Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who first became interested in China at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, studied deeply the history of the Chinese people and their liberation struggle. The starting point for V. I. Lenin was the statements of K. Marx and F. Engels. The founders of Marxism considered the Chinese people and other Asian peoples fighting for independence, against European capital, as the most important allies in the world proletarian revolution.

K. Marx and F. Engels wrote about China even when it was just becoming an object of aggression of the European capitalist powers. Marx's articles on the actions of Britain and France in China ("The Anglo-Chinese conflict", "English Atrocities in China", "The History of the Opium Trade", "The Anglo-Chinese Treaty") are full of anger against the invaders and are imbued with warm sympathy for the Chinese people .1 Recognizing the backwardness of China and the barbarism of the forms used by China in the war with the Europeans, Marx and Engels historically explained this phenomenon, emphasizing that for the Chinese it was a war "pro aris et focis" (for altars and hearths)2 .

Marx and Engels considered the national liberation movement in the countries enslaved by capitalism as a factor that would exacerbate the crisis of capitalism and contribute to the beginning of revolution in Europe .3 They foresaw the development of national capitalism in the East and the transition of Asian countries to the democratic movement. Studying, for example, the Taiping uprising, they asked whether the bourgeois-democratic revolution would not come to China from this direction: "When our European reactionaries, in their flight to Asia in the near future, finally reach the Wall of China, the gate that leads to the arch-reactionary and arch-conservative stronghold, how will they be able to achieve this goal?" to know if they can read the inscription there:

"REPUBLIQUE CHINOISE LIBERTE, EGALITE, FRATERNITE "4

In the middle of the nineteenth century, capitalist society was at an ascending stage of development. Under these circumstances, it was not yet clear how the victory of national capitalism in the great Asian countries, such as China or India, could affect the prospects of the world socialist revolution. Marx and Engels repeatedly asked themselves this question5, but the reality surrounding them still did not provide material-

1 See K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 12, p. 4. 105 - 110, 167 - 170, 564 - 571, 579 - 584.

2 Ibid., p. 222.

3 See K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 9, p. 103.

4 K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 7, p. 234.

5 See K. Marx and F. Engels, Op. 29, p. 295.

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la for the answer. Later, in the early 1980s, Marx, studying sources on the agrarian system of Russia at that time, formulated in a letter to V. Zasulich dated March 8, 1881.6 the idea of the possibility of the transition of backward peoples with the support of advanced socialist countries to socialism, bypassing the entire or partial capitalist system. after the victory of socialism in the advanced countries of Europe and America, "the semi-civilized countries will follow us of their own accord; economic needs alone will take care of this. What social and political phases these countries will then have to go through before they also reach a socialist organization, I think we could only put forward rather idle hypotheses. " 7
Based on the ideas of the founders of Marxism, V. I. Lenin developed a coherent and coherent teaching on the national-colonial question. He was the first Russian Marxist to write about China and the Chinese Revolution. In the very first issue of Lenin's Iskra, his article "The Chinese War" appeared, which spoke of the solidarity of the Russian proletariat with the Chinese people fighting for independence.

V. I. Lenin developed the problems of China in an indissoluble connection with the tasks of the Russian revolutionary movement. In the article" The Chinese War", Lenin exposes the foreign policy of Russian tsardom, and the article "Combustible Material in World Politics" (1908) opens the topic of the influence of the Russian revolution of 1905 - 1907 on Asia .8 In the articles of 1912-1913 ("Renewed China", "The Struggle of the Parties in China", "Backward Europe and Advanced Asia") Lenin uses the Chinese theme to show once again the necessity of fighting against the liberal bourgeoisie and for enlisting peasant and urban petty-bourgeois democracy on the side of the proletariat. In this article, we will consider only Lenin's thoughts directly related to two points: the assessment of the liberation movement in China and the character of Chinese society.

When Lenin began writing about China, the country was at the feudal stage of the national liberation struggle. It is well known that revolutionary and reformist movements of a bourgeois nature in the Eastern countries (Japan, India, Egypt, and the Philippines) began in the second half of the nineteenth century ; 9 in China, the transition from the feudal to the bourgeois-democratic stage was significantly delayed and ended only at the beginning of the twentieth century .10
The high point in the development of the old feudal forms of struggle of the Chinese people against foreign enslavers was the Yihetuan rebellion. Movements of this type, imbued with mysticism and blind hostility to everything foreign, including modern technological progress, are still the object of all sorts of insinuations in bourgeois historiography, which seeks to justify the thesis that any national liberation struggle of the peoples of the East, which hinders the influence of the "progressive West", is reactionary.

