The great Chinese revolutionary democrat Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) is one of the outstanding historical figures whose interest in life and work does not decrease over time, but, on the contrary, increases. A number of areas of foreign historiography of the 30s - 60s devoted to his life and work have already been analyzed in our scientific press .1 This article examines only a few books and articles by foreign authors published in recent years, which most fully reflect the main trends of modern foreign historiography about this outstanding figure of the Chinese and world national liberation movement.

The most typical representative of the direction that studies Sun Yat-sen's policy towards the Soviet state is the American professor K. M. Wilbur. Wilbur's book is the most comprehensive and well-documented foreign work on Sun Yat-sen 2 . The author had access to the Kuomintang archives in Taiwan, used materials from the closed collections of British, American and French archives, and made extensive use of not only American, European, Japanese and Taiwanese literature, but also to a large extent books and publications by Soviet authors. Despite the seemingly unbiased and pointedly objectivist "academic" style of presentation, the very title of Wilbur's book is " Sun Yat-sen. Disillusioned patriot " - does not contain an objective assessment of the author of the hero of his monograph.

In the" Preface " to the book, patteringly noting the merits of Sun Yat-sen in the struggle to overthrow the Manchu dynasty, his speeches against the Chinese militarists and even the anti-imperialist position that he held in the last years of his life, the author draws

1 Tikhvinsky S. L. Sun Yat-sen's Foreign policy in the coverage of American Historiography. - Voprosy istorii, 1961, N 11; his own review of the book "Sun Yat-sen and Communism"by Leng Shaochuan and N. D. Palmer. - Peoples of Asia and Africa, 1962, N 4; his. Bourgeois historiography of Sun Yat-sen's struggle for national independence in China. In: Modern Historiography of the countries of the Foreign East. Kitay. M. 1963; it is the same. Sun Yat-sen's foreign policy in the light of Western European historiography. In: Problemy natsionalno-osvobozhitel'nogo dvizheniya v stranakh Azii [Problems of the National liberation Movement in Asian Countries]. Sun Yat-sen. Foreign Policy Views and Practice, Moscow, 1964; see also Yefimov G. V. Istoriko-bibliograficheskiy obzor istochnikov i literatury po novoi i sovremennoi istorii Kitai [Historical and bibliographic review of sources and literature on the new and recent history of China]. The Bourgeois Revolution in China and Sun Yat-sen. 1911-1913. Moscow, 1974; his. Sun Yat-sen. Search for a path. 1914-1922. M. 1981; Monina A. A. Some remarks on the bourgeois historiography of 1963-1965 about Sun Yat-sen. In: Sun Yat-sen, 1866-1966. To the centenary of his birth, Moscow, 1966.

2 Wilbur C. Martin. Sun Yatsen. Frustrated Patriot. N.Y. 1976 (further references to this book are given in the text of the article).

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his unbalanced, inconsistent, and frustrated self. According to Wilbur, Sun Yat-sen was " passionate about his dreams and considered himself a tool for making these visions come true, but repeatedly failed when confronted with unreal realities inside China and in the outside world. He died a disappointed man" (p. VII). Wilbur does not hide the fact that his goal is to show mainly the last years of Sun Yat-sen's life, his alliance with Soviet Russia (p.VIII) (the author takes the word "union" in quotation marks).

In the Introduction, Wilbur continues to develop the thesis already postulated in the Preface that Sun Yat-sen was a dreamer far from reality, wishful thinking. The author blames "the structure of his personality that pushed him to pursue unattainable goals", claims that "at times his actions seemed inexplicable" (p. 6), that "he was a man obsessed with the belief that only he was right and that he alone should lead political changes until the intended end. It is possible that this obsession explains some of the anomalies in his behavior" (p. 9). By setting the reader up from the very first pages of the book in this way, Wilbur actually brings under the "anomaly" both Sun Yat - sen's alliance with Soviet Russia and his other main political orientation-an alliance with the CCP.

The first four chapters of the book describe Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary activities during his struggle to overthrow the Manchu monarchy and the Yuan Shikai dictatorship, with an emphasis on finding funds to finance the revolutionaries. Most of the book (chapters 5 to 9) deals with Sun Yat - sen's attitude toward the Soviet Union. The author draws extensively on documentary materials that show the great interest of the Chinese revolutionary in the experience of Soviet Russia and writes: "The first known initiative of contacts between Sun Yat-sen and Russia took place on the part of Sun Yat-sen. In the summer of 1918, after he had left Canton in frustration, he telegraphed Lenin on behalf of the South China Parliament and the Chinese Revolutionary Party, congratulating him on the tireless struggle of the Russian Revolutionary Party and expressing the hope that the Soviet and Chinese parties could unite for a joint struggle " (pp. 112-113). Wilbur recognizes the great revolutionizing significance of the Great October Socialist Revolution for the colonial and dependent countries: "The very fact of the existence of a socialist republic in Russia for 8 months gave hope to the peoples of the East for the possibility of establishing a similar system among them" (p.113). He cites the extremely favorable reaction of Chinese public opinion, including Sun Yat-sen's Mingo Daily, to the Soviet government's appeal to the governments of North and South China on July 25, 1919, which contrasted so strongly with the April decisions of the Versailles Peace Conference, which transferred to Japan the former German colonial possessions in China.

