Between the Kuomintang and the CPC: the Policy of the Soviet State in China
(1918-1927)

Gerasimov Dmitrii Igorevich Postgraduate student, Department of Russian History of XX-XXI centuries, Moscow State University 'M. V. Lomonosov' 119192, Russia, Moscow G, Lomonosovsky Prospekt, 27 K. 4 dmitriigerasimovtmb@gmail.com

Problem statementThe topic of studying Soviet-Chinese relations in the 1920s is of scientific importance and is relevant.

The relationship between the Soviet and Chinese states in the 1920s makes it possible to understand the origins and identify the causes of one of the most important turning events in world history - the Second World War. In this regard, the development of scientific plots related to the Soviet-Chinese relations in the interwar period, and especially concerning the formation of the "Far Eastern node of contradictions", is particularly acute and relevant.

The chronological framework of the article is from the establishment of the first contacts of the Soviet government with Chinese revolutionaries led by Sun Yat–sen, a supporter of the Chinese nationalist idea, and the government in Canton (1918), to the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War (the Shanghai Coup of 1927), when the Soviet state's ties with China actually came to naught.

The generally accepted opinion about the policy of the First United Front (or the alliance of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China) is that the Comintern proposed this policy in 1921, at the same time when the Communist Party of China (hereinafter referred to as the CPC) was being formed. According to this point of view, the alliance between the CPC and the Kuomintang finally took shape in 1922 as a result of a trip by Henk Snevlit, a "confidant" of the Moscow Comintern. However, the idea of the alliance of the Soviet state can be traced in historical sources almost three years before the formation of the CPC. In fact, the Soviet side first advocated an alliance with Sun Yat-sen in the summer of 1918, even before the first communists appeared in China.

The Comintern followed suit in the spring of 1919, more than a year before the formation of the party. Finally, with the support of the Comintern, in January 1921, Chen Duxiu, one of the founders and the first General Secretary of the CPC, published an article in Canton in which he advocated that the Kuomintang establish closer ties with the Comintern and proposed a "United Front" policy to promote and support the CPC. If we take into account that the policy of the "United Front" was adopted before the founding of the CPC, then its original goal could only be the unification of the Bolsheviks and Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925)– a Chinese revolutionary and politician. It should be noted that Sun Yat-sen actually controlled the southern Chinese city of Canton, which opposed the central government in Beijing. Thus, from the point of view of Soviet Russia, an alliance with Canton could be useful for its other foreign policy goal – diplomatic negotiations with Beijing.

Such an understanding of the problem will help explain the subsequent conflict and split in the United Front, when after the death of Sun Yat-sen in 1925, the Kuomintang leadership realized that they "unwittingly" promoted the national interests of the Soviet Union, making its influence stronger and China weaker ^{[1, p. 100]}. All this determines the relevance of the chosen topic.

A considerable amount of scientific research is devoted to the topic of Soviet-Chinese relations in the 1920s. Among modern Russian historians, the works of Yu. M. Galenovich ^[2], V. G. Datsyshen ^{[3, pp. 51-62]}, A.D. Voskresensky ^[4], S. L. Tikhvinsky ^[5], V. S. Myasnikov ^{[6, 7]}, L. E. Grishaeva ^{[8, 9]}, A.V. Pantsov should be singled out.10] and others, who summarized the Soviet experience of studying the issue concerning socio-economic and political aspects. In the works of M. Meyer ^[11], D. Bowden ^[12], B. Elleman ^[1], relying on both Russian and Chinese archival materials, such controversial topics as the status of Outer Mongolia, the influence of the factor of the Far Eastern Republic on the Soviet-Chinese negotiations were re-examined, the significance of the declarations of the Deputy People's Commissariat of the RSFSR was revised L. M. Karakhana.

The novelty of the research lies in the fact that the author, based on published sources and new archival materials of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, examines little-studied issues in Russian historiography, such as the role of the Comintern in the Soviet-Chinese negotiations of 1918-1924, the clash of the geopolitical goals of the NKID of the Soviet state and the ideological tasks of the Comintern on the example of the status of Outer Mongolia., and thus conducts a deep analysis of the policy of the Soviet state in China against the background of the internal contradictions that existed there between the main political forces – the Communist Party of China and the Kuomintang – the party of the national bourgeoisie.

The article shows how the Soviet state pursued a dual policy, supporting either the CPC or the Kuomintang, uniting them into a "united front", or pitting them against each other in order to direct Chinese public opinion against the Beijing government, depending on who was in power in China, and as a result gain greater foreign policy control over China. The Soviet state did not benefit from the internal Chinese political split between the Kuomintang and the CPC, since only through the joint efforts of all interested parties could it be fought against the expansionist policy of militaristic Japan.

The origins of the First United Front in ChinaThe Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and the formal abdication of Pu Yi, the last emperor of the Qing dynasty in February 1912 set the stage for the creation of the First United Front, as the revolution led to the creation of an opposition government in Canton under the leadership of Sun Yat–sen.

