S/H/46. Dissertation. Comintern and China 1920-27

This dissertation re-examines the causes of the Soviet failure to stimulate a communist revolution in China in the 1920s. It challenges the widely held view that Stalin's distortion of Lenin's united front tactics was culpable, arguing that the policy of both leaders would have delivered the same outcome and that hitherto accounts fail to emphasise sufficiently the role of Chiang Kai-shek. The paper scrutinizes the theoretical differences between the approaches of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky; the manifestations of the policies of Lenin and Stalin and the perspective of both the Guomindang and the CCP using a wealth of primary evidence to support the thesis.