This collection of documents, sealed for years in Stalin's secret archives, gathers some of Karl Bernhardovich Radek's most important contributions to the early Soviet debates about China and its working-class. Radek (1885-1939) was the foremost Soviet specialist on China, a leading activist in the Russian revolutionary movement, and a leader of the Trotskyist Opposition. In these letters, articles, and minutes he presents an original conception of the history of China from ancient times to the twentieth century, as well as a delineation of the fundamental political problems of China in the 1920s. The appendices also contain communications between Trotsky and Radek, as well as the "Chronological Information" of Zionviev and Trotsky, outlining the most important stages of the struggle of the United Left Opposition against the Stalinist majority in the All-Union Commuist Party regarding problems of the first Chinese revolution. None of the documents collected here have ever been published in English.

Mao Zedong was one of the most important figures of the twentieth century, the most important in the history of modern China. A complex figure, he was both a champion of the poor and a brutal tyrant, a poet and a despot. In this major new biography, the authors draw upon extensive Russian documents previously unavailable to reveal surprising details about Mao's rise to power, his leadership in China, and the true nature of his relationship with Stalin.
Mao brought his country from poverty and economic backwardness into the modern age and onto the world stage. But he was also responsible for an unprecedented loss of life during the disastrous Great Leap Forward and the bloody Cultural Revolution. He lived and behaved as China's last emperor.
"Mao" is the full story of Mao's life and rule told as never before.

This book brings a fresh perspective to three wars the United States fought in Asia between 1941 and 1975 - the Pacific War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War - by focusing on the human dimension of war as experienced by those, on all sides, who fought, lived through, and later remembered them. The complex relationship between history and memory is brought to bear on analyses of cultural artifacts and productions including novels, films, short stories, and poems that derive from or evoke war. Even though the cultural approach concerns itself with the local and the particular rather than with the abstract and universal, it is inherently comparative. Moreover, it also relocates each war in the historical and cultural experiences of Asian countries themselves rather than seeing the war as merely a conflict between the United States and Asian nations. This volume is meant to encourage readers, especially in a teaching environment, to develop an understanding of the experience of war in Asia that is variegated, fragmented, and complex, like the wars themselves.

"China's Bitter Victory" is a comprehensive analysis of China's epochal war with Japan. Striving for a holistic understanding of China's wartime experience, the contributors examine developments in the Nationalist, communist, and Japanese-occupied areas of the country. More than just a history of battles and conferences, the book portrays the significant impact of the war on every dimension of Chinese life, including politics, the economy, culture, legal affairs, and science. For within the overriding struggle for national survival, the competition for political goals continued. China ultimately triumphed, but at a price of between 15 and 20 million lives and vast destruction of property and resources. And China's bitter victory brought new trials for the Chinese people in the form of civil war and revolution. This book tells the story of China during a crucial period pregnant with consequences not only for China but also for Asia and the world as well. Addressed to students, scholars, and general readers, the book aims to fill a gap in the existing literature on modern Chinese history and on World War II.

"China's Bitter Victory" is a comprehensive analysis of China's epochal war with Japan. Striving for a holistic understanding of China's wartime experience, the contributors examine developments in the Nationalist, communist, and Japanese-occupied areas of the country. More than just a history of battles and conferences, the book portrays the significant impact of the war on every dimension of Chinese life, including politics, the economy, culture, legal affairs, and science. For within the overriding struggle for national survival, the competition for political goals continued. China ultimately triumphed, but at a price of between 15 and 20 million lives and vast destruction of property and resources. And China's bitter victory brought new trials for the Chinese people in the form of civil war and revolution. This book tells the story of China during a crucial period pregnant with consequences not only for China but also for Asia and the world as well. Addressed to students, scholars, and general readers, the book aims to fill a gap in the existing literature on modern Chinese history and on World War II.

Deng Xiaoping joined the Chinese Communist movement as a youth and rose in its ranks to become an important lieutenant of Mao's from the 1930s onward. Two years after Mao's death in 1976, Deng became the de facto leader of the Chinese Communist Party and the prime architect of China's post-Mao reforms. Abandoning the Maoist socio-economic policies he had long fervently supported, he set in motion changes that would dramatically transform China's economy, society, and position in the world. Three decades later, we are living with the results. China has become the second largest economy and the workshop of the world. And while it is essentially a market economy ("socialism with Chinese characteristics"), Deng and his successors ensured the continuation of CCP rule by severely repressing the democratic movement and maintaining an iron grip on power. When Deng died at the age of 92 in 1997, he had set China on the path it is following to this day. Alexander Pantsov and Steven Levine's new biography of Deng Xiaoping does what no other biography has done: based on newly discovered documents, it covers his entire life, from his childhood and student years to the post-Tiananmen era. Thanks to unprecedented access to Russian archives containing massive files on the Chinese Communist Party, the authors present a wealth of new material on Deng dating back to the 1920s. In a long and extraordinary life, Deng navigated one epic crisis after another. Born in 1904, Deng, like many Asian revolutionary leaders, spent part of the 1920s in Paris, where he joined the CCP in its early years. He then studied in the USSR just as Stalin was establishing firm control over the Soviet communist party. He played an increasingly important role in the troubled decades of the 1930s and 1940s that were marked by civil war and the Japanese invasion. He was commissar of a communist-dominated area in the early 1930s, loyal henchman to Mao during the Long March, regional military commander in the anti-Japanese war, and finally a key leader in the 1946-49 revolution. During Mao's quarter century rule, Deng oscillated between the heights and the depths of power. He was purged during the Cultural Revolution, only to reemerge after Mao's death to become China's paramount leader until his own death in 1997. This objective, balanced, and unprecedentedly rich biography changes our understanding of one of the most important figures in modern history.

