Karl Radek on China: Documents from the Former Secret Soviet Archives

The collection of archival documents Karl Radek on China reflects the views of one of the major Soviet China specialists, activists of the Russian revolutionary movement, and leaders of the Trotskyist Opposition, Karl Bernhardovich Radek (1885-1939). The documents present an original conception of the history of China from ancient times to the twentieth century as well as a delineation of the fundamental political problems of China in the 1920s. The appendices contain letters from Trotsky to Radek as well as the ’Chronological Information’ of Zinoviev and Trotsky, outlining the most important stages of the struggle of the United Left Opposition against the Stalinist majority in the AUCP(b) regarding problems of the Chinese revolution. None of the documents have ever been published in English.

Alexander V. Pantsov, Ph.D. (1983), Capital University, Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A. is Professor of History and the holder of the Edward and Mary Catherine Gerhold Chair in the Humanities at that university. He has published fifteen books and numerous book chapters and articles on China and Russia in the United States, Russia, China, and many other countries. Among them are The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution 1919-1927 (University of Hawai’i Press, 2000), Mao: The Real Story (Simon & Schuster, 2012), Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life (Oxford University Press, 2015), and Undefeated: The Real Story of Chiang Kai-shek (forthcoming).