Soviet Russia's entry into China: an analytical history of the Kuomintang's alliances with the Chinese Communist Party and Soviet Russia in the twenties

Abstract

This study attempts to throw new light upon many of the major questions still surrounding Soviet Russia's entry into China and the resulting CCP/KMT and KMT/Soviet Russian alliances in the twenties. In my opinion many of the major questions still surrounding the alliances can be solved and entirely new light can be thrown upon the early history of the CCP, the transformation of the KMT, Sun Yat-sen's views on communism, the Bolshevik entry into China and Lenin's famous theory on colonial revolution if the career of the Dutch revolutionary Marxist Henk Sneevliet alias Ma-lin in the Dutch East Indies, in Soviet Russia and in China can be taken into account. Four years before the Communist International came to discuss the question of cooperation with bourgeois-democratic nationalism in July 1920, the Indische Sociaal Democratische Vereniging (ISDV) had practised such cooperation with a loosely-organized mass movement in the Dutch East Indies, the Sarekat Islam. ISDV members had not only entered the SI without giving up their membership, but SI members were also drawn into the ISDV while retaining their membership of the SI. With amazing speed ISDV members had penetrated the innermost councils of the SI. It was the initiator of this strategy in the Indies, Sneevliet, who defended and promoted the same strategy at the Second Congress of the Comintern in July 1920 in Moscow and Petrograd and who eventually introduced it into China. In the China of 1921-23 Sneevliet initiated the formal establishment of the CCP, founded the Secretariat of the Chinese Labour Federation and almost single-handed brought about the famous and controversial CCP/KMT and KMT/Soviet Russian alliances. In fact, he not only persuaded the leadership of the Comintern to adopt his policies, but also the KMT of Sun Yat-sen, the young CCP and the people's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of Soviet Russia. Since Sneevliet played such a major role in the Bolshevik entry into China and in determining the future orientation of the Chinese Revolution, it would seem evident that in studying the two famous alliances one has not only to analyse the career of Sneevliet, but also the Bolshevik entry into China, the early years of the CCP, the transformation of Dr Sun Yat-sen's KMT and the development of Lenin's theory on colonial revolution. In this study I have attempted to give equal weight to each of the abovementioned topics.