This text examines the Pacific War, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, from the perspective of those who fought the wars and lived through them. The relationship between history and memory informs the book, and each war is relocated in the historical and cultural experiences of Asian countries.

Deng Xiaoping joined the Chinese Communist movement as a youth and rose in its ranks to become an important lieutenant of Mao's from the 1930s onward. Two years after Mao's death in 1976, Deng became the de facto leader of the Chinese Communist Party and the prime architect of China's post-Mao reforms. Abandoning the Maoist socio-economic policies he had long fervently supported, he set in motion changes that would dramatically transform China's economy, society, and position in the world. Three decades later, we are living with the results. China has become the second largest economy and the workshop of the world. And while it is essentially a market economy ("socialism with Chinese characteristics"), Deng and his successors ensured the continuation of CCP rule by severely repressing the democratic movement and maintaining an iron grip on power. When Deng died at the age of 92 in 1997, he had set China on the path it is following to this day. Alexander Pantsov and Steven Levine's new biography of Deng Xiaoping does what no other biography has done: based on newly discovered documents, it covers his entire life, from his childhood and student years to the post-Tiananmen era. Thanks to unprecedented access to Russian archives containing massive files on the Chinese Communist Party, the authors present a wealth of new material on Deng dating back to the 1920s. In a long and extraordinary life, Deng navigated one epic crisis after another. Born in 1904, Deng, like many Asian revolutionary leaders, spent part of the 1920s in Paris, where he joined the CCP in its early years. He then studied in the USSR just as Stalin was establishing firm control over the Soviet communist party. He played an increasingly important role in the troubled decades of the 1930s and 1940s that were marked by civil war and the Japanese invasion. He was commissar of a communist-dominated area in the early 1930s, loyal henchman to Mao during the Long March, regional military commander in the anti-Japanese war, and finally a key leader in the 1946-49 revolution. During Mao's quarter century rule, Deng oscillated between the heights and the depths of power. He was purged during the Cultural Revolution, only to reemerge after Mao's death to become China's paramount leader until his own death in 1997. This objective, balanced, and unprecedentedly rich biography changes our understanding of one of the most important figures in modern history.

China's enormous size, vast population, abundant natural resources, robust economy, and modern military suggest that it will emerge as a great world power. Inside China's Grand Strategy: The Perspective from the People's Republic offers unique insights from a prominent Chinese scholar about the country's geopolitical ambitions and strategic thinking. Ye Zicheng, professor of political science in the School of International Studies at Peking University, examines China's interactions with current world powers as well as its policies toward neighboring countries. Despite claims that repressive domestic policies and an economic slowdown are evidence that the country's efforts toward modernization will fail, Ye points to China's inclusion in the G-20 as an indicator of success. Ye compares China's global ascension, particularly its emphasis on peace, to the historical experiences of rising European superpowers, providing an insider look at a country poised to become an increasingly prominent international power.

An extensively researched, comprehensive biography of Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, one of the twentieth century’s most powerful and controversial figures   Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) led the Republic of China for almost fifty years, starting in 1926. He was the architect of a new, republican China, a hero of the Second World War, and a faithful ally of the United States. Simultaneously a Christian and a Confucian, Chiang dreamed of universal equality yet was a perfidious and cunning dictator responsible for the deaths of over 1.5 million innocent people.   This critical biography is based on Chiang Kai-shek’s unpublished diaries, his extensive personal files from the Russian archives, and the Russian files of his relatives, associates, and foes. Alexander V. Pantsov sheds new light on the role played by the Russians in Chiang’s rise to power in the 1920s and throughout his political career—and indeed the Russian influence on the Chinese revolutionary movement as a whole—as well as on Chiang’s complex relationship with top officials of the United States. It is a detailed portrait of a man who ranks with Stalin, Roosevelt, Hitler, Churchill, and Gandhi as leaders who shaped our world.