V. I. Lenin, in his very first article on China, sharply opposed this interpretation of the question. Without denying external reactivity

6 See K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 19, pp. 250-251, 400-421. See the latest research on this issue: B. S. Itenberg. Marx for studying the socio-economic history of post-reform Russia. Collection of articles "Marx-istorik", Moscow, 1968.

7 K. Marx and F. Engels, Op. 35, p. 298.

8 See V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 4, pp. 378-383; vol. 17, pp. 174-183.

9 See " Centuries of Unequal Struggle. The National Liberation Movement in Asia and Africa, Moscow, 1967.

10 See V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 17, p. 179.

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In the same way that movements such as the Yihetuan uprising took on (this is what Lenin later had in mind when he wrote about the "old Chinese riots"11), he focused on the fact that this uprising was directed against imperialism. The main goal for which the Ihetuani fought and sacrificed was the independence of their homeland. "It is not the Chinese who hate the European peoples," Lenin wrote, " they have had no clashes with them, but the European capitalists and the European governments that are submissive to the capitalists. How could the Chinese not hate people who came to China only for the sake of profit, who used their vaunted civilization only to cheat, plunder and violence, who fought wars with China in order to gain the right to trade in intoxicating opium (the war of England and France with China in 1856), who hypocritically covered up the policy of plunder spread of Christianity? This policy of plunder has long been pursued in relation to China by the bourgeois governments of Europe, and now the Russian autocratic government has joined it. It is customary to call this policy of plunder a colonial policy. " 12
V. I. Lenin's statements are of great importance for Marxist historians as they help them navigate the complex liberation movements of the peoples of backward countries .13 Under their influence, already in the first years of Soviet power, A. E. Khodorov revised the assessment made by one of the first Marxist Orientalists, M. P. Pavlovich (Veltman), who called the Yihetuan uprising a revolt of "Chinese black hundreds". While not denying the reactionary features of the Ihetuan movement, Jodorov generally considered this uprising to be a just war of independence .14 This assessment of the Yihetuan uprising has become widespread in Soviet historiography and remains one of the examples of an internationalist approach to Chinese history that is opposed to the bourgeois one. Soviet historiography, along with a positive assessment of the struggle of the Chinese people's masses, however, expressed reasonable objections to the idealization of the Yihetuan, Taiping and other peasant movements that were not guided by advanced ideology15 .

In his article "Combustible Material in World Politics", written in 1908, Lenin defined the main stages of the national liberation struggle of the Chinese people, pointing out the inevitability of the transition of "the old Chinese riots into a conscious democratic movement" .16 The beginning of a conscious democratic movement made it possible to hope for an alliance of revolutionary Russia with the radical peasant democracy of China, and in the future with the Chinese proletariat.

After the revolution of 1911 finally confirmed that China was at the second stage of the national liberation movement, the stage of conscious democratic struggle, V. I. Lenin wrote in his article "The Awakening of Asia":: "World capitalism and the Russian movement of 1905 finally awakened Asia. Hundreds of millions of downtrodden, feral in medieval stagnation, the population woke up

11 Ibid.

12 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 4, p. 379.

13 See A. N. Kheifets. History of the national liberation movement of the peoples of the East in the works of V. I. Lenin. Voprosy Istorii, 1970, No. 3.

14 See A. E. Khodorov. A page from the revolutionary history of China. Novy Vostok, 1923, No. 3, p. 264.

15 See the preface and comments by N. M. Kalyuzhnaya to the collection " The Ihetuan Uprising. Documents and materials", Moscow, 1968; V. P. Ilyushechkin. Krestyanskaya voina taipinov [The Taiping Peasant War], Moscow, 1967.

16 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 17, p. 179.

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to a new life and to the struggle for basic human rights, for democracy " 17 .