Already in November 1911  A secret telegram was sent from the tsarist Russian mission in Beijing. This secret telegram suggested that in the conflict between this opposition government and the central government of China in Beijing, Russia's ally would be Canton. The rationale for this assumption was simple: pre-existing disagreements over Outer Mongolia and the CER precluded closer ties with the conservative pro-Japanese Beijing government, while Russia had no territorial conflicts with Southern China, which made an alliance with Canton against the Beijing government useful. Russia's geopolitical interests did not change even after the 1917 revolution, as did the cadres representing the foreign ministry ^{[13, p. 50]}.

The Beijing government focused its policy on Japan, so its support contradicted Russia's geopolitical interests. Russia has had acute territorial and political contradictions with Japan since the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905, which it lost. At the same time, the continuity of the foreign policy line of tsarist and Bolshevik Russia in China is obvious. It can be clearly traced starting from August 1, 1918, when the People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet State G. V. Chicherin sent a letter to Sun Yat-sen, in which he noted the similarity of the goals of the Russian and Chinese revolutions and expressed hopes for improving relations between Soviet Russia and the Cantonese government ^{[14, p. 39]}.

The Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, G. V. Chicherin, even appealed to Sun Yat-sen for help against capitalist governments that were trying to stifle the Russian Revolution ^{[14, p. 40]}. It should be particularly noted that in August 1918 there were simply no Chinese Communists. The first recognized supporter of the Bolsheviks in China was the Chinese revolutionary Li Dazhao. American historian, specialist in the history of China Maurice Meissner noted that "by the middle of 1918, Li was heart and soul devoted to the October Revolution, his writings do not give any reason to assume that he began to seriously consider Marxist ideology" ^{[15, p. 67, p. 72]}. Only in November 1918, four months after G. V. Chicherin's letter, Li Dazhao published the first article in a Marxist vein. Even the arrival of Mao Zedong in September 1918 at Peking University to study Marxism under the leadership of Li Dazhao occurred only a month after G. V. Chicherin's letter. Thus, in the early stages of the development of Soviet-Chinese relations, the Soviet government did not set the task of creating a united front between the CPC and the Kuomintang. An alliance could only exist between Soviet Russia and the Southern government of Sun Yat-sen.

The letter of the Deputy People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR L. M. Karakhan dated December 4, 1918, sent to the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission and the Council of Deputies, confirms that G. V. Chicherin's proposal to conclude an alliance with Sun Yat-sen did not depend on the existence of the CPC in any way ^{[14, pp. 42-43]}.

These documents indicate that by 1918 the Soviet government was already interested in uniting with the opposition government of Sun Yat-sen in Canton. This proposal was consonant with the proposal of the tsarist Russian consulate in 1911 to conclude an alliance with Canton against Beijing, whose plan was interrupted by the First World War of 1914-1918. Thus, the early stage of the United Front's policy could not include the Chinese Communists as allies, especially as equal members of the United Front ^{[10, p. 102]}, since they were still extremely weak both politically and militarily.

The Soviet government was clearly aware of the continuity of its own geopolitical state interests with the interests of the Russian Empire, but at the same time relied on the promotion of the world revolution in Asia with the support of the Chinese Communists. Since August 1918, when G. V. Chicherin sent his first letter to Sun Yat-sen, the formation of an alliance with the Chinese revolutionaries in order to involve them in a single anti-imperialist alliance against the capitalist powers was an important part of the Bolsheviks' Far Eastern strategy. There were objective reasons for this. While in July 1921 the CPC had only 56 members, the Kuomintang already claimed membership of over 200,000 people ^{[10, p. 102]}. In addition, the members of the Kuomintang were stronger militarily and organizationally and enjoyed the support of the population. The Soviet government sought to unite the main political forces of China so that both sides could concentrate in the fight against the Japanese invaders, whose expansionist aspirations also threatened the Soviet state.

Subsequently, in the summer of 1919, a pamphlet written by the Soviet official V. D. Vilensky-Sibiryakov stated that the revolutionary fire in Southern China must inevitably move to the North. Then revolutionary Russia will find in China a reliable ally against imperialist predators ^{[16, p. 12]}.

The Soviet government was even ready to allocate its own scarce resources (the economic situation of the USSR after the Civil War was catastrophic) to train and finance Chinese revolutionaries. In August 1919, L. D. Trotsky, chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, sent a secret communique to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, which emphasized the importance of the Asian revolutions. To help the nascent revolutionary movement, L. D. Trotsky even proposed to build a special revolutionary academy in the Urals or Turkestan to provide all the necessary conditions – the training of linguists, translation units, theoretical hardening ^{[17, pp. 145-149]}.

