The Chinese Revolution

Prompt

Contemplate the following observations regarding the Russian Revolution:
Marx and Engels had viewed the peasantry as “petty bourgeois” (petit bourgeois in French) and, on the whole, had dismissed the peasants as an insignificant force in a proletarian socialist revolution. Vladimir I. Lenin, disillusioned by the lack of success on the part of the Russian Narodnik (populist) intelligentsia in arousing the peasants to rebel against the tsarist regime in the 19th century, initially agreed with this view. However, when confronted with Russia’s actual experience ‐‐ with a peasantry that constituted approximately 80% of its population ‐‐ before and after the abortive 1905 Revolution, Lenin conceded that the peasants were a significant revolutionary force and that a smychka (alliance) between the proletariat and the peasantry ‐‐ albeit a temporary one ‐‐ would be necessary for Russia’s proletarian socialist revolution to succeed. This idea of an alliance between the peasantry and the proletariat in a socialist revolution, along with his thesis regarding the need for a vanguard party that was clandestine, “steeled” and “tempered “in revolutionary theory, and uniquely equipped to bring revolutionary consciousness to the workers “from without”, can be viewed as two of Lenin’s most important contributions to what came to be known as Bolshevism (Marxism‐Leninism) ‐‐ a “russification” of Marxism, that is, an adaptation of Marxism to Russia. It is difficult to envisage the culmination of the revolutionary crisis in Russia in the creation of a new revolutionary order in October 1917 without the incorporation of these contributions into Bolshevik strategy.
‐ Germaine A. Hoston

What role did the Chinese peasantry play in creating the prolonged revolutionary crisis following the 1911 political revolution that culminated in the success of the Chinese Communist Party in building a strong popular basis for its revolutionary movement in the rural base areas from the late 1920s through World War II in 1945? Your answer should include answers to the following sub‐questions:

1. What was the “sinification of Marxism”?
2. What role did the party’s interaction with the peasantry play in the “sinification” of Marxism ‐‐ the adaptation of Marxism and Leninism to China ‐‐ made by Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi?
3. Conversely, what was the significance of the party’s sinification of Marxism ‐‐ including its appeal to Chinese nationalism ‐‐ for the role the peasantry itself played in transforming what began as a “political revolution” and prolonged political crisis (under warlordism and during the Northern Expedition) into a “revolutionary crisis” that was socio‐economic in nature? (In other words, what was the relationship between the newly adapted theory of the Chinese revolution and the practical implementation of it in the CCP base areas?)

Your answer must make a single sustained, coherent argument regarding the Sinification of Marxism supported by copious quotations and/or citations from the primary and secondary sources assigned. Be sure to define “revolutionary crisis” (referring to the Skocpol readings) as well as the “peasantry” as a socio‐ economic class and cite specific events (which may include events prior to the 1911 revolution when you discuss Chinese “nationalism”). If there are no references to the readings, you will not receive a passing grade on your paper.

Note: Discuss the period through the Sino‐Japanese War (ending in 1945) only