Image of a Chinese Revolutionary in the Era of the Civil War in the Far East: An Ideological Aspect (Based on the Novel My Great Brother by Ilya Chernev)

Abstract

The aim of this interdisciplinary article is to analyse the image of a Chinese character, as well as reflect the historical facts of the presence of the Chinese in Russian fiction. The article focuses on the ideological context. The authors refer to My Great Brother (1954), a historical and revolutionary novel by Ilya Chernev. The novel highlights the main stages of the revolutionary struggle of the Amur and Trans-Baikal proletariat. Most of the key characters in the novel are Chinese people. In the article, following H. Gьnther, the authors single out four diverse characters, the Chinese, that reflect the participation of foreign revolutionaries during the civil war: a proletarian, a warrior, a victim, and a politician. The “historical” component of the article confirms that workers who were subjects of other states and stayed on the territory of Russia were recruited into armed formations to fight counter-revolutionary forces, taking an active part in the partisan movement, and supplying the partisans with food, medicines, and ammunition. The article identifies the reasons why the Chinese joined the revolutionary associations: liberation from exploitation, socialisation, but at the same time, the ideological instability of the Chinese revolutionaries due to the motley social composition and poor knowledge of the Russian language. The article discusses the artistic means Chernev employs to portray the Chinese characters. It is proved that the novel is an example of a work commissioned by the state. Even though the novel My Great Brother has not gained fame, its value is determined by the material itself underlying its artistic canvas. The participation of Chinese citizens in the civil war remains one of the little-studied topics of Russian history, and in literature, the novel My Great Brother is the only work of fiction on this topic.