E-mail: v.klyaus@mail.ru Tel. +7 (495) 690-50-30
Full Professor (Philology), Head of Folklore Department, Institute of World Literature named after A. M. Gor’kiy, Russian Academy of Sciences
25a, Povarskaya str., Moscow, 121069, Russian Federation
This paper is financially supported by grant of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project No. 17-04-00493 “Russian folklore in Chinese language of the Northern Manchuria: Studies and texts”.
The paper deals with folklore texts of Ukrainian origin recorded by the author from Chinese people of Russian origin living in the Ergun city of Hulunbuir aimak of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of the PRC – the territory that has been called historically “Trekhrechie” (Interfluve of three rivers) in Russian. According to memories of elderly Chinese-Russian half-casts and Russian population of Trekhrechie villages established by Transbaikalia Cossacks, and townships along the Chinese Eastern Railway, there was a time when ethnic Ukrainians lived there. Today Chinese Russians are officially acknowledged as one of the minorities in PRC. Chinese Russians’ folklore shows a few examples clearly derived from Ukrainian oral tradition: fairy-tales, legendary narratives, and songs as well as some elements in family and calendar ceremonial rites. These examples prove that bearers of Ukrainian folklore (people who moved from Novorossia to Chinese boundary regions and then to China) did take a part in Chinese Russians’ ethnogenesis.
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