The Chinese Communist Party and the Comintern

Abstract

Whether in Europe or Asia, Soviet foreign policy amounted to more than diplomacy. There was also the Comintern which, although an international organisation of Communist Parties, was under the ultimate control of the Soviet Communist Party and therefore could not afford to ignore the interests of the Soviet state. In the conflict with Japan, Soviet needs were pressing; but those needs were extremely hard to meet. The Japanese Communist Party (JCP) had been suppressed almost to the point of extinction and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was of little use. From the Manchurian incident in 1931 until 1934 the CCP, concentrated in Kiangsi, a province to the south-west of Shanghai, was too far from the Japanese front to offer any resistance. And Kuomintang (KMT) encirclement of these soviets made any enlargement of Communist power most unlikely. Indeed Chiang Kaishek’s campaign very nearly succeeded in wiping them out. On 16 October 1934 the Communists escaped by forced march — the Long March — to the north and west. Under the direction of Mao Tse-tung, who secured his supremacy en route at Tsunyi in January 1935, battered remnants of the Red forces reached the poverty-stricken province of northern Shensi that October.KeywordsCommunist PartyChinese Communist PartyUnite FrontSoviet LeadershipRadio ContactThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.