Chinese mask of the Russian revolution in the literature of the 1920s (I. Babel “Chinese guy” and M. Bulgakov “Chinese History”)

https://doi.org/10.20339/PhS.5-18.085

Cao Xuemei,

Graduate Student,

Department of Russian Literature, Institute of Philology

Moscow State Pedagogical University

e-mail: 583468988@qq.com

At the edge of the XIX and XX centuries, in the Russian literature stood out an independent picture of China, and in the revolutionary era with the influence of “Asian attraction” in the ideology of the “Scythians” a myth about the Chinese face of the Russian revolution appeared. The Chinese migrant workers who lost their jobs and joined the Bolsheviks — “guys” — became the main characters of the stories of I.E. Babel and M.A. Bulgakov, who created a demonic image of the “Chinese comrade” cruel and indifferent to their victims. This image is one of many masks by which writers endowed representatives of different nationalities involved in the destructive elements of the revolution. In the stories under study, “Chinese guys” are sublimated companions of Russian historical destiny, which, at different periods of historical development, itself found content and form for them.

Keywords: Russian literature of the 1920s, myth of the Chinese, Babel, Bulgakov, image, “Chinese guy”, Chinese mask.

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