Apollon Davidson

• Affiliation: Higher School of Economics
  
• Address: Russian Federation, Moscow

This article covers the following issues. The reasons why and how the African studies were born and existing in Moscow (late 1920th – 1937). Who were the first researchers for African studies and in what activities they were involved. How and what was the reason why this epoch came to an end tragically in 1937. What lessons could be learned today from that tragedy. Alack, no one of those researchers for African studies published the memoires, except Endre Sik who devoted to that period of his life a small part of his memoirs published in Hungary in 1970. Not only that length of time had a tragic end, but it was also banished to oblivion for the decades. The article is founded on the documents from archives and evidences which were delivered to its author by the Africanists of that epoch – E. Sik and A. Z. Zusmanovich. The author examines the history of African studies in the framework of the Comintern, including the first Program for the study of African problems (1929) and the activities of the Department of Africa at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East and of the African Cabinet at the Research Association for the study of national and colonial problems. Special attention is paid to the personal fates of the first Russian Africanists. The history of the early period of Russian African studies convincingly shows how new directions in historical, social or political studies could be created and disappeared by the decisions of Stalin's authorities to such extent that even the memory of them was lost.