Russian and Soviet literature influence on the North-Eastern China's literature of the first half of the 20th century: reasons, principles, periodization

Russian and Soviet literatures’ influence on the literature of the North-Eastern China (Dongbei) had both typological and contact character. Typological interaction was caused by presence of similar conditions of Russia and China historical development. Contact influence can be explained by numerous forms of the cultural interaction on the territory of North-Eastern China which had common border with Russia. Sometimes (if not usual) the influence of Russian literature on Chinese writers was expressed in the form of creative impulses. Certainly, a perception of influence is a creative process, leading to creation of new original works such as long story “The village in August” by Xiao Jun, novel «Hurricane» by Zhou Libo, long story “Driving force” by Cao Ming etc. The influence process can be divided into three stages, and each of these stages was determined by concrete needs of the North-Eastern China’s social and political development and characterized by interest to corresponding problematic works. In this context, the translation of the novels by A. Serafimovich (“The Iron Flood”), M. Sholokhov (“Virgin Soil Upturned”), F. Gladkov (“Cement”) became very popular in the region, where the similar problems were to be solved during the different periods of development in the first half of the 20th century. The approach to the new Soviet literature was partly based on the great public interest to the Russian classics (L. Tolstoy, F. Dostoevsky, A. Chekhov, M. Gorky, L. Andreev and others). The most relevant Soviet novels and long stories during the period of 1930-40 were translated into Chinese in Vladivostok and Khabarovsk, then delivered to the territory of China (mostly Dongbei), using for propaganda purposes. At the same time, emigrant’s literature of Harbin was of little known to Chinese authors; the influence of the Russian community’s “way of life” was much more noticeable. It’s very important to underline that the writers of North-Eastern China appealed to Russian and Soviet literatures not only as to ideological resource, but also as to the spring of aesthetics values. At first, they were attracted by the critical realism of Russian classics, but then - by the creative method of Soviet literature also. It was supposed to be the most progressive, but nevertheless it was exposed to national and regional modification in Dongbei.