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On May 24, 2024, the international scientific and practical conference "Intercultural Communications on the Silk Road: History and Modernity" was held in Moscow at the Russian State Library. It was organized by the Department of Central Asian and Caucasian Countries of the Institute of Asian and African Countries at Lomonosov Moscow State University. Nearly 100 researchers from various regions of Eurasia, including cities along the Great Silk Road, attended the conference.
Among the participants were scientists from E.A. Buketov Karaganda University: Doctor of Historical Sciences and Professor of the Department of Archaeology, Ethnology, and National History, Zauresh Galimzhanovna Saktaganova, and Ph.D. in History and Associate Professor of the Department of World History and International Relations, Bibigul Aralbaevna Dosova.
Saktaganova Z.G.'s presentation, "Confessions in Central Kazakhstan in the 1940s-1980s," analyzed the stages of religious policy during that period. The author focused on the legislative framework of the Soviet state's religious policy in the post-war decades, as well as the forms and methods of anti-religious struggle. She concluded that despite the intensification of the anti-religious campaign in certain periods of Soviet history, the proportion of believers and those sympathetic to religion in the Central Kazakhstan region remained significant.
In her presentation titled "The New Silk Road as an Element of China's 'Soft Power'," Dosova B.A. identified September 2013 as the beginning of the revival of this unique economic concept through the trans-Eurasian trade and infrastructure project known as "One Belt, One Road." The author argued that the new Silk Road is a crucial component of China's "soft power" strategy. One of the key aspects of this strategy is the cultural and humanitarian direction of the New Silk Road. Dosova highlighted the growing attractiveness of China among Kazakhstani students for education, exemplified by the cooperation between E.A. Buketov Karaganda University and Chinese universities. She specifically mentioned a student from her curatorial group, N. Tulegenov, who has been studying at Anshan Pedagogical University since February 2024 as part of an academic mobility program, and a group of young university scientists who completed a three-week scientific internship at Shenyang Pedagogical University in May 2024. In conclusion, the speaker emphasized that alongside economic development, China is heavily investing in "soft power" initiatives aimed at promoting Chinese culture abroad.
