IN the very heart of Moscow, close to the Kremlin and Red Square, in an old mansion, there is the Center for Oriental Literature of the Russian State Library. In Soviet times, it was known as Lenin's Library (Leninka).
The centre was created in November 1993. It manages a collection of more than 900,000 printed items from the 16th century to the present in 230 languages of the peoples of Asia and Africa. The volume of all collections in the Russian State Library exceeds 47.4 million units.
These comprise books, magazines, newspapers, ongoing publications, and separate categories of cartographic, music, art and speech recordings (on CD and DVD).
A part of the collection consists of language dictionaries, monographs and scientific papers on oriental studies, general reference books and encyclopaedias in Russian and other European languages.
An additional collection is distributed in seven reading halls of the centre and is used in the public domain.
Among them are the halls of Japanese literature, literature of the countries of the Near and Middle East and Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Chinese and languages ​​of Central Asia, Hebrew and Yiddish, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and Commonwealth of Independent States countries.
The Malay language collection counts more than 10,000 books and magazines, including some rare books like A Dictionary English and Malayo by Thomas Bowrey (London, 1701) and Malaica Collectanea Vocabularia or Collection of Dictionaries of the Malay Language: German-Malay, Latin-Malay, Malay-Latin (Batavia, 1707).
Both are in the list of the most precious books of the Russian Federation. It is worth mentioning that there are some Malay manuscripts in the Russian State Library.
One of them, Syair Almarhum Baginda Sultan Abu Bakar di Negeri Johor by Na Tian Piet, was prepared for publication by Associate Professor of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Dr Noriah Mohamed in 2001 with the help of Yayasan Warisan Johor.
The works of modern Malaysian writers and poets are represented, too. The director of the centre, Marina Melanyina, recounts some names, including Keris Mas, Usman Awang, Abdul Samad Said, Shahnon Ahmad, Muhammad Haji Salleh, Anwar Ridhwan, Baha Zain, Kemala, Siti Zainon Ismail and Zurinah Hassan.
Each reading hall is not only a place where readers can use materials from the collections, but is also a cultural and educational centre where anyone can take part in one of many activities — exhibitions, conferences and seminars, including those on Malay literature.
Among the recent events were three exhibitions on Malaysian playwrights (Syed Alwi Syed Hassan, Usman Awang, Nurdin Hassan, Johan Jaaffar, Zakaria Ariffin, Dinsman and Ismail Kassan), Malay dictionaries and Southeast Asian literature, and an international seminar on "Culture of the Nusantara Countries" (2019). Leading Russian orientalists from the Diplomatic Academy of the Foreign Affairs Ministry of the Russian Federation and the Institute of Asian and African Countries of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, as well as representatives from Malaysia and Indonesia took part in the seminar.
The participants listened to papers on the traditional culture, literature and mythology of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Among the guests of honour were Olga Kharlamova,
minister-counsellor of the Russian embassy in Singapore,
and Jeffrey Munir, representative of the Malaysian state corporation Tourism Malaysia in Moscow.
Of course, the pandemic disturbed further activity of the centre, but director Melanyina looks to the future with optimism.
Among the plans is an exhibition of books on Malaysian cuisine. Something to look forward to.
The writer, writing from Russia, is a former lecturer of Universiti Malaya