Kremlin's Chinese Advance Guard : Chinese Students in Soviet Russia, 1917-1940

This book is a comprehensive historical study of the Bolshevik system of ideological and political indoctrination of a substantial number of Chinese revolutionaries, who studied in Comintern international institutions in Soviet Russia from the October Revolution of 1917 to the Great Terror of the late 1930s.

Including analysis of previously unknown documentary materials from the Bolshevik Party and Comintern archives, as well as memoirs of former Chinese students and prisoners of Stalin’s camps, the book determines how effective the training of Chinese students in the main educational centers in Moscow was, how well it compared to the existing level of Marxist education in the USSR, and how the Stalinist regime defined the lives and fates of the Chinese revolutionaries in Soviet Russia. In raising questions about the transferability of revolutionary ideology, experience, and practice from the revolutionaries of one country to would-be revolutionaries in other countries the authors ask: can revolution be exported?

Shedding light on an under-explored aspect of the early history of the CCP and the Soviet Bolshevik Party this book will be a valuable resource to both students and scholars of Chinese and Russian history and politics.

Daria A. Arincheva is an Associate Professor of Chinese studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia. She has published over 15 scholarly works including Chinese Revolutionaries in Soviet Russia in the 1920s and the 1930s (2015) and Lives and Fates of the First Chinese Communists (2021).

Alexander V. Pantsov is a Professor of History and the holder of the Edward and Mary Catherine Gerhold Chair in the Humanities at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, USA. He has published over 150 scholarly works including The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution 1919–1927 (2000), Mao Zedong: The Real Story (2012), Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life (2015), Karl Radek on China: Documents from the Former Secret Soviet Archives (2021), and Victorious in Defeat: The Life and Times of Chiang Kai-shek, China: 1887–1975 (2023).

Steven I. Levine is a Senior Fellow at the Maureen & Mike Mansfield Center, University of Montana, USA. He is a retired professor of Chinese history and politics. He has translated from Russian several previous books by Alexander V. Pantsov, including biographies of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Chiang Kai-shek.