Chinese studies of Bukharin

Abstract

ALTHOUGH CHINESE SCHOLARS have been studying Bukharin and his ideas from the beginning of the 1980s it is only recently that this endeavour has been brought to the attention of a wider public even in China itself. It was only with Bukharin's rehabilitation in the USSR that the high degree of Chinese interest in Bukharin began to be revealed. Several articles reviewing Bukharin's career and discussing his significance as a theoretician appeared in the Chinese press following Gorbachev's speech on the 70th anniversary of the October revolution in 1987.1 More recently the Soviet journal Voprosy istorii published a short report by Li Chuanglong on Bukharin studies in China, tracing their development from their origin in the 1920s to the present day. Li divides the history of the Chinese attitudes to Bukharin into three periods. The first period, encompassing the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s, was one in which Bukharin was regarded as an important 'party theoretician', and several of his writings were translated into Chinese. These included The ABC of Communism (written in conjunction with E. A. Preobrazhensky), The Theory of Historical Materialism, The Political Economy of the Leisure Class, Economics of the Transition Period and Imperialism and the World Economy.2 The second period extended from 1938 until the end of the 1970s and witnessed the extinction of Bukharin's popularity in China. The accusations made against him in the USSR were repeated by the Chinese and, as in the USSR, so in China, his writings were consigned to oblivion. According to Li, a new approach to Bukharin began to emerge at the end of the 1970s, and a fresh interest began to be shown in his works. This was prompted by the need to repair the damage caused to the Chinese economy and to Chinese society by the 'cultural revolution' and by the ultra-leftist policies previously pursued. These considerations caused Chinese scholars to look again at the Soviet experience, which had initially supplied them with their model for socialism.3 Many of these scholars, Li stated, had studied Bukharin's ideas 'in connection with elaborating the route to reform in China'.4 It is this link with the economic reforms, attested by Li, which gives the study of Bukharin in China a special importance as a subject for investigation. Li places the beginning of Bukharin's rehabilitation in China in 1980, with an article by the two scholars Ye Shuzong and Fu Jiurong entitled 'Bukharin Was Not the Organiser of the Revolt of the Left SRs'. He goes on to say that in the