Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

Files

File List


Knight, John 2017 Dissertation.pdf (3.49 MB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Our Nation’s Future? Chinese Imaginations of the Soviet Union, 1917-1956

Knight, John Marcus
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4745-0370
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu149406768131314

Abstract Details

2017, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, History.
This dissertation charts the path by which an idealized understanding of the Soviet Union aided the transformation of Marxism from a counter-hegemonic to a hegemonic discourse within China over the course of the four decades from the 1917 October Revolution until Nikita Khrushchev’s 1956 “Secret Speech.” It probes previously unexamined commercial, political, and student presses, as well as organizational records, to detail ways by which the “image” of the Soviet Union was employed by separate groups to critique domestic political forces during China’s Republican era (1912-49), challenge capitalism and international imperialism, and secure popular support during the early years of the People’s Republic (1949-). Such inquiry sheds light on the conflicting ways in which Chinese imagined themselves and their world, and reveals an alternative conception of modernity that promised to bridge “East” and “West.” Chapters One, Two, and Four through Six provide a chronological reading of the “Soviet Union” in Shanghai and Beijing presses. As China experienced the consecutive pangs of revolutionary upheaval, state consolidation, foreign invasion, and civil war, the “meaning” of the Soviet Union also changed. Activists in the 1920s viewed the October Revolution as the opening salvo of a growing international movement against all forms of oppression. Over the following decades, however, “modernization” eclipsed “internationalism” as the USSR’s chief selling point. The Soviet Union came to be portrayed as an industrialized nation with high rates of economic growth, able to provide for its citizens, and withstand foreign aggression. By depicting New China as the “younger brother” of the modern USSR, the Chinese Communist Party upon taking power implied that it would be able to replicate Soviet successes domestically. Chapters Three, Seven, and Eight examine organizations that defined their respective eras: the proletarian women’s movement of the 1920s, and Shanghai’s Industry and Commerce Bureau (Gongshang ju) and Sino-Soviet Friendship Association (Zhong-Su youhao xiehui) of the 1950s. Contrasting these groups reveals both the liberating and the confining effects of pro-Soviet rhetoric in practice. The first viewed the Soviet Union as the symbolic head of an international grassroots movement to upturn the imperialist and patriarchal status quo. The latter two presented the USSR as a nation-state with a “proven” developmental model applicable to China. By the 1950s, the meaning of the “Soviet Union” was no longer open-ended; it was a tailored image promoted by the CCP to gain legitimacy. This study revises scholarly understanding in three substantive ways. First, by closely reading more than a hundred period essays, it broadens our perspective of China’s Communist Revolution, demonstrating that alongside the now-familiar military campaigns, land seizures, and workers’ strikes, there was a battle within the Republican mediasphere in which an array of students, journalists, and political figures articulated a “new China.” Second, by highlighting how Chinese imagined the Soviet Union rather than how the USSR existed “objectively,” my study affirms the intellectual agency of Chinese in choosing their revolutionary path. Finally, we see the rupture that took place when Soviet-inspired Marxism transitioned from being an oppositional to a state ideology.
Christopher Reed (Advisor)
Ying Zhang (Committee Member)
David Hoffmann (Committee Member)
Judy Wu (Committee Member)
645 p.
Asian Studies; History; Mass Media; Modern History; Political Science; Russian History
Republican China; Maoist China; Soviet Union; modernity; mediasphere; October Revolution; cosmopolitanism; imagination; Sino-Soviet Friendship Association; Chinese womens movement; Guomindang; Chinese Communist Party

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Knight, J. M. (2017). Our Nation’s Future? Chinese Imaginations of the Soviet Union, 1917-1956 [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu149406768131314

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Knight, John. Our Nation’s Future? Chinese Imaginations of the Soviet Union, 1917-1956 . 2017. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu149406768131314.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Knight, John. "Our Nation’s Future? Chinese Imaginations of the Soviet Union, 1917-1956 ." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu149406768131314

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu149406768131314
632
© 2017, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.