One of the most important features of the national liberation movement of the early twentieth century was that it took place in a new, imperialist era. This left its mark on the bourgeois revolutions that were taking place in the East at that time. The world was largely divided by the imperialists. China, as V. I. Lenin defined it, was a semi-colony of imperialist powers .18 The Chinese Revolution could not, therefore, avoid a conflict with international imperialism. In the works of 1912-1913 (in the resolution of the VI (Prague) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP "On the Chinese Revolution", in the articles "Renewed China", "Historical Destinies of Karl Marx's teaching", "Great Success of the Republic of China", "Backward Europe and Advanced Asia") Lenin exposed the machinations of the imperialists against the young Republic of China. He wrote: "The entire commanding Europe, the entire European bourgeoisie, is in alliance with all the forces of reaction and the Middle Ages in China." 19
The phrase "Backward Europe and advanced Asia" used in Lenin's articles was intended to emphasize the reactionary role of the European bourgeoisie in relation to the progressive bourgeois movement in Asia. During the period of widespread Orientophile enthusiasm in petty-bourgeois journalism (for example, in the books of V. A. Gurko-Kryazhin , 20 who later adopted the position of Marxism), V. I. Lenin, on the contrary, saw the essence of the changes taking place in the fact that "The East has finally taken the path of the West", 21 and believed that the revolutionary movement in the East can to help the struggle of the European proletariat. At the same time, Lenin did not overestimate the own strength of the peoples of the East, which at the beginning of the twentieth century was still opposed by a strong, well-armed imperialism. Lenin hoped that the victory of the European proletariat would "liberate both the peoples of Europe and the peoples of Asia." 22
Lenin paid much attention to exposing the predatory role of the international banking consortium in China. "The fact is," Lenin wrote, " that the revolution in China has aroused among the European bourgeoisie not enthusiasm for the cause of freedom and democracy - such feelings are capable of the proletariat, but the knights of profit are not capable - but a desire to plunder China, to begin the division of China, to seize land from China. A "consortium" of six powers (Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Japan, and the United States of America) tried to bring the case to China's bankruptcy in order to weaken and undermine the republic." Lenin, noting that "the collapse of this Black-hundred consortium "is a" major success of the young republic", at the same time stressed that the collapse of the consortium could give the Republic of China the opportunity, using imperialist contradictions, to obtain on relatively acceptable terms loans so necessary for the development of the national economy (this was the development of Japan in the second half of the XIX century). "Now," Lenin wrote, " American banks have withdrawn from the consortium. America will now provide China with much-needed financial support, opening up the Chinese market to American capital and facilitating reform in China."23 . But this opportunity was not realized, mainly due to the weakness of China-

17 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 23, p. 146; see also pp. 166-167.

18 See V. I. Leni, PSS. vol. 27, p. 377.

19 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 23, p. 167.

20 V. A. Gurko. White danger. Vostok i Zapad [East and West], Moscow, 1914; V. Kryazhin. Twilight of the East (Imperialism in the East), Moscow, 1919.

21 " V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 21, p. 402.

22 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 23, p. 167.

23 Ibid., pp. 28-29.

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the Russian Revolution of 1911-1913, the frailty of the bourgeois republic created by this revolution. China was unable to take advantage of the inter-imperialist contradictions.

V. I. Lenin considered the results of the Russo-Japanese war (the first victory of an Asian country over a European one) and especially the influence of the Russian revolution of 1905 - 1907 to be significant reasons for the rise of the revolutionary movement in China at the beginning of the XX century. From the very beginning, Russian revolutionaries gave moral support to China's desire for independence. Just as in 1900 Iskra declared the sympathy of the Russian proletariat for the Chinese people, who had risen up in the anti-imperialist struggle, so also in January 1912. The Prague Conference of the RSDLP declared its sympathy for the outbreak of the revolution in China 24 .

In a number of articles, V. I. Lenin analyzed in detail the sources available to him about the revolutionary movement and the political situation in China, which allowed him to draw conclusions about the ways of further development of the revolution in China. Of these articles, the most important are "Democracy and Populism in China, "" Renewed China, "and"The Struggle of Parties in China." The last two articles contain a complete and complete description of the Chinese Revolution of 1911-1913, and "Democracy and Populism in China" is devoted to evaluating the program of the great Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat - sen.