These statements by V. D. Vilensky-Sibiryakov and L. D. Trotsky in 1919 are the first signs of what soon became one of the most important foreign policy initiatives of the Bolsheviks in the 1920s: the active introduction of anti–imperialist ideas throughout Asia, training and financing of revolutionaries "on the ground". And with all this, it is not at all necessary that these revolutionaries were communists or at least were familiar with the problems of Marxism. Representatives of the Comintern subsequently negotiated with a large number of "newly minted" revolutionaries who had contact with Sun Yat-sen. This indicates that the Soviet government hoped that Sun Yat-sen would become the main Soviet protege in China.

Before creating a unified anti-imperialist front led by Sun Yat-sen, the Bolsheviks needed to find their supporters in China who were ready to act as intermediaries. Even before the official creation of the CPC in July 1921, Chen Duxiu played an important role in helping Comintern officials. His merits include the establishment of a strong connection between Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang. These early attempts to conclude an alliance of Soviet Russia with the government in Canton show that the Bolsheviks promoted the idea of creating a United Front not in the interests of the CPC, as Comintern propaganda later claimed, but in their own. However, close cooperation was often hindered by the geographical remoteness of Southern China ^{[18, p. 299]}.

On March 26, 1920, a member of the Far Eastern secretariat of the Comintern, G. N. Voitinsky, arrived at the Chinese consulate in Vladivostok, on the same day that L. M. Karakhan's first manifesto was published, promising to throw off all the "royal shackles" that hindered the development of equal Soviet–Chinese relations. The timely publication of the manifesto was clearly aimed at helping G. N. Voitinsky ideologically "shoe" Chinese intellectuals sympathetic to him to carry out the policy of the "United Front". G. D. Voitinsky's mission was not only to spread revolutionary ideas in China, but also to create a pro-Soviet Chinese government.

Chen Duxiu's efforts to develop closer cooperation between the Canton Government and Moscow represented an important step towards the formation of a United Front. On August 28, 1921, Sun Yat-sen wrote a letter to G. V. Chicherin, in which he expressed interest in the idea of creating a United Front ^{[18, p. 300]}. The Soviet government was now closer to fulfilling the goal set in 1918 – the creation of an alliance with Sun Yat-sen. The greater the influence of Sun Yat-sen and his party became, the higher the probability that revolutionary sentiments could spread throughout China. Therefore, we can assume that the active policy of the Comintern to create a United Front was conceived not only as a direct blow to capitalism, but also as a means of strengthening the influence of the USSR throughout China.

Although the publications of the Comintern emphasized the importance of the United Front in China's struggle against capitalist countries, they also had an important diplomatic component that was not presented to either the Russian or Chinese public. As it appears from the letter of the Soviet Envoy to China A.A. Ioffe to Maring (one of the founders of the Communist Party of China) dated September 18, 1922, the Soviet government hoped that the United Front would encourage Sun Yat-sen to intensify foreign policy and intervene in the affairs of the central government in Beijing ^{[19, l. 12-13]}. In the same letter, A.A. Ioffe even urged Maring to enlist the help of Sun Yat-sen in the ongoing negotiations between Moscow and the Beijing government ^{[19, l. 12]}.

One of the main motives for the formation of the united front of the Comintern was the desire to direct Chinese public opinion in support of Soviet diplomats in Beijing, and this was far from accidental.

In China, public opinion could influence political decisions. So, back in the XIX century, Ci Xi (the dowager Empress of China until 1908) used public anger to "scold the authorities" to carry out reforms, after which "saving" reforms were adopted. During the Republican period (1912-1949), this became even more in demand. In particular, the wave of discontent during the Soviet-Chinese negotiations in 1924 was directed against Beijing and in support of the foreign policy goals of the Soviet Union.

Sun Yat-sen changed his position as a result of the formation of a United Front with the USSR. In the early 1920s. Sun Yat-sen tried to get funding and recognition from the United States, Great Britain and Japan. All these countries refused, explaining that they continue to recognize the central government in Beijing, and the financing of the Canton government will only prevent the unification of China ^{[20, p. 56]}. An alliance with Soviet Russia was possible only on the condition that the South Chinese government would fully support the foreign policy goals of Soviet Russia, including the issue of Outer Mongolia. So, in an interview with the representative of the Soviet diplomatic mission A. A. Ioffe, which took place on January 27, 1923 in Shanghai, (in the autumn of 1922, Sun Yat-sen was expelled from Canton and settled in Shanghai). Sun Yat-sen stated that the evacuation of Russian troops from Outer Mongolia does not correspond to China's foreign policy interests ^{[14, p. 65]}.

This statement provided Soviet diplomats with the most important levers of influence on the official Beijing government, since they could now threaten to open Soviet-Chinese diplomatic relations with the "friendly Cantonese government."

Sun Yat-sen may have hoped that he would be able to unite Chinese public opinion against the Beijing government and thereby put pressure on the United States and other foreign powers, because if the Beijing government is not legitimate, then the world powers would have to recognize the Canton Republic. When attempts to use the alliance with the Bolsheviks as a lever to put pressure on the capitalist world failed, Sun Yat-sen had no choice but to strengthen his ties with the USSR. Analysis of historical sources shows that in exchange for his support, Sun Yat-sen demanded Soviet "specialists" military and political advisers, weapons and ammunition, as well as funding ^{[10, pp. 116-117]}.