However, along with such objective evidence, Wilbur also quotes a report from an American intelligence agent, an American journalist J. R. R. Tolkien. Sikorsky, who ingratiated himself with Sun Yat-sen in Shanghai in early 1919 and "reported his master's Russian contacts to the American consulate" (p. 115). This spy assigned to Sun Yat-sen informed the American Consul General in Shanghai, E. Cunningham, that the Russians viewed Sun Yat-sen as an "old-fashioned militarist" who relied only on military force. Picking up on this fabrication, Wilbur, in turn, states:: "Later, the constant goal of Soviet Russia was to turn Sun away from him.

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reliance on the army to achieve political goals " (p. 116). The author also cites another" testimony " of the same American agent that in the summer of 1920 Lenin allegedly sent Sun Yat-sen a telegram from London in French, inviting him to Russia "to see how they did it", but Sun Yat-sen declined this offer.

Wilbur also makes extensive use of another equally dubious source-the anti-Soviet forgery published in Tianjin in 1927 in English by a certain N. Mitarevsky, "World Soviet Conspiracies", which cited the materials of a commission appointed by the Beijing government to study and translate documents allegedly seized during a gang raid by the Chinese police on the territory of the Soviet Union. Embassies in Beijing on April 6, 1927. Wilbur's promiscuity about the sources he uses in the book is not accidental. By quoting dubious and often obviously falsified materials, he resorts to casting doubt on the sincerity of Sun Yat-sen's attitude towards the Soviet state and on the motives of the Soviet policy towards China and Sun Yat-sen personally. Wilbur also quotes extensively a letter from the CCP renegade Chen Duxiu, who claims that Sun Yat-sen only agreed to reorganize the Kuomintang and form an alliance with Russia after Soviet political adviser Mikhail Borodin brought a large sum of money to Canton for Sun Yat-sen (p.150). He also cites "third-rate", in his own words, information from Japanese sources that Sun Yat-sen, on his way to Beijing at the end of 1924, allegedly stopped in Kobe with the famous Japanese adventurer Toyama Mizuru and confessed to the latter that " the abolition of extraterritoriality and unequal treaties is only a slogan; these demands are unrealistic, and he does not intend to carry them out, and that he is not in love with Bolshevism " (p. 275).

Why would Wilbur have used all this innuendo and gossip in his book? It is clear that he was unable to attract more solid materials to "prove" his biased concept of Sun Yat-sen and Soviet politics, due to the actual lack of such materials.

Wilbur grossly distorts the goals of the Soviet state's policy towards China, stating that they "did not differ much from the tsarist ones - control over the CER and influence in Northern Manchuria and Outer Mongolia." Sun Yat-sen was needed by the Soviet leaders only in the light of their global strategy - the deployment of a revolutionary movement in the colonies, which would undermine the power of the capitalist powers and eventually, at a later stage, lead them to socialism (pp. 164-165). The author does not hide his hostility to the Marxist methodology of scientific research, indiscriminately accusing its supporters of trying to drive history into the Procrustean bed of Marxist categories (p. 293).

In the course of his presentation, Wilbur tries to polemicize with Soviet historians, accusing them of biased coverage of the relationship between Soviet Russia and Sun Yat-sen: "They celebrate motivational motives and generosity, pursuing a twofold goal - to recreate the youthful spirit of the revolution for a new generation of Russians and score points in polemics with the Chinese Communist Party that developed after 1960" (p. 167). According to Wilbur, "some contemporary Russian authors" claim that Sun Yat-sen, in his contacts with representatives of Soviet Russia in 1920-1922, made every effort to "court the socialist fatherland" (p.112).

The author complains about the great difficulties that he allegedly faces.-

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There are also researchers on the topic of Sun Yat-sen's cooperation with Soviet Russia. "When describing these events, there are serious historiographical problems... Another serious problem is the problem of ideological bias" (p. 166). Wilbur admits that Sun Yat-sen's close ties to Soviet Russia put most Kuomintang authors in a difficult position: they find the Russians ' motives suspicious; Western authors also tend to view Russia's cooperation with Sun Yat-sen with deep suspicion. "A significant number of scientific papers were colored by the belief that Soviet Russia stimulated Chinese hostility to the West and incited revolution - and this was considered a bad thing" (p. 167).

