Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow and the Chinese Revolution - KU ...

ector was filled by a very handsome and friendly man named
Kuchumov. He came to the university more often than Mif and was
well liked by the students. He was also known as an expert on China,
but actually his specialty was Outer Mongolia. He was in charge of
Mongolian affairs in the Comintern. During the 1920s, he also took
various Sun Yat-sen University students on official tours of Outer
Mongolia.
Mif was young, inexperienced, and generally unpopular. While he
was vice-rector, most of the students did not like him, for he seldom
mingled with them. He maintained contact only with a handful of
students who spoke fluent Russian and who were among those who
later became known as the 28 Bolsheviks. He did not even teach a
course at the university and only occasionally delivered speeches to us.
In addition, he always had a long face and never smiled. Perhaps his
relative youth made him self-conscious and caused him to try to act
older than his age. In any case, students at that time, at least, had no
way of knowing what substance there was to the man. What was clear
to all was that he compared to Karl Radek as a drop of water to an
ocean.
The China Problems Research Institute, which will be discussed in
chapter four, was Mif s greatest contribution while serving as rector of
the university. His only other achievement was to issue walking papers
to some very learned Trotskyite professors and to replace them with
instructors strong on Partyism but poor in scholarship. Of course, he
was not to blame in this case, for he was doubtless only carrying out
the orders of those higher up in the Party.
Despite being disliked by many students of the university, Mif was
very successful in enhancing his position in the Party and the government.
With the rapid development of the Chinese revolutionary movement
after 1925, the situation in China naturally became more and
more important to the Comintern. Consequently, Mifs post as rector
of Sun Yat-sen University became an enviable one. Moreover, the
power struggle between Stalin and Trotsky gave him the opportunity
to improve his position even more. Mif supported Stalin and was in
turn consulted by Stalin on the problems of the Chinese revolution.
However, Mif did not find himself above correction on the problems
of the revolution. At the ECCFs Seventh Plenum, held from
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