The Image of Chinese Culture in Travel Notes Published in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s

Abstract

This article considers the formation of the image of China and Chinese culture in travel notes published in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. While analysing typical texts on China by Z. V. Richter, G. I. Serebryakova, A. Ivin, M. G. Andreev, N. K. Kostarev and Paul Vaillant-Couturier, the author considers different approaches of the writers to the Chinese culture which faced an encounter of the traditional lifestyle and modern trends in the context of a radical change in the zeitgeist in China in the first third of the 20 th century. It is discovered that the travellers had preferences in describing old customs, social issues under modernisation processes, the origin and the rapid development of progressive ideas and proletarian revolutionary movements in old China. The author reveals the dynamics of the construction of the image of China and Chinese culture in Soviet non-fiction of that period, which served the interests of Soviet official ideology. Based on the analysis, the author concludes that the image of Chinese culture in Soviet and foreign travel notes published in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s was largely formulated for the purpose of propaganda of Soviet values and hence was politicised. Under the influence of this image, Soviet readers were supposed to form a good impression of the Chinese people, express sympathy to the Chinese labourers and moral support for the proletarian revolution in China. This kind of politicisation was also supposed to stimulate the rooting of the idea that it was the Soviet Union that was the cradle of great revolutions, the stronghold of the world proletarian movements and the springboard of the struggle against imperialism and capitalism.