19세기 말~20세기 초 제정 러시아 외교관의 동아시아 인식 －파벨 바스케비치를 중심으로－ = The Perception of the East Asia by Imperal Russian Diplomats in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries : Focusing on Pavel Vaskevich

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study analyzes the travel reports, diplomatic reports, newspaper articles, and memoirs of Pavel Georgievitch Vaskevich (1876–1958), a Russian diplomat and Japanese studies specialist active in Korea, Japan, and China in the early 20th century. By doing so, it aims to examine how his perception of the East Asia shaped his images and discourses. A graduate of the first class of the Vladivostok Institute of Oriental Studies, Vaskevich served as a military interpreter during the Russo-Japanese War and then as a diplomat in Korea, Japan, and China from 1917 until 1925, when the Soviet Union gained international recognition and the Russian Empire officially ended. After retiring from his diplomatic career, he published articles on Japan, China, and Korea in newspapers, providing valuable insights into how Russian intellectuals understood the East Asia. His understanding of Japan’s invasion of East Asia is thoroughly imperialistic, a perspective that closely aligned with Japan’s colonial view of history at the time. He perceived Korea as a weak nation with no potential for development, China as a space of decline, and Japan as an Asian nation that had achieved modernization and risen to the same level as the Western powers. He was an intellectual educated in the Russian Empire’s discourse of East Asian domination, which argued that “civilized” nations should proactively lead “uncivilized” nations to build a developed society for all. Therefore, Japan’s invasion and domination of neighboring Asian countries were merely a natural part of Asian development. This perspective was reproduced and consumed by Japanese imperialism even after the collapse of the Russian Empire.