POETIC IMAGE OF PERCEPTION OF CHINA AND CHINESE IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE OF MANCHURIA 1920–1940 (BASED ON WORKS BY ARSENIY NESMELOV)

The article presents the results of a study of the specifics perception of China in Russian literature in Manchuria, created mainly by emigrant writers living in Harbin and nearby territories of the CER line. According to the authors of the article, this specificity was determined by the frontier (spatial, temporal, ethnic, social, religious) circumstances of the formation of the population of Northern Manchuria, the powerful development of oriental and Chinese studies in these territories since the beginning of the 20th century, the pre-vious experience of foreign communication of representatives of the older generation of emigration, the organic integration into the bor-derline being of “children of emigration.” On the material of lyrics and prose by Arseniy Nesmelov, the authors of the article explore the poetic images of the perception of China and the Chinese from the point of view of their conceptual, metaliterative, sociocultural basis, as well as methods of expression. It is concluded that the modernist approach is very soon replaced by Nesmelov's realistic narrative in the spirit of ethnographic sketches. From the propaganda neomyphologism and space-time indifferency inherent in the former capital journalist, the Harbin writer turns to the point of view of the "simple Harbin resident" and beyond, to a detailed penetration into the eve-ryday psychology of ordinary Chinese (Manchus), residents of Manchuria (peasants, laborers, Hunhuz).