Power and limitations of dominant party control: United Russia, the Indian national congress and the Chinese communist party compared

This chapter describes the image of China in Russia today, analyzing mainly contemporary fantastic novels in which a remarkable role is allocated to the eastern neighbor. It focuses on several important topics in the imperial and early Soviet eras so as to have an understanding of the historical background. The chapter deals with the comparison of transforming variations of images of China in contemporary Russian novels in the 2000s, and analyzes the Chinese mirror in which the complicated relationship between Russia, Europe and Asia is reflected. It talks about the early Soviet periods which have high significance for our main discussion concerning the forming of images of China. This chapter examines how contemporary Russian writers make use of the legacy of Russian and Soviet sinology. It talks about the traditional character of the ‘superfluous man’ of nineteenth-century Russian literature, the idle noblemen or intellectual elites depicted typically in Alexandrovich Goncharov’s novel Oblomov, projected onto the fictional future society.