The Far East in the Policy of Russian Empire in the Late 19th–Early 20th Centuries: the Minion from China (Historiography from 1949 to the early 1990s)

Abstract. The article is a summary of the Chinese historiography from 1949 to the early 1990s on the Russian Empire in the Far East in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After the defeat of the Kuomintang army, Chinese historiography was also divided into two parts – Mainland and Taiwan historiography. Compared to the previous period of development, Chinese historiography in the second half of the 20th century was characterized by extreme politicization both on the Mainland and in Taiwan. The second feature, more characteristic of mainland historiography, is the scarcity of the source base. Modern Chinese historians often describe the situation of historiography in the second half of the 20th century with the phraseology "To conduct rituals inside the shell": on the one hand, the limitation in terms of sources did not allow historians of that time to fully and comprehensively engage in historical research, on the other hand, they were much more encyclopedic and erudite than their modern colleagues, so their works cannot be considered to have completely lost their value.

Keywords: historiography, China, Russian in Far East, USSR, PRC, the Cold War, the Culture Revolution, Taiwan.