Changing attitudes to the work of I.A. Bunin in mainland China through the prism of socio-cultural changes in Chinese society

This article provides a retrospective of the attitude to the work of I.A. Bunin in society and the academic environment in mainland China. The article analyzes the changes in the attitude to the writer’s work through the prism of socio-cultural transformations that took place in Chinese society in the period from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. The author proceeds from the premise that there are three main periods in Chinese Bunin studies, each of which reflects the trends of its historical epoch and gives us different assessments of the writer’s work. For modern Chinese Bunin studies, it is important to identify what reasons contributed to the formation of interest in the work of Ivan Alekseevich, what factors and processes taking place in Chinese society influenced the decline in interest in the author’s work, which was the reason for the more than 30-year oblivion of Bunin’s name in academic circles, how the writer returned to China. It is necessary to evaluate Bunin’s literary criticism in mainland China, as well as how it affected the perception of the author’s works by ordinary readers. The objectives of this study are: firstly, to determine the historical background for the perception of Bunin’s work in China; secondly, to identify the time and ways of penetration of Russian classical literature into mainland China; thirdly, to analyze the nature of changes in attitudes towards the writer’s work in Chinese society. The relevance of the work is due to the need for the development of Bunin studies in mainland China. Russian literature will be useful for further study of the processes affecting the perception of literary works by society, as well as for the subsequent comprehensive study of the mechanisms of penetration of Russian literature into China, the influence of Russian literature on Chinese society.