An important source for V. I. Lenin was Sun Yat-sen's article on his "principle of national welfare", published in 1912 by the Belgian socialist newspaper Peuple and reprinted by the Nevsky Star25 . After reading this article, V. I. Lenin wrote that the peasantry, which formed the main army of the Chinese revolution, is acting under the leadership of the revolutionary bourgeois democracy headed by Sun Yat-sen. Sun Yat-sen's program was to demand a republic and nationalization of land, the gradual redemption of landlords ' land by the state, followed by leasing it to the peasants. Lenin praised Sun Yat-sen's program as a powerful means of mobilizing the masses of China, noting the "militant, sincere democracy" that permeates every line of Sun Yat-sen's platform, Sun Yat-sen's warm sympathy for the working people and the exploited, and his belief in their rightness and strength. "We have before us a truly great ideology of a truly great people, who know how not only to mourn their age-old slavery, not only to dream of freedom and equality, but also to fight against the age-old oppressors of China." 26
V. I. Lenin explained the revolutionary nature of the Chinese bourgeoisie by saying that at that time the bourgeoisie in China was a progressive class, that it hated the old system and sought to free itself from its oppression: "The Western bourgeoisie has rotted away, and its gravedigger, the proletariat, is already standing before it. And in Asia there is still a bourgeoisie capable of representing a sincere, militant, consistent democracy, a worthy companion of the great preachers and great figures of the late eighteenth century in France.

The main representative or main social support of this Asian bourgeoisie, which is still capable of a historically progressive cause, is the peasant. " 27
But even then, at the dawn of the Chinese revolution, Lenin saw that alongside the revolutionary-democratic bourgeoisie in China there was a liberal bourgeoisie whose leaders were "most capable of

24 See V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 21, p. 155.

25 See Yu. M. Garushyants and V. I. Lenin on the role of the popular masses in the Chinese Revolution of 1911. "Peoples of Asia and Africa", 1966, N 3, pp. 149-151.

26 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 21, p. 401.

27 Ibid., p. 402.

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to treason: yesterday they were afraid of Bogdyhan, they cringed before him; then, when they saw the strength, when they felt the victory of the revolutionary democracy, they betrayed Bogdyhan, and tomorrow they will betray the democrats for the sake of a deal with some old or new "constitutional" bogdyhan."28 Lenin also pointed out which classes in China constitute the camp of extreme reaction: the feudal lords, the bureaucrats, and the Chinese clergy. He clearly predicted the main policy direction of this camp - the restoration of the monarchy. Attempts to do this, which took place in 1915 and 1917, confirmed the analysis made by V. I. Lenin. Thus, in the revolution of 1911, Lenin distinguished three main camps: reaction, revolution, and the liberal camp, which pursued a "policy of maneuvering between the monarchy and the revolution."29 Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the revolution, belonged to the revolutionary democratic camp.

The concept of the Chinese revolution in Lenin's articles fundamentally contradicted the liberal point of view prevailing in the literature and press at that time, according to which the prospects for a progressive independent China are connected with top-level reforms, while Sun Yat-sen and his supporters, with their revolutionary impatience, only hinder the implementation of reforms .30 History proved Lenin right when he saw that China was heading for a mighty democratic revolution, which could not be prevented by top-level reforms.

While Lenin highly valued the revolutionary democrats of China, he did not idealize them. In his article "Democracy and Populism in China "(July 1912), he criticized the populist utopias of Sun Yat-sen, who wanted to "avoid" the stage of capitalist development. 31 Lenin proved the reactionary nature of these calls for utopian peasant-petty-bourgeois "socialism." But the value of Sun Yat-sen's program lay not in the utopian doctrine, but in the practical struggle for bourgeois," maximally capitalist " development, as Lenin defined it, which was the only thing that Sun Yat-sen's agrarian program could then lead to. As Lenin pointed out, "the subjective socialist thoughts and programs of the Chinese democrat actually turn out to be a program of 'changing all the legal foundations' of 'immovable property' alone, a program of destroying feudal exploitation alone. " 32 Lenin saw the main way to the victory of the Chinese revolution "in the development of the greatest self-activity, determination and courage of the peasant workers." mass participation in political and agrarian reforms " 33 . The article "Democracy and Populism in China" is the most significant of Lenin's works specifically devoted to China. It is of great importance for understanding Sunyatsenism and petty-bourgeois revolutionary teachings. The following articles - " A Renewed China "and especially" The Struggle of Parties in China " - contain a general concept of the Chinese revolution of 1911.

