The Qing project: a brief survey of the annalistic sources on the medieval history of Manchuria and the early stage of study them

The article is devoted to the history of making Russian specialists in the study of the Old Manchurian language and to that of translations into Russian of the Manchurian versions of the annalistic chronicles «The History of the Gold Empire» («Jin Shi»), «The History of the Iron Empire» («Liao Shi») and «The History of the Heavenly Empire» («Yuan Shi»). The author throws light upon the very important role in this work of the members of the Russian ecclesiastic mission in Peking, adduces information of the Russian humanities fund' projects concerning introduction into scientific turn of the enumerated primary sources in the medieval history of the peoples who inhabited Central Asia and the Far East, as well as lets know of the beginning of work at a new project, i. e. translation into the Russian language and preparation to publishing of the unique annalistic chronicle on the early history of the Manchus - the Ist volume of «The old archives in the Manchurian language» («Man-wen lao-dan»).