Nikita Liang Kun (Russian Ники́та Ива́нович Лянь-Кунь)(Shanghai 1882 - Moscow 1947) was Soviet orientalist, translator, publisher and journalist. Author of the first Russian - Chinese dictionary.

Ethnic Chinese. According to the memoirs of relatives, he was born near the city of Shanghai. He lost his parents when he was a little child, and was taken into care by the Russian Orthodox Spiritual Mission in the Beijing, where he was baptized. He graduated from Peking University. In his youth, having a good voice (bass), he sang in the church choir at the Russian Mission.[1]

Liang Kun came to Russia in 1917 (according to family legend, at the invitation of a certain Russian professor who drew attention to a gifted young man he saw at the Russian Orthodox Spiritual Mission). As he came to the collapsing Russian Empire, he was caught in the middle of the Russian Civil War, where he was fighting at the side of Reds..[2] After the war, Liang Kun worked as an editor of the Chinese workers' newspapers in Moscow and Chita. He taught Chinese at the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Central Executive Committee of the USSR as well as at the Oriental Faculty of the Military Academy of the Red Army named after M. V. Frunze from 1920 to 1940, and at the Higher Special School of the General Staff of the Red Army from 1940 to 1945.[3] He was decorated member of the Red Army.[4] He trained more than 300 officers[1]

Today, he is probably best known as an actor who played the role of the Hubilay, ambassador of the Golden Horde in the Sergei Eisenstein's film Alexander Nevsky (1938).[5]

References

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  1. ^ a b https://dzen.ru/a/Wr4LzyOU3z6xun2b
  2. ^ "Минаев Дмитрий Николаевич. Китайцы на стороне красных. Командиры". zhurnal.lib.ru.
  3. ^ Ерофеев, Константин Борисович. "Китайцы на Неве". Русская народная линия.
  4. ^ "Лянь-Кунь Никита Иванович :: Память народа".
  5. ^ "Aleksandr Nevskiy". March 22, 1939 – via IMDb.