At the end of 1912, Lenin had an opportunity to get acquainted with an important source: the text of the electoral law, on the basis of which elections to the first Chinese parliament were held. V. I. Lenin analyzed the law in connection with the available data on political parties in China, especially on the Kuomintang established in 1912 by Sun Yat-sen. This analysis, as well as the characteristics of the main political parties, led to the conclusion that China has developed a new political system.

28 Ibid., pp. 402-403.

29 Ibid., p. 406.

30 See Yu. M. Garushyants. Soviet historical literature on the Chinese Revolution of 1911 "Peoples of Asia and Africa", 1962, N 2.

31 See V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 21, pp. 403-405.

32 Ibid., p. 404.

33 Ibid., p. 406.

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an alliance of "the well-to-do peasantry with the bourgeoisie, in the absence or complete impotence of the proletariat." Based on this conclusion, Lenin expressed serious concern as early as November 1912: "Will the peasants, who are not led by the Party of the proletariat, be able to maintain their democratic position against the liberals, who are just waiting for the right to shift at the right moment..."34
An even clearer analysis of the political parties of China is given in the article "The struggle of parties in China", which states: "... supporters of Sun Yat-sen, the party of Guo (or Kuo) Ming-Tang, "nationalists"; - to express the essence of this party in relation to Russian conditions, it is necessary to call it radical-narodnik republican a party, a party of democracy... This party is opposed by smaller moderate or conservative parties... They all gravitate towards the Chinese cadet Yuan Shi-kai ... " 35 . This juxtaposition - on the one hand, the liberals ("moderates", "Chinese Cadets") in alliance with all the conservative elements, on the other - Sun Yat-sen at the head of the "radical narodniks" - is found in many of Lenin's articles. At the same time, in the article under consideration, Lenin develops and clarifies his characterization, adding to the high assessment that he gave Sun Yat-sen earlier (in the article "Democracy and Populism in China"), such features as "dreaminess and indecision, depending on the lack of proletarian support"36 .

Comparing Sun Yat-sen with the revolutionary democrats of eighteenth-century France, Lenin was much more reserved in his assessment of the Chinese revolution as a whole than of its leader .37 In describing the Chinese Revolution of 1911-1913, Lenin proceeded from the typology of bourgeois revolutions that he had developed, and in particular from the distinction between popular peasant-bourgeois revolutions and simply bourgeois, non-popular ones. In speaking of two types of bourgeois revolutions, Lenin took into account two types of capitalist agrarian evolution - "Prussian" and "American." 38 In essence, the basis of a truly democratic, popular revolution is the struggle for a radical solution of the agrarian question. If we approach the Chinese revolution of 1911 with this criterion, we can conclude that it belongs to the second type of bourgeois revolutions in accordance with the classification proposed by V. I. Lenin. The peasant masses did not really awaken in it.

Lenin's concepts of the first Chinese Revolution and Sunyatsenism formed the basis for the development of these problems by Soviet historians .39 They were repeatedly confirmed by factual material. The study of both problems was accompanied by scientific discussions: on the basis of the Marxist-Leninist methodology, the degree of participation of the masses in the revolution of 1911-1913 was clarified (these chronological frames were defined by V. N. Kuchumov), and petty-bourgeois and purely bourgeois features in the teachings of Sun Yat-sen were revealed. Soviet historiography proved that on the eve of 1911, the liberal camp in China

34 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 22, p. 191.

35 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 23, p. 138.

36 Ibid., p. 140. V. I. Lenin initially attributed the Chinese politician Yuan Shih-kai to the cadet-liberal camp. Later, when this figure .When Lenin revealed his true identity, he called him "an adventurer, a traitor, and a friend of reaction" (see ibid., p. 167).

37 See V. I. Lenin's PSS. Vol. 22, pp. 189-191; vol. 23, pp. 138-140.

38 See V. I. Lenin's PSS. vol. 16, pp. 216, 331; vol. 33, p. 39; vol. 9, pp. 380; vol. 17, pp. 44-47.

39 See A. E. Khodorov. The first stages of the Chinese Revolution. "Novy Vostok", 1927, N 18; it is the same. The era of the Second Revolution in China. "New East", 1927, N 19; V. Kuchumov. Essay on the history of the Revolution of 1911. "Problems of China", 1929, N 1.

