This collection of documents, sealed
for years in Stalin's secret archives, gathers some of Karl
Bernhardovich Radek's most important contributions to the early
Soviet debates about China and its working-class. Radek (1885-1939)
was the foremost Soviet specialist on China, a leading activist in
the Russian revolutionary movement, and a leader of the Trotskyist
Opposition. In these letters, articles, and minutes he presents an
original conception of the history of China from ancient times to the
twentieth century, as well as a delineation of the fundamental
political problems of China in the 1920s. The appendices also contain
communications between Trotsky and Radek, as well as the
"Chronological Information" of Zionviev and Trotsky,
outlining the most important stages of the struggle of the United
Left Opposition against the Stalinist majority in the All-Union Communist Party regarding problems of the first Chinese revolution.
None of the documents collected here
have ever been published in English.
