THE RUSSIAN-SPEAKING POPULATION AND THE SPHERES OF THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE USAGE IN THE XINJIANG UYGUR AUTONOMOUS REGION OF CHINA (THE MIDDLE OF THE XIXTH – EARLY XXITH CENTURIES)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the Russian language in China, namely in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China from the middle of the XIXth to the beginning of the XXIth centuries. The author examines waves of emigration from Russia to north-western China due to socio-historical factors and the spheres of the Russian language usage in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region during this period. The aim of this article is to study the functioning features of the Russian language in north-western China, namely in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, from the middle of the XIXth to the beginning of the XXIth centuries against the background of the history of the Russian-speaking population emergence in north-western China. The main sources of the study are published scientific materials on the history of the Russian colony in Xinjiang, as well as materials from the scientific expedition to the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China, carried out by the group of researchers of the Russian language in China with the author’s participation in July 2018. The materials were studied by means of field, linguistic and personological, descriptive, and narrative methods of scientific research. The author comes to the conclusion that the use of the main life activity spheres (everyday, religious, educational, production and cultural ones) by the Russian speaking population of Xinjiang have had a qualitative effect not only on the ethnicity preservation of the Russian-speaking population, but also on the preservation of the Russian language in this Chinese region. The results of this work will be useful for further research of the Russian language in northwestern China, since the specifics of the Russian language functioning in this foreign region still remains a «white spot» in Russian and foreign sociolinguistics and linguistic emigrant studies.