This paper traces the 200-year evolution of Russian and Soviet scholarly inquiry into Gojoseon (Ancient Joseon) from the early 19th century to the 1970s, articulating its unique academic trajectory and historiographical significance. While domestic Korean interest in Gojoseon remains exceptionally high, international scholarship has often been obscured by insular nationalistic narratives and remained relatively inaccessible to the global academic community. Russia, however, occupies a singular position; as the only European power to share a land border with Northeast Asia since the 17th century, it has viewed the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria not as distant peripheries, but as immediate and strategically vital neighbors. In the early 19th century, N. Ya. Bichurin (Iakinf) laid the field’s foundation by translating Chinese dynastic records, recognizing Gojoseon as a distinct polity spanning Manchuria and the Korean Peninsula. This tradition was later refined through N. V. Kyuner’s philological revisions and S. M. Shirokogoroff’s ethnological inquiry into Tungusic interactions. The post-war era witnessed an empirical shift fueled by academic exchanges with North Korea, notably in M. V. Vorobyev’s (1961) analysis of indigenous cultural evolution and A. N. Shokov’s (1962) classification of Gojoseon as a Bronze Age tribal confederation. By the mid-1960s, an "archaeological turn" led by R. Sh. Dzharilgasinova demonstrated historical continuity from Gojoseon into the Goguryeo period. This culminated in A. P. Okladnikov’s 1974 delegation to North Korea, which established a critical distinction between Soviet socio-cultural analysis and the increasingly ideological Juche historiography of the era. In conclusion, the two-century trajectory of Russian Gojoseon studies represents a methodological evolution from textual historiography and ethnolinguistics to archaeology-driven analysis. This holds profound significance in that it established a uniquely Russian perspective, situating Gojoseon within the broader context of Eurasian history from the viewpoint of adjacent regions such as Siberia and Manchuria
In Uk Kang (Wed,) studied this question.