A Road Is Made

"This is a study of the activities, ideas and internal life of the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai during its formative period. It investigates the party's relations to the city's students and teachers, women, entrepreneurs, secret societies, and, above all, its workers, and examines the efforts to transform the CCP into a "Leninist" party, exploring relations between intellectuals and workers and men and women."

"The book culminates in a detailed analysis of the three armed uprisings which led to the CCP's briefly taking power in March 1927, before being crushed by the troops of Chiang Kai-shek. The study highlights the extent to which the Soviet Union sought to control China's national revolution, yet also reveals how divisions at every level of the Comintern allowed the CCP to achieve a degree of independence and to conduct a policy at considerable variance with that laid down by Moscow." "In addition to using the wealth of Chinese material that has become available since the 1980s, this study is the first to make use of the Comintern materials that have become available since the collapse of the Soviet Union."--Jacket.