Russian Émigrés in Early to Mid-Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature: Ethnic contra Political

 Introduction. The article examines the image of Russian émigrés in Chinese early to mid-twentieth-century fiction and opinion writing. The period was marked by intense ideological disputes which were mirrored in fiction and non-fiction narratives. The historical situation and political environment resulted in that the collective consciousness of the Chinese became dominated by the image of Russians as ‘white émigrés’, and the latter persisted until the 1980s. Goals. The paper attempts a study and analysis into the image of Russian emigrants in Chinese literature throughout the specified period. Materials and methods. The study analyzes works by such Chinese authors, as Jiang Guangci, Ding Ling, Zhang Ailing, Ba Jin, Xiao Jun, Shu Qun, Xiao Hong, Luo Feng, and many of the latter have never been translated into Russian. The methodological scope includes tools of historical genetic, historical cultural, structural semantic, and immanent analyses of fiction texts, as well as biographical and translation approaches. Results. The work shows that during the CCP’s establishment and War of Resistance, the images of emigrants would largely manifest the writers’ own ethnic and political attitudes (with exceptions of few non-party authors). The article identifies the persistence of ethnic stereotypes and analyzes some differences in perceptions of white émigrés in literatures of Shanghai, Beijing and Harbin. Furthermore, the paper focuses on how emigrants would become objects of political controversies, so that some young leftist writers tended to view them as symbols of imperialism, while others would use them as starting points for self-images. Non-politicized, non-party and artistically single writers would articulate quite different and rather curious ethnic attitudes. Conclusions. The study emphasizes that the images of Russian emigrants in Chinese literature mirror not only experiences of actual contacts between the two ethnic groups, but also internal conflicts and changes in Chinese society associated with revolutionary transformations. The early to mid-twentieth-century writings show a complex reception process of the phenomenon of emigration, as well as expose the frames inherent in Chinese perceptions of foreigners since ancient times. Thus, the image of white émigrés largely served a mirror for self-perceptions of the young progressive Chinese society in the specified historical period.

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