Образ Петра Великого в странах Восточной Азии

425 Overview methodological sides of such studies and determines the place and role of Peter’s epoch in formation and development of sociocultural interaction between Russia and East Asian countries. In Chapter 3, “The Image of Peter the Great in China” (by N.A. Samoylov, D.I. Maiatskii and E.V. Lankova), the authors consider the evolution of Peter the Great’s image in China from its earliest references to the present day, and look into the principal lines along which the concepts and ideas about Peter I formed and evolved in various historical periods. In the first Section of the Chapter great attention is given to the image of the Russian emperor and Russia during his reign as reflected in the travel journals (dated by the first quarter of the 18th century) of the Qing diplomat Tulišen, who sojourned Russia during Peter’s lifetime. In the following section of the Chapter the image of Peter I is viewed from the perspective of Chinese social thought and journalism of the 19 th –early 20 th centuries, with the analysis of a wide scope of articles and writings of Chinese publicists dedicated to Peter the Great and his immense contribution to the development of the Russian state and statehood. A special stress is put on the historical background of these literary works, their genre features and artistic qualities. In addition to these sources, information about Peter I has been derived from geographical literature, traditional report memos to the emperor, biographies (both Chinese originals and translations from other languages) published in magazines, poems and novels. The materials studied reveal that Chinese reformers and, most notably, Kang Youwei resorted to the image of Peter I to substantiate their ideas of modernization of China in the late 19th century. Another section of the Chapter, ” Translations of literary works and their influence on the image of Peter the Great in China in the 20 th –21 st centuries” , deals with the remarkable role of Chinese translations of Russian and Soviet literature and historic- philosophical works about Peter the Great (including A.S.Pushkin’s poetry and prose, Leo Tolstoy’s novels, a book by D.S.Merezhkovsky) that was played in helping the Chinese reader to gain a comprehensive understanding of the figure of the Russian emperor. Due consideration is given to books and articles of modern Chinese historians dedicated to the analysis of Peter the Great’s personality, policy and transformations, with the conclusion drawn that nowadays in China researching into the Peter’s reign is steadily growing deeper and stronger, the range of topics for research is widening, new monographies and dissertations are being published. The section ” Portraying Peter the Great in Chinese net literature” brings to light unparalleled artistic materials found in the Chinese segment of the Internet that include historical novels and fantasy fiction about Peter I together with the articles published in ”Baidu”, the largest search resource of the PRC, the authors