course, not all the works of the first Soviet Africanists have stood the test of time. They worked in very difficult conditions. The inability to visit Africa, the lack of extensive contacts with foreign scientists, and the "nihilistic" attitude to history characteristic of the Africanists of the 1930s could not but affect the results of their activities. As a result, Africa and its past were often subject to categories and concepts that were not typical of it. At the same time, the first Soviet Africanists have great achievements, and the main one is that they defined a new, Marxist approach to Africa and its history. In their scientific works, they proceeded from the idea that African peoples should play an active role in revolutionary processes that renew the world, and sought to understand what this role could be. Therefore, they put forward in their research a number of questions that are completely new to the world of African studies. Today's problems of studying African history are closely intertwined with those that were so hotly discussed in Moscow four decades ago, and the program of studying Africa outlined by E. Schick in 1929 still retains its significance.

42 Ibid., p. 175.

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