The author justifies the validity of his approach to the topic of relations between Sun Yat-sen and the Soviet Union, openly admitting that he approaches this topic with a bias that "will undoubtedly be visible in the subsequent presentation" (p.167). Indeed, his bias is expressed in the desire to belittle the significance of the last, most vivid stage in the life of an outstanding Chinese revolutionary democrat, a sincere friend of the Country of Soviets and a staunch opponent of imperialism. Wilbur claims, contrary to his own evidence, that Sun Yat-sen "did not turn his eyes to any one power in the name of saving China" (p.287). To this end, Wilbur emphatically, but completely unsubstantiated, writes about Sun Yat-sen's disappointment. Wilbur describes Sun Yat-sen as an "ambitious and disillusioned patriot" when describing the contents of Sun Yat-sen's Lectures on the Three Principles of the People in Guangzhou in 1924. In the final, 9th chapter of the book, the author writes that the last four months of Sun Yat-sen's life were a period of deep disappointment (p. 270). "We have called Sun Yat - sen a 'disillusioned patriot' because much of his career was marked by the discouraging failure of his efforts to achieve patriotic goals" (p.288);" his story is a story of unfulfilled dreams "(p. 290) - these are the words Wilbur ends his book.

Criticizing the flawed concept of this American historian, it is nevertheless impossible not to admit that he did a lot of work on the search for documents and materials about Sun Yat-sen, the involvement of which in scientific use allows the thinking reader to come with an open mind to a diametrically opposite conclusion about the nature of Sun Yat-sen's attitude to the Country of the Soviets, the author tries to force the book to its end. So, he gives a recording of a conversation between Sun Yat-sen and his colleagues on Chinese foreign policy issues, which took place on board the gunboat "Mohan" on August 9, 1922 in Guangzhou, on the eve of Sun Yat-sen's departure for Shanghai after the counter-revolutionary mutiny of Chen Junming. In this conversation, Sun Yat-sen pointed out that Soviet Russia is not anarchy, but a legitimate government, that the new economic policy does not prohibit private property, that the West conducts false propaganda about the situation in Soviet Russia, and that it is nevertheless extremely important for China to have good relations with it (p.124). The book contains the text of an interview Sun Yat-sen gave to a Japanese correspondent of the Jiji Agency in mid-November 1922. In it, Sun Yat-sen appealed to Japanese public opinion, advocating the establishment of diplomatic relations between Japan and Russia, and called for a joint "struggle with Russia against Anglo-Saxon aggression" (p.134).

Wilbur gives a detailed account of Sun Yat-sen's conversation with the American F. Brockman in Hong Kong in March 1923, during which Sun Yat-sen sharply criticized the policies of foreign powers, in particular

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"We have lost all hope of getting help from America, Britain, France, or any other great power, "he said... The only country that is willing to help us in the south is the Soviet Government of Russia" (p.145). The author also admits that in a conversation with old members of the Kuomintang during the First Party Congress, Sun Yat-sen refuted the thesis of anti-communist propaganda about the intention of Soviet Russia to use the Kuomintang for its own selfish purposes and stated that the suspicions of individual members of the Kuomintang in this regard were caused by the fact that they had lived for a long time in imperialist countries, anti-Russian propaganda (p. 192).

The book also contains extensive documentation showing the extremely hostile attitude of representatives of imperialist powers, especially American diplomatic and consular representatives in China and senior officials of the US State Department, towards Sun Yat-sen. In 1921, the State Department advised all other U.S. government agencies and individuals not to have anything to do with Sun Yat-sen (p.162). Foreigners living in China did not understand Sun Yat-sen's true motives, as the author says, " most of them were in China to make money or save souls!" (p. 287).

Although the abundance of factual material makes Wilbur's monograph the most comprehensive of all the biographical works about Sun Yat-sen published in the West, the author's open bias in covering the relationship between the leader of the national liberation struggle of the Chinese people and the world's first country of socialism, which clearly aims to negatively affect the development of modern Sino-Soviet relations, largely negates the advantages books.

Wilbur also participated in a collective work of West German and Kuomintang authors published in Germany under the editorship of Professor of Political Science, Director of the Center for International Politics at the University of Munich G. K. Kindermann. In this work, Wilbur belongs to the XIV chapter 3 . Here he repeated in a concentrated form the whole set of arguments he gave in the book we analyzed above and designed to belittle the importance of Sun Yat-sen's cooperation with Soviet Russia. "The material about Dr. Sun's Russian connections is either shrouded in secrecy or has been deliberately distorted for political reasons," Wilbur writes at the beginning of the chapter. According to him, Sun Yat-sen sought cooperation with Soviet Russia only out of fear that the Russians might help rival militant groups like Chen Junming, Wu Peifu, and others. Referring to conversations in Taiwan with Kuomintang leader and extreme anti-communist Huang Jilu, Wilbur claims that Sun Yat-sen was extremely dissatisfied with his political adviser Mikhail Borodin. Contrary to Sun Yat-sen's well-known speeches in Shanghai and Japan on the way to Beijing in November-December 1924, as well as his dying address to the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, the author of the chapter states that " Sun Yat-sen's departure from Canton on November 13, the day after his 58th birthday, marked the end of his cooperation with Soviet Russia on Russian terms. From that time on, he began to follow his own dreams. " 5
3 Wilbur C. Martin. Motives, Methods and Precausions in Sun Yatsen's Cooperations with Soviet Russia. Ch. XIV. In: Sun Yatsen: Founder and Symbol of China's Revolutionary Nation Building. Munchen - Wien. 1982.

4 Ibid., p. 260.

5 Ibid., p. 275.

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In addition to Wilbur, 14 other authors took part in the collective work discussed here: eight professors and teachers from various educational and research centers in Germany, four Kuomintang authors from Taiwan, and one author each from Austria and Israel. Although the general tone of the book is openly anti-communist, its executive editor, G. K. Kinderman, in a biographical sketch entitled "Sun Yat-sen: The Armed Prophet of twentieth-century China," admits, unlike Wilbur, that "for the rest of his life, Sun felt indebted to the Soviet Union, which was, among other things, the first Soviet leader." a foreign state that gave him some kind of recognition, as well as the material assistance and advice that he so badly needed. " 6 This testimony of Kinderman, who defended his doctoral dissertation on Sun Yat - sen's Sino-Soviet Union Policy 1923-1925 at the University of Chicago in 1959, stands in sharp contrast to Wilbur's" conclusions".

Kinderman emphasizes Sun Yat-sen's priority in raising the issue of anti-imperialist solidarity of colonial and dependent countries and their use of foreign capital for their economic development. "Decades before the non-Aligned Movement emerged, Sun demanded international solidarity of oppressed nations against all forms of imperialism and proposed concrete forms of political neutralization of aid from industrial powers to developing countries such as China."7 . Kinderman elaborates on this thesis in detail in chapter IV of the collective work, which is called "Sunyatsenism-the prototype of the syncretic ideology of the Third World."

The authors of a number of other chapters of the book also address questions about Sun Yat-sen's attitude to the USSR and the Soviet state's policy towards China and Sun Yat-sen, aiming to extrapolate these questions to the current state of Sino-Soviet relations. Thus, D. Heinzig, head of the research group on Chinese communism at the Federal Institute for Oriental and International Studies in Cologne, author of chapter XVI "The role of Sun Yat-sen in shaping the initial Soviet policy towards China and the Third World", attributes the USSR's desire to subordinate China to its influence. He asserts that V. I. Lenin "was initially not interested in either China or the third World," 8 while ignoring the fact that as early as in the first issue of Iskra, in December 1900. Lenin, in his article "The Chinese War", sharply criticized the intervention of eight powers in China, which suppressed the Yihetuan uprising. Lenin's great interest in the national liberation struggle of the Chinese people is evidenced by his article "Combustible Material in World Politics", written in 1907, the resolution of the Prague Conference of the RSDLP on the Chinese revolution (April 1912), written by Lenin, and his articles on Sun Yat - sen and the events of 1912-1913 in China.

Author of the XVII chapter " China in World Politics. Sun Yat-sen's views on International Relations" Associate professor at the University of Trier M. N. Neth states that Sun Yat-sen "made a mistake" by entering into an alliance with Soviet Russia in 1924. According to her, he thereby violated the basic principle of his foreign policy views -not to allow control over China by any foreign power. "The Chinese Communists made the same mistake in 1949," Nat continues, " but it is clear that the Soviet Union never felt satisfied.-

6 Ibid., p. 64.

7 Ibid., p. 72.

8 Ibid., p. 295.

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warnings from an uncontrolled Chinese ally " 9 . Presenting Sun Yat-sen as a supporter of an alliance with Japan and close cooperation with the United States, the author claims that the political events in China in the early 80s are very similar to what happened in the early 20s, when Sun Yat-sen chose his foreign policy orientation.

The author of the XII chapter "The Movement for the Defense of the Constitution" by Sun Yat - sen and the Revolutionary Governments in Southern China (1917-1923), Professor of Chinese history in Israel G. Shifrin, is closest to Wilbur's views on openly anti-Soviet positions. He argues that Sun Yat-sen's orientation toward the Soviet Union "did not represent an irreversible ideological change. It was just one strategic choice among many others he considered that eventually materialized. " 10 The same author goes on to state that even after Sun Yat-sen met with the Soviet diplomat Joffe in Shanghai in January 1923 and an agreement was reached between them on all the issues discussed, "Sun Yat-sen continued to explore alternative options"11 and if he had lived longer, "he would certainly have broken off relations with the Chinese Communists and their Soviet masters " 12 .

Previously published in the United States, Shifrin's book 13 is accompanied by a dust jacket advertisement stating that " Sun was the father of the idea that by an act of will, the Chinese can make a sudden leap from backwardness to modernization, and his dream of using foreign capitalism to build socialism is being realized today, in the post-Mao era."". Unlike the previous book on Sun Yat-sen [14], which is based on serious documentary material, the 1980 work is of a compilation nature. The author draws much of the factual material from Wilbur's book, which he praises for "an objective study of Sun Yat-sen's career, especially the last four years of his life" (p. 273), as well as from other books and dissertations by American and Kuomintang authors. In Shifrin's image, Sun Yat-sen looks like a man who was completely oriented towards the West, but due to the short-sighted policies of the United States, Japan and England, he was forced for purely tactical, pragmatic reasons to accept Soviet assistance.

"An alliance with Russia," Shifrin states, "was not Sun's priority choice, and his attitude toward the capitalist powers was more due to their rejection of it than to Borodin's instructions" (p.250). The author complains that "America and Britain, while continuing their imperialist role to the end, did not allow Sun Yat-sen to turn away from the alliance with Russia" (p.235). Soviet Russia, according to Shifrin, "capitalized on the short-sighted policies of the West and, moreover, could serve Chinese nationalism without renouncing the imperialist legacy received from the tsars" (p.247). The author tries to pass off the sharply anti-imperialist tone of Sun Yat-sen's lectures on the principle of nationalism and their "pro-Bolshevik tone "as a tactical maneuver and explain both Sun Yat-sen's desire to" please the Russians " and the threat from the Western powers, which concentrated 16 military courts under Guangzhou in early 1924 (p.257). For an alliance with

9 Ibid., p. 306.

10 Ibid., p. 227.

11 Ibid., p. 242.

12 Ibid., p. 243.

13 Schiffrin H. Z. Sun Yatsen. Reluctant Revolutionary. Boston-Toronto. 1980 (further references to this book are given in the text of the article).

14 Schiffrin H. Z. Sun Yatsen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution. University of California Press. 1968.

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According to the author, Sun Yat-sen joined the Communist Party of China only under pressure from Moscow (p. 251).

Shifrin perversely presents the policy of the Soviet Union as a desire to " buy " the favor of Sun Yat-sen by providing him with generous financial and military assistance (p. 258); Sun Yat-sen, in the author's image, "did not surrender his independence to the Russians... his most important recent decisions went against Borodin's strategy and disregarded the objections of the Communists" (p.260). Shifrin resorts to a cheap trick: first he thinks that the USSR was trying its best to turn Sun Yat-sen into an obedient tool of its policy, and then he himself vigorously argues that Sun Yat-sen opposed such a policy, did not become a Soviet pawn, and "would not have allowed a coalition with a party that is under foreign control" (p. 270). Echoing Wilbur in summarizing his book, Shifrin writes: "If Sun Yat-sen had any permanent talent, it was the talent to fail... he was a reluctant revolutionary" (p. 269).

Such a conclusion, however, does not prevent the author, throwing a bridge to the present, to praise Sun Yat-sen's desire to cooperate with foreign powers in the economic development of China. "Recent developments," Shifrin concludes, " prove that some of Sun Yat - sen's strongest beliefs are correct. The Western world and Japan, especially the latter, are beginning to discover the benefits of cooperation with a strong and modernizing China. And China after Mao is actually trying to use foreign capital to build socialism" (p. 271). The author concludes the book with a discussion of the prospects for the attitude towards Sun Yat-sen in modern China and writes that "the People's Republic will feel an even greater need to glorify Sun as a prophet of Chinese nationalism. He is the only modern hero recognized in both mainland China and Taiwan. Their joint celebration of the memory of Sun can serve as a useful psychological bridge if they ever happen to unite in a peaceful way "(ibid.).

An indicator of the increased interest of Western researchers in the topic of relations between Sun Yat-sen and the Soviet Union is the appearance of a series of books about Sun Yat-sen's political adviser M. M. Borodin, including an anti-communist and anti-Soviet pamphlet by Chiang Kai-shek's wife .15
A more objective assessment of Sun Yat-sen's life and revolutionary activities, his attitude to Soviet Russia, and his ideology is given by French sinologists L. Bianco and I. Chevrier in an article published in the Biographical Dictionary of the Chinese Labor Movement .16 The authors distinguish two main stages in Sun Yat-sen's activity : the period of struggle for the overthrow of the Manchu monarchy and the period of struggle against the "Beijing usurpers", various militarists who seized power in the country after the abdication of the Manchu dynasty. Analyzing the ideological views of Sun Yat-sen, the authors believe that they are based on a pragmatic approach: he was obsessed with the only desire - to make China rich and strong. Sun Yat-sen developed detailed plans for the country's economic development, including

15 Madame Chiang Kai-shek. Conversations with Mikhail Borodin. Taipei. 1977; Lydia Holubnychy. Michael Borodin and the Chinese Revolution 1923 - 1925. Columbia University Press. 1979; D. N. Jacobs. Borodin. Stalin's Man in China. Harward University Press. 1981.

16 Bianco L., Chevrier Y. Sun Yatsen. In: Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier chinois. P. 1985 (further references to this work are given in the text of the article).

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These projects include the grandiose railway construction projects, which are described by the authors as utopian and not much different from the projects of Saint-Simon. To achieve his goal, they write, Sun Yat-sen needed the unification of the country, but considered it possible to implement it exclusively by military means. Only in the last two years of his life, after the establishment of an alliance with Soviet Russia and the arrival of Soviet political and military advisers in Guangzhou, did Sun Yat-sen manage to create an influential political party, the Kuomintang, and his own reliable army. The authors are forced to acknowledge the great influence of the ideas of Leninism on Sun Yat-sen, although they accompany this with the caveat that he was primarily interested in the fact of the success of the Russian revolution, and not in the causes of its occurrence (p.204).

At the same time, the authors, having drawn a significant part of the factual material for their article from Wilbur's book, also borrowed some points of the vicious concept of the American biographer Sun Yat-sen. Following Wilbur, they call Sun Yat-sen a "disillusioned patriot" (p.209), and claim that his death "left an unsolved mystery about his attitude to communism" (p. 212). Under the influence of Wilbur's book, a significant part of the article is devoted to speculating about the hypothetical question of the fate of Sun Yat-sen's intentions for an alliance with Soviet Russia and the CCP if his premature death had not ended his life (p. 213).

Another area of Western historiography-the study of Sun Yat-sen's foreign economic views-is represented by M.-C. Berger, a professor at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations of the Higher School of Social Sciences in Paris, who specializes in the economic history of modern and contemporary China. In a 17 report on Sun Yat-sen at an international symposium organized by the Yat-sen University. Sun Yat-sen in Guangzhou, the Central and Southern China Research Association for the History of the 1911 Revolution, and the Guangdong Province Historical Association, she highly appreciates Sun Yat-sen's book "China's International Development", first published in 1920 in Shanghai in English (some parts of it were published in Chinese translation in 1919 in the Organ of Chinese Studies). supporters of Sun Yat-sen ("Jianshe zazhi").

Berger believes that in this book, Sun Yat-sen, far ahead of the era, showed an innovative approach to the problems of economic development, international economic cooperation between industrial and developing countries, that is, to problems that became the subject of major political discussions only in the second half of the century (p. 6). Many of the provisions of Sun Yat-sen's book, on which Berger points out that cooperation between China and the powers should be based on the principle of mutual benefit for both sides; China is not interested in unilateral assistance, but in cooperation; the capital invested by the powers will be paid by China with the appropriate interest; China should receive the latest technology and science from the powers; in the Chinese economic system, capitalism and socialism should be they will co-exist, etc.), which are very much in line with the demands that are being put forward in China today in the course of the ongoing economic reform there.

17 Bergere M. -C. Sun Yatsen and "The International Development of China". A Paper Prepared for the International Symposium on Dr. Sun Yatsen, Jointly Sponsored by Zhongshan University, 1911 Revolution Research Association of Central South China Area and History Association of Guangdong Province, Guangzhou, PRC, November 20 - 26, 1984, 24 p. The text of the report was kindly provided by Professor Berger to the author of this article.

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As for the contemporary Chinese historiography of Sun Yat-sen, the leading theme of the vast majority of works is his work as the organizer of the first cooperation between the Kuomintang and the CCP and the justification, with reference to this precedent, of the need for these two parties to resume cooperation in order to reunite Taiwan with mainland China as soon as possible. This topic is covered by an introductory editorial in the party-theoretical organ of the CPC Central Committee entitled " The historical Path of completing the unification of the Motherland (on the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Third Congress of the Communist Party of China)"18 . The article notes that the Third CPC Congress, held in Guangzhou in June 1923, opened the first period of cooperation between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang.

According to the authors of the article, the newly created CCP, armed with the ideas of Marxism - Leninism, analyzed the contradictions of Chinese society and understood the nature of the Chinese revolution, put forward a demand for cooperation with the Kuomintang Party headed by Sun Yat-sen, for the creation of a united front, and set the task of joint struggle to complete the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal democratic revolution. The Congress officially decided to cooperate with the Kuomintang, decided that Communists join the Kuomintang as individual members. At the same time, the political, ideological and organizational independence of the Communist Party was preserved. In January 1924, under the chairmanship of Sun Yat-sen, the First National Congress of the Kuomintang opened, where a declaration was adopted in which Sun Yat-sen formulated three main political guidelines: an alliance with Russia, an alliance with the Communists, and support for peasants and workers.

Sun Yat-sen, according to the article, gave a new interpretation of his three popular principles, as a result of which they turned out to be similar to the main provisions of the CPC program at the stage of the democratic revolution in China. The Kuomintang, which underwent a reorganization due to the participation of Communists in it, actually became a democratic revolutionary union of workers, peasants, petty and national bourgeoisie. With this, the establishment of cooperation between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang officially began. "The emergence of such a historic situation," the authors of the article note, " should be attributed not only to the efforts of the Communists, but also to the active participation of Mr. Sun Yat-sen." The article goes on to say that cooperation between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang has already taken place twice in Chinese history. During the first stage, the two parties jointly destroyed the reactionary forces in Guangdong, created a revolutionary base, a powerful revolutionary army, led the revolutionary movement of the masses, and carried out the Northern Campaign, which led to a situation that was not previously observed during the Chinese revolution. In the second stage, the Chinese people finally achieved victory over Japanese imperialism in a difficult eight-year war; after almost 50 years of Japanese rule, Taiwan was returned to its homeland. A new stage of the Chinese revolution has begun.

The article raises the question of the need to "start cooperation between the two parties for the third time in order to jointly complete the great cause of uniting the motherland", and lists the initiative proposals made by the leaders of the People's Republic of China in this regard and addressed to the authorities in Taiwan. "The new history of China teaches us that imperialism is a muddy source of separatism. Mr. Sun Yat-sen, on the basis of his forty-year experience in the field of-

18 Hongqi, 1983, No. 12.

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He knew that imperialism was the main source of unrest in China. It is enough to destroy the influence of imperialism in China, and China will be able to peacefully reunite, there will be order and calm." The article calls on Chinese patriots to " never forget the bitter lessons of the past, not show credulity towards the flattering speeches of foreigners, and not delay the time of unification, thereby betraying the interests of the country and the people!"

In January 1984, the People's Republic of China widely celebrated the 60th anniversary of the First National Congress of the Kuomintang. A scientific conference organized on the initiative of the Chinese Historical Society was dedicated to this event. The opening ceremony was attended by Deng Yingchao, a veteran Communist Party member and chairman of the National Committee of the People's Political Consultative Conference, who called on Kuomintang leaders in Taiwan to put the national debt first and put an end to the situation in which Chinese people are divided due to the split between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang. Deng Yingchao said, "Sun Yat-sen has repeatedly stressed that China is inherently one and that the unification of the country is the main course of historical development, reflecting the will of the people." 19
The conference announced the establishment of the Sun Yat-sen Research Society, designed to promote the development, systematization and publication of materials related to Sun Yat-sen's activities and his own works. As the Xinhua News Agency reported on January 17, 1985, one of the goals of the society is to " actively promote scientific exchange with organizations and individuals engaged in Sun Yat-sen research in Taiwan Province, Hong Kong and Macao regions, and among Chinese living abroad." Hu Sheng, Director of the Institute of Party History under the CPC Central Committee, was elected President of the new society, and Liu Danyan, a well-known Chinese historian, was elected vice - president.

Numerous articles and notes were published in the Chinese press on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the First Congress of the Kuomintang. In 1984, a collection of articles was published in Beijing under the editorship and foreword of Liu Danyan 20 . The collection reprints 17 articles previously published in the Chinese press by Chinese experts in modern and contemporary history, devoted to the preparation and holding of the First Kuomintang Congress in January 1924 in Guangzhou under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen, as well as the activities of Sun Yat-sen, Liao Zhongkai, Song Qingling, Li Dazhao, Mao Zedong, Deng Yanda, Qu Qiubo and other figures of the Communist Party and Kuomintang, as well as the history of the Wampu military school.

In the preface to the collection, Liu Danyan wrote that despite the huge changes that have taken place in China over 60 years, "the historical role and meaning of the First Congress of the Kuomintang have not lost their vivid significance. The great pioneer of the revolution, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who represented a resolute revolutionary democracy, and the Chinese proletariat political party, the Chinese Communist Party, which entered the political arena shortly after the May 4 movement, established an organizational and programmatic cooperation that generated a great wave that had never been seen before in the Chinese revolution. The subsequent history developed in a tortuous and intermittent way and led to a huge bloodshed, but practice has shown that the course that was outlined by the First Congress of the Kuomintang was correct.

19 Deng Yingchao. History of Bi-Party Co-operation Reviewed. - Beijing Review, January 30, 1984, vol. 27, N 5 - 6, p. 23.

20 Collection of articles dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the first Congress of the Chinese Kuomintang. Beijing, 1984 (in Chinese).

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the right course for China to pursue was to ensure national independence, establish democracy, and achieve wealth and power. " 21
The article "Assistance of the Chinese Communist Party in reorganizing the Kuomintang and the first cooperation between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang" published on February 1, 1985 in the "People's Daily" under the heading "Studying the history of the Revolution" notes that " The Communist International, led by Lenin, took full care of the Chinese resolution, sending Voitinsky, Marang and others to China at various times. to assist the Chinese Communist Party, seeking to establish cooperative relations with the Kuomintang Party led by Sun Yat-sen." The article describes the history of Sun Yat-sen's relationship with Soviet Russia and its representatives, and details the relationship between Sun Yat-sen and the CCP representatives who helped Sun Yat-sen reorganize the Kuomintang Party and formulate its new three people's principles.

In 1984 - 1985, China hosted international conferences dedicated to studying the legacy of Sun Yat-sen. On February 1, 1985, the People's Daily published information about a scientific conference held in November 1984 in the cities of Guangzhou and Zhongshan, organized by the University. Sun Yat-sen, the Guangdong Provincial Historical Society, and the Xinhai Revolution Research Society of Central and Southern China. The conference was attended by over 80 Chinese and foreign scientists. Among the topics discussed at the conference were: 1) the question of Sun Yat-sen's democratic and dictatorial methods; 2) an assessment of his early views: 3) the question of his attitude to imperialism; 4) how well Sun Yat-sen knew the peasant question and what were his connections with secret societies and peasants; 5) the development and change of Sun Yat-sen's views in the last period of his life. In addition, the conference addressed issues related to Sun Yat-sen's attitude to the constitutional defense movement, his philosophical and economic views, views on culture, etc.

From March 21 to 28, 1985, an international symposium was held in Zhoxian County, Hebei Province, near Beijing, to mark the 60th anniversary of the death of Sun Yat-sen. The symposium was organized by the Sun Yat-sen Research Society. The symposium was attended by 49 scientists: 33 from China, 15 from Japan, Australia, Germany, the GDR and one from Hong Kong. The symposium discussed the state of Sun Yat-sen's legacy in various countries and regions, his views and activities in the early period, during the Xinhai Revolution and during the Kuomintang-CCP cooperation, as well as the evolution of his teachings on the Three people's principles.

On April 22, 1985, the People's Daily published a report on the results of the symposium, highlighting the following topics discussed by participants:: 1) Sun Yat-sen's early views, which were dominated by the revolutionary ideology of the struggle against the Qing monarchy, associated with his patriotism; 2) Sun Yat-sen's position on the "national party" of the first years of the republic; 3) the assessment of the "Chinese revolutionary party" and 4) the general assessment of the revolutionary ideology-

21 Ibid., p. 1. Unfortunately, none of the articles in the collection cover the topic of Sun Yat-sen's cooperation with Soviet Russia and the role of Soviet political and military advisers during the preparation and holding of the First Congress of the Kuomintang. To some extent, Shang Mingxuan and Wang Xuezhong address this topic in their article "Liao Zhongkai and the First Cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party", published in the People's Daily on August 20, 1982, and Liu Junying in his article "The First Cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China and the Creation of the Revolutionary Army", published in the Bulletin of the University of. Sun Yat-sen's "Zhongshan daxue xuebao", 1984, N 1.

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Sun Yat-sen's logies. At the same time, it was emphasized that by the time Sun Yat-sen drafted the declaration of the First Kuomintang Congress, his views were most closely aligned with the CCP's program.

On May 3, 1985, the People's Daily published an article by Jin Chongji entitled "On further intensification of work on the study of Sun Yat-sen", which is a summary of the author's speech at an international symposium. Jin Chongji notes that " the revolution led by Sun Yat-sen and the path it took were not only a phenomenon characteristic of Chinese society, were important not only for the new history of China, but also were an important historical phenomenon of global significance. It was a bourgeois-democratic revolution in a semi-colonial, semi-feudal country. It was in many ways different from the bourgeois-democratic revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the West, as it faced a new situation and new problems that the Western revolutionaries of that time did not have to face, and therefore in some issues it appeared in its own specific form. But to a certain extent, we can say that it has many similarities with the current national revolutions in many third world countries."

The article outlines the following areas of further study of Sun Yat-sen's life and work: its international significance in the broad context of world history; Sun Yat-sen's patriotism and democratic views, the peculiarities of his method of thinking, his ideology in an inseparable connection with the difficult situation in which he lived and worked; Sun Yat-sen's system of views and its origins: the Chinese revolutionary process, Chinese traditional thought, European and American social thought, especially the influence of Western ideas and Chinese tradition on Sun Yat-sen; Sun Yat-sen's" social environment", the social forces and strata that influenced him and his concepts, as well as the impact of Sun Yat-sen's ideas and activities on them. The author writes that the Chinese Communists are the successors of the Sun Yat-sen cause. His research aims to study the continuity and connection between the Sun Yat-sen cause and the revolutionary process led by the Chinese Communists, and to identify the role of Sun Yat-sen's rich spiritual heritage in the ongoing modernization of China.

According to reports in the Chinese press, neither the Guangzhou conference nor the symposium near Beijing raised the issue of Sun Yat-sen's attitude to the Soviet Union. The greatest interest of Chinese historians continues to attract cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, which took place in the last years of Sun Yat-sen's life.

As you know, many biographical works about Sun Yat-sen published abroad before the 1960s tended to tone down the anti-imperialist, national liberation character of Sun Yat-sen's policy, to present him as a supporter of one or another imperialist power (depending on the author's nationality), to consider his policy of friendship and alliance with Soviet Russia as a purely tactical, forced and short-lived maneuver (as well as his policy of a united front between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China), to limit the historical significance of Sun Yat-sen's activities only to the preparation and conduct of the anti-Manchurian revolution of 1911, not to attach importance to the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal orientation of the last period of his life and activities.

These trends in bourgeois historiography as a whole persisted in the 70s and in the first half of the 80s, but the characteristic tenor of bourgeois historiography is still quite different.-

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The trend of the period considered in this article is the sharp actualization and politicization of research, its close connection with the foreign policy attitudes of the ruling circles of Western countries, which is especially noticeable in the increased attention of Western authors to the problems related to Sun Yat-sen's attitude to the Soviet Union. The research has also been updated by Chinese historians, whose attention is drawn to one of Sun Yat-sen's three main policies-the alliance between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and in particular to the problems of the First Congress of the Kuomintang, which marked the beginning of the first period of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the CPC (1924-1927). with the foreign economic views of Sun Yat-sen, in particular with his plans for China's industrial development with the participation of foreign capital and the policy of "open doors" for foreign investment under the control of China.

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