In our opinion, Sun Yat-sen wanted to get Soviet aid first, and the alliance with the Chinese Communists was a forced concession. The political significance of the CPC was determined by the presence of strong ties with the USSR and the Comintern ^{[20, p. 55]}. As a result, from 1923 to 1927, the CPC was an intermediate link, thereby an intermediary between the Kuomintang and the Soviet Union, but when both the Kuomintang and the USSR fulfill their foreign policy tasks, the CPC will become the "third superfluous" and this will lead to the termination of official diplomatic relations between China and the Soviet Union.

M.M. Borodin, a political adviser to the CEC in China and one of the organizers of the concept of the "First United Front", arrived in Canton in October 1923 with a letter from the official representative of the USSR at diplomatic talks in Beijing, L.M. Karakhan. In this letter, L. M. Karakhan asked Sun Yat-sen to support the efforts of the Soviet Union to establish diplomatic relations with the Beijing government ^{[14, p. 66]}.

Sun Yat-sen could not be satisfied with the very fact of the negotiations, since they implied that it was the Beijing government, and not the government in Canton, that was the legitimate government of China. But M. M. Borodin convinced the head of the Kuomintang that Beijing's recognition of the Soviet Union would "untie the hands" of the Comintern and give greater freedom in helping the Kuomintang, since Soviet advisers would freely come to China ^{[10, p. 123]}.

As a result of M. M. Borodin's efforts, the Kuomintang convened a party congress and adopted its first foreign policy program on January 23, 1924. The Soviet government immediately reacted to this event and sent a congratulatory telegram ^{[14, p. 77]}. The Kuomintang's support in the Soviet-Chinese negotiations ultimately helped Soviet diplomats maintain control over Outer Mongolia and restore control over the CER. Interestingly, it turns out that by 1925 the Soviet Union was able to regain almost all the "imperialist privileges and concessions" that it had refused in 1919 and 1920.

After the signing of the Soviet-Chinese treaty on May 31, 1924, Chinese public opinion fully supported the Soviet Union. Soviet officials were quick to condemn capitalist countries for not copying the Soviet Union's outwardly friendly relations with China. Perhaps these Soviet victories would have been more difficult or would not have happened at all if it had not been for the support of Sun Yat-sen [18 p. 742].

Thus:1) From 1918 to 1925, we observe the evolution of the Soviet government's foreign policy towards China:

from the alliance with Sun Yat-sen and the government in Canton to the creation of the First United Front under the constant control and leadership of the NKID of the USSR. At the same time, the Comintern takes a very direct part in the creation of the CPC as an intermediary in the Soviet-Chinese negotiations and even actively finances it in order to subsequently unite the two parties, thus achieving its foreign policy goals.

2) Our research shows that in Soviet-Chinese relations in the 1920s, ideology was only a "wrapper", a "red wrapper", which was designed to cover the national and geopolitical interests of the Soviet state - the creation of the CPC, assistance to the Kuomintang, the spread of Marxist–Leninist principles among Chinese society, and finally, the creation of the First The United Front. All this corresponded to national and state interests rather than ideological ones.

3) Sun Yat-sen's decision to provide the Soviet leadership with his public support against the internationally recognized Chinese government in Beijing will eventually lead to the weakening of China and the expansion of the influence of the USSR. At the same time, although the Bolsheviks' hopes for a socialist revolution in China will collapse along with the collapse of the shaky alliance between the CPC and the Kuomintang, some ideological "shoots" will go deep into the soil and subsequently "blossom" in a qualitatively new revolutionary program, but already in the 1940s.

4) On the issue of the status of Mongolia, its territorial integrity and the issue of the CER, the Soviet Union outplayed China, thereby creating the necessary military-political springboard for building foreign policy in China and military-political rivalry with Japan in Manchuria, although already in the 1930s.

 Soviet Foreign Policy and the Chinese Communist PartyFrom 1921 to 1927, the CPC supported Soviet efforts to renew the terms of treaties concluded by tsarist Russia.

The close coordination of the policy of the Comintern and the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs in China in the 1920s is striking in its coherence and consistency. The famous American historian A. Ulam even compared the foreign policy activities of the USSR in China with "an acrobat juggling several balls in the air" ^{[21, p. 344]}.

Soon after Maring, the secretary of the Communist International for the Colonies of the Far East, arrived in China in April 1921, he brought the policy of the United Front to a new important stage, creating a new political force – the CPC, which, as we already know, together with the Kuomintang Party, subsequently forms a strong political alliance.

