Studying the works of Vasily Shukshin in Chinese literary criticism

The subject of this work is the main themes and ideas of Russian country prose – the school that most fully refl ects the essence of the Russian national mentality. Ethical issues are an integral part of the works of Vasily Shukshin. V. Shukshin’s novellas represent the wisdom, virtue and life experience of a Russian villager, an attempt is made to identify the spiritual foundations. Writers strive to fi nd the foundations of the peasant world. Vasily Shukshin’s works are known not only in Russia, but all over the world. At the end of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, V. Shukshin’s novellas were also translated into Chinese and had a signifi cant impact on the work of modern Chinese fi ction writers of the new era. During the period of social transformations in China and the Soviet Union, a large number of peasants left the village and rushed to the cities, while their lands were abandoned, and the very attitude of man to the land changed. These processes could not but disturb the writers of the two countries, refl ecting in their works on the relationship between man and nature, on national historical memory, on the connection between tradition and modernity. Thus, the question of studying the reception of V. Shukshin’s creativity in China seems to be very up-to-date. The historical and biographical methods provide a key to understanding the author’s content of such national Russian concepts as ‘home’, ‘melancholy’, ‘soul’, ‘conscience’, ‘fate’ and demonstrate the views of Chinese literary scholars on the oeuvre of Russian writers of this school. The works of Chinese literary critics are introduced into the scientifi c circulation.