48th Meeting Moscow, 2005

The 48th annual Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference was held in the outskirts of Moscow, Russia, from 10 to 15 of July, 2005.  According to the list of participants and the programme, more than 70 participants delivered more than 50 papers.

The following summary of the meeting is also the preface to the volume of proceedings.

([p. v], Kinship in the Altaic World. Proceedings of the 48th Permanent International Altaistic Conference, Moscow 10 – 15 July, 2005. Edited by Elena V. Boikova and Rostislav B. Rybakov. Asiatische Forschungen, vol. 150. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006). X + 353 pp. ISBN 3-447-05416-6, ISSN: 0571-320X.)

Preface

The 48th annual Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference was held at the Center for International Cooperation “Olimpiets” in the outskirts of Moscow, Russia, from the 10 to the 15 of July, 2005. The first-ever PIAC Meeting in Russia was held by the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Director of which Rostislav R. Rybakov was the President of the 48th Meeting.

73 specialists, who represented Canada, Czechia, China, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Romania, Russia, Turkey and the U.S.A., took part in the conference. 54 papers were read in 20 sessions. The general theme of the 48th Meeting of the PIAC was “Kinship in the Altaic World.” Most papers presented at the conference were dedicated to this theme.

The participants of the conference had an excursion by bus to Moscow where they visited the State Historical Museum of Russia and were present at the opening ceremony of the exhibition of Oriental Books in the State Library of Foreign Literature. They also had a boat trip on the Moskva River.
The Secretary General of the PIAC, Professor Denis Sinor, was awarded the rank of “Honorary Professor” presented to him by the Academic Council of the Institute of Oriental Studies, RAS.
The Indiana University Award for Altaic Studies went to Professor Sergei Klyashtorny, the head of the Department of Turkic and Mongolian Studies of the St.-Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies.

The organizers of the 48th Meeting of the PIAC were financially supported by the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Foundation for Humanities. The conference itself was carried out thanks to the active participation of the members of the Institute of Oriental Studies – Dr. Ilya Zaitsev, Dr. Tatiana Pang, Dr. Edward Efimov, Dr. Zoya Anaiban, Galina Kuznetsova and others. We express special thanks to Dr. Zoya Shalyapina, Professor Anna Dybo, Professor Dr. Barbara Kellner-Heinkele, Dr. Tamara Pogibenko, Dr. Charles Carlson and Dr. Alexander Kostyrkin who helped to prepare this volume for publication.

We are thankful to Michael Langfeld and Dr. Barbara Krauss who supported our efforts to publish the Proceedings of the 48th PIAC Meeting in quite a short period of time.

Moscow, April 2006

Elena V. Boikova Rostislav R. Rybakov

Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences