The Comintern and the Chinese Revolution

Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.9, 2014

The Comintern and the Chinese Revolution

(Abstract)

Yang Jun and Cheng Enfu

During the years of the Comintern (Communist International), the Soviet regime led by Lenin and Stalin “was international by virtue of its class nature” and acted as the base and center of world revolution. The Comintern directed the Chinese revolution using the theories of the classic writers and Russia’s revolutionary experience, and made an indelible contribution to the birth and growth of the CPC and the formation of its theoretical consciousness. It thus effectively advanced the great development of the Chinese Revolution. In so doing, however, it failed to pay sufficient attention to the differences in the national conditions of the Chinese Revolution and made the error of divorcing ideas from reality in judging the revolutionary situation. It stressed that the CPC should subordinate itself to the central mission of a particular stage and preserve its proletarian class foundation, give priority to the workers’ movement centered on the cities, etc. All this was profound and important. But the action strategies and solutions the Comintern recommended were mired in dogma and were not wholly suited to China’s realities. In the same way as the thinking of the CPC was developed through practice, the Comintern conducted its own explorations in the course of directing the Chinese revolution. Overall, the Comintern could rectify its dogmatic errors, change its strategies, improve its mode of direction, and ultimately recognize that the CPC under the leadership of Mao Zedong was “truly applying Marxism-Leninism.”