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Backward Toward Revolution

P'u, Heroines of Eastern Europe, which was serialized in Liang Ch'i-ch'ao's magazine, Hsin-wen pao (New Fiction). The Chinese revolutionaries regarded their Russian counterparts as kindred spirits from whom they had much to learn. Their methods of struggle—e.g., the general strike and political assassinations—appeared to be very effective. The Chinese, moreover, respected the absolute commitment of the Russians to the revolutionary cause, and the "great compassion" that justified their revolutionary ruthlessness. They saw in the Russians the moral purity that they demanded from their own movement, in accordance with a powerful tendency in traditional Chinese moral philosophy. In spite of the effectiveness of the Russian example, Don Price does not think that it spawned the revolution of 19a. Yet respect for the Russian revolutionaries at the beginning of the century prepared the ground for acceptance of a considerable degree of Russian leadership by the Chinese revolutionaries beginning in the 1920s. Price's book shows that the role of the populists in the Russian revolutionary movement was duly recognized in China during the period described—not only the populists of the 1870s and 1880s, but also the neopopulist Socialist revolutionaries. The Marxist Social Democratic Party was scarcely noticed by the Chinese at that time. It was of course the radical wing of the Social Democratic Party, the Bolsheviks (Communists), who were to lead the world-shaking October 1917 revolution; but during the first seventeen years of the twentieth century, including the 1905 Revolution, the Socialist Revolutionaries were a powerful factor. Even after the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, the November 1917 elections to the Constituent Assembly gave the Socialist Revolutionaries 419 seats out of 721, with only 186 going to the Bolsheviks. The role of the Socialist Revolutionary Party was later passed over in silence by the Soviet historians of the Russian revolutions; and, unfortunately, too many Western historians followed suit. One of the great merits of Don Price's book is that it helps to correct this mistaken judgement. The author has skillfully handled an enormous number of Chinese, Japanese, and Western sources; and his objective, well-balanced presentation illuminates many significant aspects of the period he has studied. It is a pity, however, that he noticed only "an anarchist fringe of Esperanto enthusiasts" in China at that time. The fact is that JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES