Preface to the Digest of L. A. Bereznyi, a Critique of American Bourgeois Historiography on China: Problems of Soclal Development in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Abstract

Mr. Bereznii's book is a detailed and systematic Sovietstyle critique of American scholarship on Chinese modern history, the most extensive yet available; it has some 1008 footnotes, mostly textual references to American publications. When I received copies of the book last spring, my own slim command of Russian gave me an idea of what Mr. Bereznii's critique was about but not what it actually said - a distinction perhaps familiar to others who have fallen short of mastering a given foreign language - yet I found and his writings, particularly his joint work with Edwin 0. Reischauer and Albert Craig, cited in something like a third of the footnotes and in corresponding portions of the text. Fairbank seemed plainly t o be a principle anti-hero of the book. (Whether this prominence given to one person indicates an admirable perspicacity or an unfortunate lack of judgment on the part of Mr. Bereznii need not concern us.) I therefore asked Mrs. Ellen Widmer, a 1962 M. A. graduate of the Fletcher...