In August 1922, G. N. Voitinsky sent a letter to the Central Committee of the PC with clear instructions for further actions. G. N. Voitinsky advised young "party brothers" to participate correctly in the political struggle, strengthen and expand communist organizations, respond to all events of political importance in the country. According to G. N. Voitinsky, China had at least two tasks – the destruction of the dujunate (the rule of military governors) and the solution of the problem of the territorial federal structure of China ^{[22, p. 113]}.

The CPC was becoming a strong political organization and was ready to lead the United Front itself in order to fight militaristic regimes in Northern and Central China, but the Comintern insisted that the Kuomintang Party play the main role in this alliance. Perhaps this decision was influenced by Sun Yat-sen, with whom the Soviet government did not want to spoil relations, because it understood that his authority would help solve other foreign policy issues. In August 1922, the CPC was ordered to join the union led by the Kuomintang.

On January 12, 1923, the Comintern sent a telegram to China outlining the resolutions of the Fourth Congress of the Comintern on the policy of the United Front. Although the discussion was heated, and many delegates still opposed the close relations of the Chinese Communists with Sun Yat–sen, the congress eventually agreed that the United Front should be implemented, recognizing that the Kuomintang is the only serious national revolutionary organization in China ^{[22, pp. 172-173]}.

Thus, these rapid changes show that as early as 1921 the CPC considered itself the leader of the Chinese revolution, but by July 1922 it was assigned a secondary role, since only the Comintern and the Soviet leadership behind it could decide who to lead the weapons they created. In fact, in 1921-1924, the CPC was only a toy in the hands of Soviet diplomacy. The Soviet leadership "fervently worried" about the problems of China's fragmentation and tried in every possible way to support the intentions and desires of the CPC, as long as it corresponded to the USSR's foreign policy line. There was nothing new in this, it was a logical continuation of the policy of supporting the Kuomintang, first proposed by L. M. Karakhan in 1918. This can be seen in the example of the question of the autonomy of Outer Mongolia.

As part of the Soviet leadership's efforts to extend the terms of the 1915 treaty granting Outer Mongolia autonomy, the CPC publicly supported Russia's unequal treaties in articles in Chinese published in its official newspapers, such as Avangard. The CCP helped Soviet diplomats, naively believing that after the success of the communist revolution in China, the region of outer Mongolia would be returned to China.

Immediately after the signing of the Soviet-Chinese treaty on May 31, 1924, Chen Duxiu wrote an article in which he called the people who consistently opposed the autonomy of Outer Mongolia short-sighted. Chen Duxiu explained this by saying that a minor concession to the Soviet Union would not harm China, but on the contrary would allow it to build an independent foreign policy in alliance with the USSR.

Even after the Comintern ordered the CPC to join the Kuomintang, disputes within the CPC over this decision continued. It took some time for the Comintern's decision to be fully accepted. What the USSR considered "expedient", the Chinese Communists considered, if not the "end of the world", then the end of their independent political activity and, admittedly, they had every reason to do so. But since the CPC was a member of the Comintern, it was obliged to follow the decisions of this organization, and Chinese Communists were reluctant to join the Kuomintang as private individuals.

The first Congress of the Kuomintang in January 1924 called for strict party discipline, an intensive propaganda offensive, the introduction of social guarantees, the equalization of lands under the agrarian reform of 1924, state control over capital and monopolistic industries, the creation of an army to repel attacks both inside the country and on the external borders ^[23].

The Congress transferred all supreme power into the hands of the Kuomintang National Congress, making Sun Yat-sen the party's president for life and giving him the right to veto resolutions of the National Congress and the Central Executive Committee. We would like to emphasize that the decision to grant Sun Yat-sen the right of veto, rather than requiring him to agree to any decision, also had significant consequences. After all, as Sun Yat-sen's workload increased, more and more party decisions were made at lower levels, which allowed the Communists to feel much more confident than they could have expected. Subsequently, this will become one of the reasons for the split of the First United Front and will lead to the failure of the policy of the Comintern. 

In July 1924, Chen Duxiu, in a letter to G. N. Voitinsky, reported on the growing tension between the left and right factions of the Kuomintang ^{[22, p. 458]}. Despite all the difficulties that were beginning to arise within the Kuomintang Party, the Soviet leadership still had a glimmer of hope for the creation of a left wing – a "time bomb", which, firstly, would not allow the Kuomintang to take all power into its own hands and, as a result, refuse "fraternal communist assistance", and secondlysecondly, it would allow to pursue a policy of "divide and rule". For these reasons, on July 18, 1924, M. M. Borodin sent a letter from Canton to the representative of the CPC, Qu Qubo, in which he insisted on organizing the left wing of the Kuomintang ^{[24, L. 5]}.

