Images of the Hunghuz in the Literature of Manchuria in the 1920s–1940s (The Case of Xiao Jun’s Works)

Abstract

The relevance of the study is due to the interest of Russian and Chinese science in artistic capture of the processes taking place on the territory of the Far Eastern frontier – Manchuria and the Far East in the first half of the 20th century. In a situation of political chaos, economic confusion and civil wars in these lands, the phenomenon of hunkhuznichestvo arises, which has become a real disaster for civilians. This problem is covered in great detail in the literature of the Far Eastern emigration and historical, literary works. The novelty of the research is determined by the appeal to Chinese sources (scientific and literary), which until now have not been systematically studied from the point of view of the ethnocultural, ethnosocial and literary paradigm. The problem lies in the comparative analysis of historical, socio-political materials (dictionaries, chronicles, scientific articles) and the results of the artistic reception of the phenomenon of hunkhuznichestvo in the works of northeastern writers of the 1920s–1940s. The aim of the work is to study the images of the Hunghuz from the point of view of the socio-political, ethno-cultural request of the emerging Chinese national consciousness of the 1920s–1940s and their artistic interpretation by Xiao Jun. The main methods are historical-genetic (reconstruction of the formation of ideas about Hunghuz in the Chinese mind), cultural-historical (study of images of Hunghuz in the context of the formation of the literature of the “Left Wing” and the influence of Soviet models), comparative-historical (comparison of images of Hunghuz in literature of the 1920–1940 and their subsequent reception in the Chinese public consciousness), biographical (the influence of the family’s upbringing and the author’s inner circle on his perception of hunkhuzism), translation methods (translation of Chinese scientific works, dictionary entries, historical documents, Xiao Jun’s novels) and the method of immanent analysis (in relation to the above-mentioned texts by the author studied). When writing his novels (Village in August, Third Generation) Xiao Jun drew not only on the ideologemes of the communist movement in China, literary examples of Soviet heroic-romantic prose about the civil war, but also on his personal experience of knowledge of hunkhuzism. The author comes to the conclusion that Xiao Jun recorded important historical and cultural ethnocultural, ethnopsychological, ethnoreligious details of Hunghuz life, customs, original ethos.