| Summary/Abstract |
The article describes how social and political changes in post-Soviet Russia over the past quarter of a century have been read and assessed by Chinese experts in relevant fundamental monographs. Each of the monographs considered herein, published in China twelve years apart, reviews different stages in the evolution of Chinese experts’ approach towards Russia, and states their analytical, ideological and political conclusions. Generally speaking, China’s sociopolitical Russian studies have evolved from the ideologically motivated resentment against the Soviet Union’s dissolution, the disbandment of its Communist Party and the ensuing shock reforms of the 1990s to the recognition of irreversible changes in Russia and “legitimization” of the Russian leadership in the 2000s-2010s. However, by the end of the current decade, the topic of uncertainty about Russia’s future sociopolitical and economic development has once again surfaced in some key publications along with increasingly “panegyrical” assessments of the Russian president.
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