The revolutionary intensification in China was part of the gradual shift of Soviet Russia's tactics from Europe to Asia, as the Soviet government began to realize that the Far East could become the site of the next world conflict. Of course, the starting point of the internal political crisis in China and at the same time the forced turn of the USSR's foreign policy should be considered the year of Sun Yat-sen's death, March 12, 1925. It turned out that too much depended on the authority of the Chinese leader – he was a kind of symbol of the revolutionary struggle for both the Kuomintang and the CPC. The Comintern could no longer maintain the fragile alliance of the two parties, which sooner or later would lead to a split and the gradual loss of Soviet influence in China. On the one hand, the death of Sun Yat-sen threatened to destroy the Kuomintang's alliance with the CPC, but on the other hand, it untied the hands of the Comintern, which received the long-awaited opportunity to decisively turn the Kuomintang against the influence of foreign powers in China.

By helping to organize, finance and lead the revolutionary Kuomintang movement in China, the Soviet leadership had a great chance of completely dragging China into the Soviet camp. It was especially important to promote the Chinese revolution because of the long Sino-Soviet border: if China joined the socialist camp, it would increase the size of the Soviet bloc by four hundred million people. The Comintern temporarily supported the leading role of the Kuomintang in the Chinese National Revolution, but then clearly hoped to carry out a socialist revolution in China under the leadership of the workers' movement and the forces of the CPC.

By May 1925, both the Comintern and the People's Commissariat of the USSR were ready to bring the Chinese revolution to a new level of activity. In mid-May, the death of a striking Chinese worker triggered the "May Thirtieth movement." It was only after these incidents that the revolutionary movement of the Kuomintang became really noticeable. With the rise of the Kuomintang, the CPC also grew from 1,000 members in January 1925, to 30,000 in July 1926, and then doubled to a maximum of 57,900 members in the spring of 1927.

When rumors spread in the USSR about the demonstrations of the thirtieth of May in China, G. E. Zinoviev immediately published an article in which he called China the most important participant in the colonial revolutionary movements ^[25]. In connection with these events, the Beijing government sent a note stating that the situation was very tense ^[26].

Slogans demanding the abolition of unequal treaties and extraterritoriality by capitalists were especially important for the strategy of the Comintern in China, since it was emphasized that the main hope of the East is the position of the USSR on this issue ^[26].

The events in Asia were so important for the USSR that they took priority over the revolutionary events in Europe, where the idea of a world revolution could not be realized. As Zinoviev stated, Asia now seemed to be a particularly important region. While the UK was "immobilized" by the Hong Kong strike, the influence of another world leader, the United States of America, was growing. It followed from this that the Soviet Union should defend its own foreign policy interests in Asia.

Thus:1) During the period of cooperation with the Kuomintang and the Soviet Union, as well as active participation in the mass anti-imperialist movement, organizing class demonstrations of workers and peasants, the CPC gained valuable experience in working with the masses and formed organizationally and politically.

2) Largely due to the Soviet experience, as well as legal activities, the CPC has achieved greater success than the Kuomintang, primarily in the field of party building, in organizational and propaganda work, both inside and outside the Kuomintang.

3) The help of the CPSU(b) and the Comintern, including financial support and training of revolutionary cadres in higher educational institutions of the USSR, contributed to the formation of the CPC as a political party ^{[27, pp. 72-79]}.

The collapse of the policy of the First United FrontWith the support of I. V. Stalin and N. I. Bukharin, as well as in opposition to L. D. Trotsky and G. E. Zinoviev, the Northern Expedition of the CPC began in the summer of 1926.

By the end of autumn, the army moved north to the Yangtze River, took the strategically important city of Wuhan and laid siege to Shanghai. Faced with the rapidly deteriorating situation in China, the British Foreign Office issued a statement on September 30, 1926, warning that Britain was ready to defend its interests in China "from pirates and robbers" ^[28].

Great Britain tried to convince the United States to intervene in the situation in China, but its efforts did not lead to anything, since the United States for the time being firmly adhered to the policy of "isolationism". Convinced of the moral correctness of China's claims to equal treatment, US Secretary of State Kellogg telegraphed a statement to the American consulate in Beijing on November 29, 1926, in which he rejected a request to use American naval forces to protect foreign customs in Hankow from attack ^{[29, p. 10]}.

During 1926 and 1927 . The Comintern declared that the revolution in China promised to expand the world revolution in Asia and would deal a fatal blow to capitalism. The special interest of the Soviet Union in China can best be judged by the huge amount of materials devoted to the future of the Chinese revolution: for example, in 1927, thirty-one out of fifty-one editorial articles published in the Communist International were devoted to China.

On December 10, 1926, the leading editorial board of the Communist International called for the beginning of a "new phase" of the revolution in China, in which "the struggle for hegemony between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie will determine the further direction of the revolution" ^{[22, p. 87]}.

We emphasize that the success of the so-called "northern expedition" led to the long-awaited recognition of the Kuomintang Party by foreign powers. With the beginning of diplomatic negotiations between the Kuomintang and British negotiators in 1926 and the Kuomintang-British Agreement concluded in early 1927, the main goal was achieved, which at one time initially prompted Sun Yat-sen to join the First United Front. From the point of view of the Kuomintang, the policy of the united front, and with it the CPC, were now unnecessary components, mechanisms in a huge bureaucratic machine, without which it was quite possible to live.

