Works by Roman Kim: ethnocultural realities in Soviet fiction

The article is concerned with the works by the Soviet writer and East Asian studies scholar Roman Kim (1899-1967). He is well known as an author of spy fiction. The article follows the literary history of Roman Kim. Being a Russian-language descendant of Korean emigrants, he wrote about rivalry between international intelligence services on polycultural territories. First published works by R. Kim were nonfictional. He became a commentator of the book The Roots of the Japanese Sun by B. Pilniak and also published his analysis of the contemporary Japanese literature in the lampoon Three Houses across from the Other Two. R. Kim criticized Japanese ‘ego’-fiction of the early 20th century because literary ‘masters’ and their apprentices did not notice significant events in Japan and in the world and did not bring up social issues. Kim’s literary work demonstrates that the civic position of the characters in literature is essential for him. In the 1950s and 1960s, Roman Kim’s fiction has an intriguing plot and distinctness of a storyline. The structure of his novellas is usually built on ideological oppositions: the USA and the USSR, North and South Korea, Japan and communist China. The writer creates images of Kore and Koreans with historical retrospections and ethnocultural details. Korea in general is shown as a space of competition between the modern empires. Kim underlines ethnocultural particularity of most of the characters. The specificity of his fiction is based on the rationalistic principle, which also determines the unambiguity of the characters. Such a feature of the characters and the storyline is fairly typical of formula literature. Roman Kim also depicts spies like ghosts in his novellas. The authors of the article interpret that as reflection of the hybrid identity of Korean diaspora in the Soviet Union.