RUSSIAN TURKESTAN EXPEDITIONS IN S. M. DUDIN'S LETTERS TO S. F. OLDENBURG FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE ST. PETERSBURG BRANCH OF THE ARCHIVE OF THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 1 "Sometimes it seems as if fate is dominating everything connected with this expedition " [Vorobyova-Desyatovskaya, 2011, p. 21] The article contains letters from the classic of scientific photography S. M. Dudin to the outstanding Russian orientalist and organizer of science, Academician (since 1900) S. F. Oldenburg, who at the time of correspondence was the permanent secretary of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (since 1904), and then-the Russian Academy of Sciences (since 1917), the USSR Academy of Sciences (1925-1929). In addition, S. F. Oldenburg was the head of the Russian Turkestan expeditions in 1909-1910 and 1914-1915. The letters contain important information about the development of Russian historical and archaeological research in East Turkestan. Keywords: Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, S. F. Oldenburg, S. M. Dudin, history of science, history of archeology, East Turkestan. The beginning of the 20th century is an interesting period in the development of Russian historical science. The political and administrative expansion of the Russian Empire to the East, on the one hand, caused the need to intensify the exploration of newly acquired lands in Central Asia and adjacent territories, on the other hand, intensified competition with the leading world powers for influence in the region. Not only in big politics, but also in scientific research - geography, archeology, and many branches of Oriental studies - there was a "Big Game"2: collegiality and cooperation were intensively replaced by the desire to isolate certain regions of Central Asia from the presence of competitors (for this aspect, see, in particular: [Bukharin, 2014, p. 169-182]), monopolize certain types of research. In the second half of the 19th century, it became possible to explore the hard-to-reach ... Читать далее