ABSTRACT

This volume provides the first study of the history of sinology (aka China studies) as charted across several communist states during the Cold War.

The People’s Republic of China was created in the first years of the Cold War, with its early history and foreign policy intimately bound up in that larger geopolitical fight. All the seismic changes in China’s geopolitical landscape—from its emergence and close relationship with the Soviet Union, to the Sino–Soviet split and the eventual rapprochement with the United States—resulted in a great deal of interest by journalists, politicians, and scholars. Yet, although scholars across the Soviet Bloc produced an impressive body of work on a range of sinological studies, with rare exceptions most of those scholars and their work remains unknown outside their own intellectual circles. This book redresses this dearth of knowledge of sinological scholarship, providing invaluable and unique glimpses of Soviet Bloc sinologists and their work during the Cold War, including cutting-edge research on lesser-studied communist states such as Poland, Hungary, Mongolia, and others.

International in scope, this book is ideal for scholars and researchers of modern history, Chinese studies, sinology, and the Cold War.

part I|28 pages

Personal account

chapter 1|26 pages

Sinology in Poland during the Cold War era

The perspective of a graduate and practitioner

part II|131 pages

Sinology in domestic and international perspectives

chapter 2|29 pages

In search of modern China

The development of sinology in East and West Germany during the Cold War era 1

chapter 3|26 pages

“We are waging a consistent, uncompromising struggle against Maoism”

Coordinated research on modern China in the Soviet Bloc—a Hungarian perspective

part III|93 pages

Sinologists and their research interests

chapter 7|24 pages

Mapping the interplay between the individual and the structure

The life of a Hungarian sinologist during the Cold War

chapter 8|24 pages

Jaroslav Průšek

Communism, modernization, and Chinese literary studies during the Cold War, 1950s−1960s

chapter 10|19 pages

Enter the dragon

Chinese cinematography in Poland in the Cold War era