The CCP's goal was to take control of the Chinese nationalist revolution and turn it into a socialist revolution. But on March 7 , 1927 Chiang Kai-shek, who headed the Kuomintang Party after the death of Sun Yat-sen, made a speech in which he made it clear to the Soviet leadership that it should not try to take control of the Chinese revolution, and already on April 18, 1927 Chiang Kai-shek established a new government in Nanjing under the control of the Kuomintang. With the end of the United Front, Soviet military advisers were forced to leave for the USSR.

On April 25, 1927, Soviet military commander K. E. Voroshilov reported that the Red Army was very weak, especially in modern heavy technical equipment, aviation was small and dependent on foreign industry and resources.

In fact, the Soviet Union's military weakness meant that it could not afford to actively interfere in China's affairs. By refusing to come to the aid of its communist allies in China, the Soviet government condemned the CCP to a unilateral struggle against the Kuomintang, a struggle that the Chinese Communists repeatedly offered to the Comintern from 1921 to 1927, but each time they were refused, both ideologically and materially. As soon as it became necessary, the USSR turned away from China, preferring state interests to its assurances in the press, and even more so to ideological provisions and doctrines.

In the same month, after the Beijing raid on the Soviet embassy, a purge against communists followed in Shanghai, which was already occupied by Kuomintang troops under the command of Chiang Kai-shek (the head of the Kuomintang since 1925). Stalin's resolute determination to avoid an open break with the nationalist government was condemned by Trotsky as a "Menshevik policy" of an alliance with Chiang Kaishi and Wang Jingwei ^{[11, pp. 265-293]}.

L. M. Karakhan, who, thanks to the developed trust and personal friendly relations with G. V. Chicherin and I. V. Stalin, had some independence in the work of the NKID and could broadcast party instructions and construct Soviet-Chinese relations in 1923-1926, was recalled to Moscow and never returned to China. Meanwhile, in such a complicated, complicated situation, the USSR, on the personal instructions of I. V. Stalin, is heading for the formation of independent Soviet regimes in China through uprisings by representatives of the CPC. To bring this plan to life, he sent "professional communists" to China, a member of the Comintern – G. Neumann and a Soviet party worker V. V. Lominadze. At the "meeting on August 7," 1927, under the leadership of V. V. Lominadze, the Chinese Communists adopted the text of an "open letter" to all party members, in which they defended Stalin's "Resolution on China", which was approved at the 8th plenum of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. This Resolution of May 20, 1927 set the main goal of achieving socialism by any means, including armed methods ^{[30, p. 731]}.

The attempt of the Communist Party of China to create a new territorial base of the revolution, to preserve and rally around itself the armed forces of the former national revolutionary army, who remained faithful to the resolution ^{[31, p. 18]}, led to the unsuccessful Nanchang uprising.

Despite the failed uprising in Nanchang, the Comintern sent a directive to the CPC members instructing them to organize an urban uprising in Canton. The leadership of the uprising was to be carried out by the German revolutionary G. Neumann. It is worth noting that the uprising in Canton, unlike some other cities, although it was organized by the CPC under the leadership of Moscow, however, the ground for this uprising had already been prepared for several reasons:

1) Already in 1926-1927, Canton became one of the hotbeds of incessant strikes of the proletariat (strikes of sailors, drivers, postal workers, telegraph operators) ^{[31, p. 14]}.

2) In Canton, a fairly large city in Southern China, in addition to hundreds of thousands of Cantonese workers, there were still tens of thousands of workers from Hong Kong.

3) The city had a sufficiently developed trade union system.

4) On October 19, 1929, workers' demonstrations were dispersed, the organization of which was in no way connected with the Comintern and the CPC.

5) The Canton uprising was favored by the split that took place in the Kuomintang camp. During this period, skirmishes of various militaristic associations took place throughout China. And in Canton itself and in the entire Guangdong Province, opposing blocs were also formed.

On November 7, 1927, the Guangdong Committee of the Communist Party makes a decision on the preparation of the Canton uprising. The main slogan of the rebels were the words "All power to the Soviets." A manifesto about an armed uprising appears ^{[32, pp. 59-61]}. The regional Guard was organized. Revkom is being created illegally.

The uprising began on the night of December 11, 1927, according to a pre-arranged plan. Together with the workers' detachments of the Red Guard, illegally created by the Canton Committee of the Communist Party, a training regiment performed. The rebels' armament was meager. At the time of the uprising, according to a pre-planned plan, the Red Guard, divided into seven detachments, occupied separate sections of the city. Detachments of postal workers, sailors, builders seized the planned points. All transport was mobilized in advance. Cars played a huge role in the uprising, the transfer of parts took place on them. In the first hours of the uprising, over 2 thousand political prisoners were released from prison, who joined the ranks of the rebels. The workers' detachments occupied the post office, the radiotelegraph station, the barracks, the central police building and police stations, the premises of the provincial committee of the Kuomintang and all the most important military points of the city. At 5 o'clock in the morning, the establishment of revolutionary communist power was officially announced in Canton ^{[33, p. 16]}.