40 See V. N. Kuchumov. Essays on the history of the Chinese Revolution, Moscow, 1934.

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It was strong and organized, 41 but the revolutionaries were still weak and in many respects, in particular in the foreign policy program, depended on the liberals .42 Soviet researchers successfully overcame not only the liberal concept of the early twentieth century, which ignored the revolutionary forces and idealized Chinese liberals, but also the Kuomintang concept, which exaggerated the degree of revolutionism of the Chinese bourgeoisie and concealed the incompleteness of the revolution of 1911-1913 led by this bourgeoisie. The first Chinese Revolution, with all its weaknesses and shortcomings, marks the beginning of the awakening of the Chinese masses - a process that still had a long, tortuous path to follow after 1911-1913. Together with Lenin's concept of the revolution of 1911-1913, Soviet historiography established the comprehensive and objective assessment of Sun Yat-sen that was given in the works of V. I. Lenin43 .

Despite the incompleteness of the revolution of 1911-1913, the significance of this first revolutionary upheaval in the modern history of China is great: "A quarter of the world's population has passed, so to speak, from hibernation to light, movement, and struggle." 44 Lenin did not doubt that " no forces in the world will restore the old serfdom in Asia the heroic democracy of the masses of the people in Asian and semi-Asian countries will not be swept away from the face of the earth."45 He saw the intervention of the imperialists in China's affairs as the main reason for the defeat of the Chinese revolution.

V. I. Lenin's confidence in the ultimate victory of the Chinese Revolution was based on changes both inside and outside China. First of all, the steady growth of the "number of Shanghais" and with it the growth of the Chinese proletariat belong to the former. V. I. Lenin foresaw that the Chinese working class would form its own "workers' party, which, while criticizing the petty-bourgeois utopias and reactionary views of Sun Yat-sen, will probably carefully single out, protect and develop the revolutionary-democratic core of its political and agrarian program. " 46 Lenin pointed out that the Workers ' Party must see its task in leading the "Sun Yat-sen" against the big bourgeoisie. Less than ten years later, Lenin's foresight was fulfilled. Sun Yat-sen came to an alliance with the USSR, with the CPSU(b), with the international proletariat in the anti-imperialist struggle.

Outside of China, the main condition for its final emancipation from imperialist slavery was the development of a world proletarian revolution. With the victory of October, cooperation between the Soviet country and the revolutionary forces of China began to improve.

A number of Lenin's post-October works refute the ideas that were widespread among Chinese and European Communists at that time about the supposedly proletarian nature of the liberation movement in China. V. I. Lenin repeatedly repeated that the national liberation movement in the East remains essentially a peasant movement .47 The dialectic of historical development consisted in the fact that

41 See Yu. V. Chudodeev. On the eve of the revolution of 1911 in China. Constitutional Movement of the Liberal bourgeois-landowner opposition, Moscow, 1966.

42 See A.M. Grigoriev. Anti-imperialist program of the Chinese bourgeois Revolutionaries 1895-1905. Moscow, 1966.

43 See S. L. Tikhvinsky. Sun Yat-sen. Foreign policy views and practice. (From the history of the national liberation struggle of the Chinese people), Moscow, 1964; " Sun Yat-sen. 1866-1966. To the centenary of his birth". Collection of articles, memoirs and materials, Moscow, 1966.

44 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 22, p. 189.

45 V. I. Lenin, PSS. Vol. 23, p. 3.

46 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 21, p. 406.

47 See V. I. Leni, n. PSS. Vol. 39, pp. 327-329.

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The peasant-petty-bourgeois, bourgeois-democratic movement, by virtue of its anti-imperialist orientation, became part of the world revolutionary process that began in October 1917. This idea runs through many of Lenin's works. Attaching great importance to drawing into the struggle against imperialism such countries as India, China, etc., which make up more than half of the world's population, V. I. Lenin always considered their struggle against imperialism to be inextricably linked with the struggle of the world proletariat and the construction of socialism in the U.S.S.R. 48 Only in fraternal alliance with the socialist revolution in Russia and other countries could the peasant countries of the East win freedom and secure independent development.

