The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution, 1919–1927

The opening of former secret Soviet archives has broadened the documentary base for a new study of Bolshevik policy in China on the eve of and during the revolution of 1925–1927. The aim of this work is to incorporate these new documents into a scholarly study and on that basis to explore the essence of the Russian Bolsheviks’ main concepts concerning the Chinese revolution. The work was designed to determine the influence of these concepts exerted on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) through an analysis of the way various adherents of the Chinese Communist movement perceived them.

The primary sources used in this book include: previously unpublished archival material on the Comintern, the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik), and the CCP, reflecting the theories and political practice of Leninism, Trotskyism, and Stalinism, and of the Russian and Chinese Left Oppositions; works by Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, and other leaders of the Executive Committee of the Communist International and the CCP published in East Asia, Europe, and the U.S.; Comintern journals and bulletins; private interviews carried out by the author with participants and eyewitnesses of the events treated in the book; and memoirs of various Chinese revolutionaries.