Assesments by modern english-speaking historians of the policy of the comintern in Asia

Abstract

The article analyzes the modern English-language historiography on the policies of the Communist International in Asia. English-speaking countries have been chosen because a significant number of studies devoted both directly to the tactics of the Comintern in relation to Asia and the activities of its sections in this region are published in the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and India. This topic has been infused with fresh relevance thanks to the opening of funds in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) that concern, among other things, the activities of Asian communist parties. These newly available documents present an opportunity for scholars to rethink some issues, such as the policies of Asian communist parties: what was the influence of the Comintern on their tactics? What was the nature of this influence? What role did national and colonial questions play in the policy of the Comintern, and what were the results of their implementation? This article demonstrates that the traditionalist approach to the analysis of the activities of the Comintern and its policies toward specific nations, which took shape before and during the Cold War, is still significantly represented in English-language historiography. However, the final approval of a new approach (“revisionist”) contributed to a certain correction of existing trends: the article contains assessments of both the negative and positive influence of the Comintern on individual communist parties and on the political situation in the given country or region.