The process of development of the St. Petersburg school of Vietnamese studies (Leningrad) in the history of Russia’s Vietnamese studies

Abstract

 The teaching and learning of Vietnamese language in Leningrad started in the early 1930s. On December13, 1931, one of the chief staff of the Comintern Vera Ya, Vasilyeva appointed comrade J. Minin (whose real name was Nguyen Khanh Toan) and comrade Artsybasheva to the Oriental Institute Leningrad to help teaching Vietnamese language. Prof. Yu. K. Shchutsky played essential roles in this process. Mr. Nguyen Khanh Toan had drafted the first textbooks about Vietnamese language and teaching Vietnamese language for Leningrad’s orientalists that interested in Vietnam. As a result, Leningrad was the first city in the Soviet Union begun to teach Vietnamese. In the late 1930s, Mr. Nguyen Khanh Toan and other Orientalists were suppressed and had to stop teaching Vietnamese as ab impact of revisionism. After the Great patriotic war (1945), thanks to Prof. Nikolay Đ. Andreev the Vietnamese studies program, as well as on other Southeast Asian countries, was reorganized. Soon later, during the 1950s, Prof. Nguyen Tai Can was sent from Hanoi to Leningrad to manage the teaching of Vietnamese language at Leningrad State University. Prof. Nguyen Tai Can laid a solid foundation for the studies on Vietnam and until now, this academic school continues emerging in Saint-Petersburg city (Leningrad). During the last 90 years from the first program of teaching Vietnamese and 66 years from the restoration of Vietnamese studies program in Leningrad / St. Petersburg, there were nearly a dozen successful experts were trained in the subjects of sciences, education, foreign policies, and economics. They make significant contributions to strengthen and develop Vietnamese relationship with the Soviet Union in the past and with nowadays Russia Federation.