Образ Петра Великого в странах Восточной Азии

424 The activities of the first Russian emperor laid foundations for creating a common Eurasian geopolitical and sociocultural space and formed the paradigm of the Eurasian policy of the Russian Empire. Peter the Great’s policy towards China was chiefly aimed at maintaining peaceful and good neighborly relations between the two countries and at achieving tranquility on the Sino-Russia border. Chapter 2, “Peter the Great’s Contribution into the Sociocultural Interaction of Russia with East Asian Countries” (by N. Samoylov) , centers around the role of Peter the Great in the process of Russia’s sociocultural interaction with China and Japan at the beginning of the 18th century. In this period, thanks to Peter’s efforts, trade and cultural ties between Russia and the Qing Empire were established, caravan trade started to build up, lots of various goods and commodities from China were exported to Russia, which promoted interest to Chinese art on the part of the Russian population. In St. Petersburg, in imperial palaces and mansions of the nobility ”Chinese” rooms and studies were decorated, and this fact alone can clearly manifest the ever-growing interest of Peter the Great and his followers to China, their desire to bind Russia’s fate and future not only with the West but also with the East. In palace interiors of that time, Chinese artefacts were on display together with Western European objects of art, which can be viewed as the openness of Peter’s epoch to foreign cultural borrowings from the West and the East. Peter the Great played a decisive role in the establishing of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Peking, which worked for almost two and a half centuries (1715–1954) and made a considerable contribution into the development of spiritual ties between Russia and China as well as into the systematic study of China in Russia. Owing to the tsar’s efforts, the first collections of Chinese manuscripts and early printed books were brought to Russia by Lorenz Lange, who had been specially instructed by the monarch to do this. It is safe to say, that the beginnings of source studies in Russian sinology based on unique collections of books were made at the time of Peter I and were marked by his personal involvement and support. Peter’s epoch not only made Russia and Russians more knowledgeable about China, it also aroused interest to Russia and its culture in the Qing Empire. The year 1708 saw the foundation of Beijing Russian Language School following the edict of Chinese Emperor Kangxi, which greatly facilitated Russian- Chinese cultural exchange. Peter’s particular attention to Japan stimulated the future development of Russian-Japanese relations and eventually led to the beginning of Japanese studies in Russia. This Chapter presents a complex analysis of numerous aspects of Russian-Chinese sociocultural interaction, raises a number of questions connected with theoretical and The Image of Peter the Great in the Countries of East Asia