In 1911-1913, Sun Yat-sen's dream of avoiding the further growth of capitalism in China was a reactionary utopia. Under the conditions of a victorious proletarian dictatorship in a neighboring country, it became possible for China, with the help of the USSR, to pass the stage of developed capitalism. In 1920, at the Second Congress of the Communist International, V. I. Lenin put forward and justified the proposition "that with the help of the proletariat of the advanced countries, the backward countries can pass to the Soviet system and, through certain stages of development, to communism, bypassing the capitalist stage of development."49 He also pointed out one of the forms of this transition - peasant Soviets (later, in 1927-1936, in the so-called "Soviet regions" of China, such a form of power existed). In the interests of socialism, the international proletariat had the opportunity to use the subjective desire of the non-proletarian working masses to avoid capitalism, directing the utopian search of the radical narodnik intelligentsia in the direction of scientific socialism. Sun Yat-sen, the Chinese revolutionary democrats could not ignore the experience of the USSR and to some extent used it to lead the Chinese revolution. We are referring to Sun Yat-sen's invitation of Soviet advisers to join his party and army, the admission of Communists to the Kuomintang, and the inclusion of a policy of friendship with the USSR, alliance with the Communist Party, and reliance on workers and peasants in Sun Yat-sen as a mandatory supplement. Sun Yat-sen's ideas of non-capitalist development were a step in the development of his revolutionary ideology50 . After the Second World War, as is well known, a situation was created in a number of Eastern countries that were being liberated, which further contributed to the development of the ideology of revolutionary democracy in these countries in the same direction in which the revolutionary ideology of Sun Yat-sen was developing at the time.

Having put forward at the Second Congress of the Communist International a proposition on the possibility of a non-capitalist, that is, ultimately socialist, path of development for the peoples of the East, V. I. Lenin criticized the thesis of M. N. Roy, who suggested that the communist parties of underdeveloped countries should first of all fight to prevent the growth of local capitalism. Roy overestimated the degree of capitalist development in the East and, rejecting the bourgeois-democratic stage of the revolution, oriented the Communist parties of the Eastern countries towards direct economic integration.

48 See V. I. Leni, n. PSS. Vol. 45, pp. 402-404.

49 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 41, p. 246.

50 Of two articles that have appeared in recent years (E. F. Kovale v. Sun Yat-sen on the" prevention " of capitalism in China. "Peoples of Asia and Africa", 1963, N 2, and A. N. Kheifets. V. I. Lenin's struggle against petty-bourgeois-narodnik views on non-capitalist development. "The Peoples of Asia and Africa", N? 69, N 1), the first emphasizes the positive, the second - the negative side of the" non-capitalist " aspirations of Sun Yat-sen.

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the struggle for power and the departure from the alliance with the national bourgeoisie 51 . Lenin's conclusions were also important for the development of the Chinese Revolution. They warned against attempts to skip over the stages that the revolution had not passed, and stressed the importance of an international link between the oppressed nations and the international working-class movement. Lenin taught that it was necessary to strive for the creation of truly proletarian parties in the East, and to expose the attempts of petty-bourgeois radical elements to paint themselves in "Marxist" colors.

Lenin's concept of the revolutionary movement in China gave Soviet historians a clear perspective in their studies of China's recent history. Soviet historiography defined the character of the Chinese revolution, which unfolded from the second half of the 1920s, as a democratic-peasant revolution, showed the special role of the working class as the leader of the revolution and the only force capable of ensuring the subsequent transition to socialism, and emphasized the most important role of the international factor - the alliance of China with the USSR, with the world workers ' and communist movement. The views of the Trotskyists, who distorted the periodization of the Chinese Revolution and pushed the Chinese Communists to break the united anti-imperialist front and isolate the proletariat, were refuted.

V. I. Lenin's articles specifically devoted to China and his individual statements about China show an example of an approach to studying the history of China, taking into account its national and historical specifics, and an example of the ability to see the general and specific in the development of China.

Lenin's thoughts on the social system of China, as well as on the Chinese revolutionary movement, are inextricably linked with the solution of the common tasks of the struggle of the proletariat of Russia and the whole world for socialism.

G. V. Plekhanov tried to give a Marxist analysis of the Chinese social system based on the concept of the "Asian mode of production". Plekhanov believed that in some countries the disintegration of the primitive community leads to a slave - owning system (Western Europe), in others-to an "Asian"one.52 G. V. Plekhanov's views on the "Asian mode of production" were finally formed after the first Russian Revolution. According to Plekhanov, Ancient China, like other empires of the East (Egypt, Chaldea, Assyria, Persia, Japan), came to the "Asian mode of production", having previously passed through feudalism. This was reflected in the noticeable influence that the traditional concepts of bourgeois scientists, who understood feudalism as a synonym for political fragmentation, had on G. V. Plekhanov. Therefore, G. V. Plekhanov considered Chinese society feudal until the establishment of a centralized state, that is, until the third century BC. The Marxist criterion-fundamental changes in production relations - was ignored by G. V. Plekhanov in this case. G. V. Plekhanov tried to use the theory of the "Asiatic mode of production" for the theoretical justification of his Menshevik views. The underestimation of the revolutionary capabilities of the peasantry found "justification" in the idea of stagnation, reactionary rural communities that create the basis of an "Asian" society. Plekhanov's objections to Lenin's demand for land nationalization were derived from the idea of state ownership of land as the basis of Asian despotism. In 1906. Plekhanov, criticizing Lenin's program of land nationalization, referred to an example from Chinese history: the failure of Wang An-shi's reforms in the eleventh century, which Plekhanov interpreted as the failure of the Chinese government to implement its own policies.

51 See " Awakening the Oppressed. The National Liberation Movement in Asia and Africa, Moscow, 1968, pp. 74-78.

52 See G. V. Plekhanov, Soch. Vol. XVIII, pp. 216-217.

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attempted nationalization 53 . Lenin showed that comparing twentieth-century Russia with eleventh-century China is meaningless .54
V. I. Lenin repeatedly argued with G. V. Plekhanov about the social relations of pre-Petrine Russia, which the latter considered "Asian". V. I. Lenin insisted on the feudal nature of these relations, referring to the research of V. O. Klyuchevsky and A. Ya .Efimenko 55. As for China, Lenin wrote that " the objective conditions of China, a backward, agricultural, semi-feudal country, place on the agenda of almost half a billion people only one definite, historically peculiar form of this oppression and exploitation, namely feudalism. Feudalism was based on the domination of agricultural life and subsistence farming; the source of feudal exploitation of the Chinese peasant was his attachment to the land in one form or another; the political exponents of this exploitation were the feudal lords, all together and each separately with Bogdykhan as the head of the system."56
This complete and unambiguous Leninist definition of the Chinese social system is worth recalling now, when some authors are trying to claim that Lenin believed that in the countries of the East, in particular in China, there is an "Asian mode of production"57 . Let us add that Lenin did not find the "Asiatic mode of production" not only in the new, but also in Ancient China; when he gives a general scheme of the change of socio-economic formations in world history, he does not assign a place in it to any particular formation based on this mode of production: neither in the new nor in the Old China. Neither in 1897 in the review of A. A. Bogdanov's book 58 , nor in 1919 in the lecture "On the State".

The facts of history, as it seems to us, are not on the side of those who consider feudal relations more primitive than slave-owning ones. 59 The facts increasingly confirm the correctness of V. I. Lenin, who emphasized: "A serf society has always been more complex than a slave society. There was a great element of development of trade and industry in it, which even at that time led to capitalism. " 60 V. I. Lenin's conclusions, of course, do not close the way for further concrete research; on the contrary, they create the possibility of new searches, offering them the only correct method. V. I. Lenin's thoughts and all of Lenin's theoretical legacy are at the heart of the study of Chinese history by Soviet scientists.

53 G. V. Plekhanov, Soch. T, XI, p. 31.

54 See V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 12, p. 253.

55 See V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 13, p. 14.

56 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 21, pp. 403-404.

57 See, for example, E. Varga. Essays on the problems of political economy of capitalism, Moscow, 1963, p. 363; N. B. Ter-Hakobyan. Development of the views of Karl Marx and Fr. Engels ' view of the Asian mode of production and the agricultural community. "Peoples of Asia and Africa", 1965, No. 2, p. 75. The statements of E. S. Varga and N. B. Ter-Hakobyan met with objections (see, for example, "General and special in the historical development of the East", Moscow, 1966).

58 See V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 4, p. 36.

59 For the discussion, see in the journals " Peoples of Asia and Africa "( since 1965), "Questions of History" (since 1966), in the collections "General and special in the historical development of the East", "Problems of the history of pre-capitalist societies" M. 1968; "Premieres societes de classes et mode de production asiatique". "Recherches international", 1967, N 57 - 58.

60 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 39, p. 76.

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