The leadership of the uprising was carried out from the walls of the Soviet consulate, and the training regiment of the army of the 2nd Front took part in it. This regiment was formed from cadets of the Wuhan military-political school and students of the peasant movement courses. There were many Communists and Komsomol members among them. Their slogans "bread for the workers" and "land for the peasants" were borrowed from the arsenal of the Bolshevik revolution. In addition, they had a "Council of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies." On December 13, 1927, the Kuomintang troops under the command of Li Fulin crossed the river, broke into Canton from Henan. The 4th Corps under the command of Xue Yue was urgently deployed and sent to Canton. Without holding out for three days, the commune fell, and the rebels were severely punished." The uprising failed for several reasons at once:

Objective reasons:1) Despite the assurances of some Soviet historians and statements by Chinese party officials, the Chinese proletariat was divided, extremely small in number and acted quite locally.

In many ways, it was the fault of the Council of Workers' Deputies, which failed to unite disparate groups.

2) Cantonese and Hong Kong workers hardly interacted with each other.

3) The Kuomintang army was significantly superior to the rebels, both in strength and organization. Almost all military leaders remained loyal to their general and commander–in-chief, Chiang Kai-shek.

4) The number of industrial workers in the Canton was small.

5) The peasantry did not support the rebels.

Subjective reasons:1) The uprising was not accompanied by a general strike.

2) There was no sufficiently skillful organization capable of mobilizing the masses to carry out an uprising.

3) There was no unified leadership of the uprising.

Immediately after the Canton Commune, the Chinese government in Nanjing informed Moscow on December 15, 1927 that all Soviet consulates and trade agencies in China should be closed ^{[33, p. 75]}.

The unreliable diplomatic relations that existed between the Beiyang government and Soviet Russia for four years, despite the severance of diplomatic ties, remained practically the same when the Kuomintang became the leader throughout China, until the irreparable incident of 1929 occurred on the CER, which ended with the complete severance of diplomatic relations with the USSR. As a result, the Chinese socialist revolution ended before it could begin, and now only its distant echo reached Moscow.

Main conclusions1) The Soviet government, with the assistance of the Comintern, created a United Front of the Kuomintang and the CPC to regulate public opinion in China, which significantly accelerated the course of the Soviet-Chinese negotiations.

2) The United Front was called upon to become the leader of the Chinese nationalist revolution. Soviet diplomacy did not want to lose control of this organization, so when the leaders of the CPC asked to be allowed to withdraw from the United Front, the USSR refused.

3) There was also no unity within the Soviet party leadership on the issue of interaction with the CPC. Some Bolsheviks supported Chen Duxiu's attempts to end the United Front, but they were sharply criticized by the party leadership. Thus, Trotsky's active support for the political independence of the CPC subsequently played a role in his expulsion from the party in 1927.

4) As a result of the conducted research, we came to the conclusion that the Comintern, which was under the protection of the Soviet state, played a significant role in the creation of the United Front, but by 1925 it became increasingly difficult to manage this organization, therefore, after the organization collapsed, the Comintern shifted responsibility for the policies of the CPC and the Kuomintang, referring to poor leadership of Chen Duxiu, who was not like Sun Yat–sen, a revolutionary democrat full of nobility and heroism ^{[34, p. 402]}. The policy of the Comintern was extremely unpopular in the CPC, even in the highest circles. In addition, the Soviet adviser in China, M. M. Borodin (perhaps the most important supporter of the Comintern policy in China) admitted that the Comintern condemned Chen Duxiu for his repeated attempts to withdraw from the Kuomintang even before the United Front collapsed.

It should be particularly noted that, while condemning the imperialist policy of the West, the Soviet state continued to promote its foreign policy line, which only verbally differed from the official statements of the Comintern, for example, on the problem of Outer Mongolia. However, a comparison of propaganda measures and Soviet diplomatic steps in China shows that there was both ideological unity and close political ties between the activities of the People's Commissariat of the Soviet State and the Comintern. While the agents of the Comintern in China supported first the independent government of Bogdo-gegen in Outer Mongolia, and since 1924 the socialist Mongolian People's Republic, Soviet diplomats worked to ensure that the so-called "imperialist treaties" between the Soviet state and China continued to operate. It turns out that the Soviet official state foreign policy line did not contradict the policy of the Comintern, but, in fact, was clearly coordinated with its activities, which contributed to the fulfillment of the common important foreign policy tasks of the Soviet state.

Thus, Soviet foreign policy was of a dual nature: on the one hand, the USSR promoted the line of the Comintern to create a "base of socialism" in China, and on the other hand, the USSR defended its own geopolitical interests in the Asian region.