Indirect translation is a phenomenon often overlooked and underestimated in studies on the reception in China of Victor Hugo, and other French writers, long considered as mere bilateral exchanges between China and France. In the light of the theory of cultural transfer and in particular of the notion of third established by Michel Espagne, while using the methodological tools of research on indirect translation, this article aims to reveal the intermediary role of Soviet Russia in the reception of Victor Hugo in China and to shed light by this example on the importance and the mechanism of indirect translation. Through the analysis of Gavroche’s indirect translations made through the USSR, as well as the examination of Hugo’s romantic image in China which is imbued with Sovietized Marxist theories, it is finally demonstrated that Soviet Russia exerts a profound influence on the Chinese institution of literature and thus plays the decisive role of third in the Chinese reception of the French writer, not only in terms of circulation and translation, but also in that of interpretation. It is in this perspective that the article proposes to study linguistic and cultural encounters in literary reception.