The regular seminar "Migration studies". Ivan Peshkov "Russian communities in Three Rivers (China): between political and ethnic mismatch"
On March 14, 2019 a session of the regular seminar "Migration studies" organized by the Higher School of Economics Institute of Social Policy: Russian communities in Three Rivers (China): between political and ethnic mismatch Ivan Peshkov (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland) was held.
Three Rivers is the Russian name for the delta of the three tributaries of the Argun (Derbul, Haul and Genhe), which was the site of a comprehensive agrarian colonization by people from the former Russian Empire. The phenomenon of the Russian Three Rivers, the frontier community of Russian old-timers in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China, has given rise to complex patterns of the perception of these communities in present Russian culture. Today, the Three Rivers turns, on the one hand, into the territory of production of samples of “real Russian culture”, on the other - into a symbol of alarm over the expansion of China.
The seminar was devoted to the triangle of the main categories (former enemies / real Russian peasants / Orthodox mestizos who have lost contact with Russian culture) that largely determine the ways of perception of the Russian communities in China in modern Russia. On the basis of field studies conducted from 2009 to 2016 in Inner Mongolia (Chinese community of Russians), the Chita region (repatriates from the Three Rivers) and San Francisco (the Russians from Three Rivers), the relationship of external perceptions with local practices of reproducing Russian life models in cross-border areas of China will be analyzed. In addition, the following issues will be addressed: how can the memory and experience of Russian communities be aligned with the interest of Russian society in the history of “Russian Manchuria”; how do Chinese communities in China integrate into the open border model; how is the perception of Russian communities in China related to the alarming image of Chinese migration in Siberia and the Far East?