YE Fan The Student Years of the Chinese Marshal Liu Bocheng in the USSR (1927–1930)

Abstract: The article reviews the topic concerning the biography of the prominent Chinese marshal Liu Bocheng – more precisely, the years of his stay in the USSR. During the 1920s the USSR invariably provided uncompensated help to the Chinese Revolution. After the cooperation between Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China (CPC) ended, the Chinese communists, in response to the white terror and massive assassinations of their party members, prepared and carried out the famous Nanchang Uprising. Because of the uprising’s defeat Liu Bocheng, being one of its main organisers, was forced to hide due to the highly dangerous situation in China at the time. In accordance with the decree of the Communist Party of China, Liu Bocheng went to the USSR to study within the framework of a military training program for the realisation of the Communist revolution in China. During his short student years in the USSR (1927–1930), first taking tactical-rifle courses with the commanding officers of the Communist International’s Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army (school "Vystrel") and later attended the Frunze Military Academy, Liu Bocheng received a systematic military education of the highest level. This education had a profound influence on his future revolutionary activities and on his theoretical outlook concerning the field of military preparation. The article’s author, using the historical-retrospective, descriptive-narrative, cause-effect and historical-typological methods, thoroughly examines the details of the life and education of the Chinese marshal within the Soviet military-educational institutions, thus reconstructing the important but little-known chapter of his life. The article’s scientific novelty consists of the fact that the author based his study above all on archival sources from the funds of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RSASPH), the Russian State Military Archive (RSMA) and memoir literature, and is one of the first scholars to scrupulously study Liu Bocheng's stay in the Soviet country. During his student years Liu Bocheng had distinguished himself with persistence and great diligence in his studies. He benefitted from an esteemed reputation and respect among his teachers and other Chinese students in the USSR. On the example of the examination of this short segment in the biography of one of the representatives of the highest military elites of China, it becomes clear how crucial the international help of the Soviet country was in creating the army of the Communist Party of China.

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