Blocked Transition from Empire to Nation-state: the Making of the Bolshevik and CCP Revolutionary Elites

• In Event: 330 - Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology Paper Session. Comparative-Historical Perspectives on Nationalism and Ideology

Abstract

This article compares the leading revolution makers of the Russian Bolshevik and Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP), by asking why they went beyond or rejected nationalism, an ideology which was dominant at their periods. It explores the biographical data of the central committee members of the Bolshevik (1917-23) and the CCP (1945-56). Exploring the nature of their conversions to communist ideology, this article argues that the conversions to communism resulted from both Russia’s and China’s blocked transitions from empire to nation state: when imperial values had been delegitimized by military defeats, solid national identities had not yet come into being due to overall underdevelopment. In this interruption, radicals started to look for alternative ideologies that could make revolutions. Nationalism was deemed unworkable in three specific scenarios: (a) it appeared unable to overcome both Russia’s and China’s tremendous internal cultural heterogeneities, which led to aggressive centrifugal trends within revolutionary movements; (b) it evoked little responses among the illiterate or assimilated populations, which had little sense of their own nationhood; (c) it crafted nations by bringing discredited dynastic values back in, which alienated the already enlightened segments of societal elites. This article further asks why Bolsheviks and CCPs went so far to adopt communism as an alternative. It draws comparison between communist and nationalist elites, including Kuomingtang, constitutional democrats, non-Russian separatists and Russian rightists. Such comparison suggests that communists were younger individuals of lower class and education background. They viewed nationalism as an ideology that preached class-collaboration and “reactionary traditions”.

Author

• Luyang Zhou, McGill University