Abstract
This chapter focuses on the issue of race in Russian modernist writings concerning Japan as well as China. It examines the writings concerning East Asia from the 1890s to the immediate pre-revolutionary period by the philosopher Vladimir Solov'ev and the symbolists Dmitrii Merezhkovskii and Andrei Belyi. The racial images of East Asians drawn by these three key figures of Russian modernism are highly ambiguous and complex, images in which much more is at stake than the straightforward assertion of Russians' racial superiority over its eastern neighboring peoples. In 1916-1921 Belyi participated in a literary movement called Scythianism. Scythianism was a refreshing escape from the combined impact of Far East and Far West - from Herzen's Chinese Europe through Solov'ev's Pan-Mongolism to Merezhkovskii's Yellow-Faced Positivism-a construct that embodied the Russian ideals of East and West. Keywords:Andrei Belyi; Dmitrii Merezhkovskii; East Asia; Pan-Mongolism; race; Russian Modernism; Russian modernist writings; Scythianism; Vladimir Solov'ev; yellow-faced positivism
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