SUMMARY:

This article deals with the influence of Yuri N. Roerich (1902–1960), a prominent Russian Oriental studies scholar, on a group of young Soviet Orientalists employed by the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies in the late 1950s. The son of the well-known Russian artist Nikolai K. Roerich, Yuri Roerich left Russia at the age of fifteen and was educated at the University of London, Harvard University, and Collège de France. A brilliant young scholar, who commanded a dozen ancient and modern Asian languages, he took part in his father’s expeditions in Northern India, Tibet, and Mongolia and carried out research on the languages, history, and art of these regions. After spending decades living and working in India, he came to the Soviet Union in 1957, inspired by his family’s emotional attachment to an idealized image of Russia. A protégé of Nikita Khrushchev himself, Roerich was hired by the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies as the head of a newly created section for the study of philosophy and religion of India. Unaccustomed to life in a large city and its Soviet culture and especially to the politics of a Soviet academic institution, Roerich faced a series of obstacles in carrying out his agenda of reviving classic Orientalism in the USSR and died three years after his arrival. Nonetheless, he managed to share his rich knowledge and unique experience with a small but very productive cohort of young Soviet scholars, whom he inspired to devote their lives to the study of ancient India, Sri Lanka, Tibet, and Mongolia.
One of them was Elena Sergeevna Semeka (1931–2022), the mother of the article’s author. Appointed as Roerich’s secretary, she experienced his intellectual, spiritual, and moral influence and witnessed his scholarly accomplishments and setbacks. Using published sources, Semeka’s published reminiscences and interviews, and his own conversations with her, the author documents the predicament of a Western-educated émigré scholar struggling to revive the tradition of classical Russian Oriental studies in a late 1950s Soviet academic institution and the effect of his ideas and character on a group of bright and enthusiastic young scholars.