IMAGINED RUSSIA: RUSSIAN LITERATURE IN CHINA AND TAIWAN

Abstract

Each ethnos has a certain cultural and linguistic originality. The uniqueness of each nationality is associated with specific mental values and attitudes, uniqueness of national world picture and ethnic selfawareness. National features and national texts are manifested in a vast variety of facts and signs. If fiction promotes the knowledge of the national culture of one country, artistic translation is its instrument. World literature emerged, exists and develops precisely because of the artistic translation of various works of literary art. The rich history of Russia gave birth to an equally rich culture and literature, which cause extremely conflicting feelings among foreigners. Although Chinese people have had complex and contradictory stereotypes about Russians, about Russia, the picture that Russian literature leaves in the minds of the Chinese is beautiful and unique, and it still has an impact on the Chinese in both China and Taiwan. Russian literature occupies a special place in the minds of the peoples of China and Taiwan. Readers of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are united by a love of Russian writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. It is interesting to note that, although there is a difference between these two societies in ideology and the political system, a common love for Russian literature unites them. The author of this article have set herself the following tasks: to explore the concept of «stereotype» of national culture in intercultural communication; to study the influence of background knowledge on the understanding of the culture of another people through literature and its’ translations; to reveal the perception of stereotypes of Russia and Russians from the Chinese; to study the perception of Russian literature in China; to study the perception of Russian literature in Taiwan.