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

of a Russian-language work entitled A Study Of Sun Yat-sen s Teachings
were available free of charge. While no authorship was attributed
to the book, it seemed obvious to us that it had been written by someone
who knew a great deal about the subject. Its detailed analysis of
Sun Yat-sen's teachings was severely critical of them. The author
chiefly developed ideas which Lenin propounded in 1912 in "Democracy
and Narodnism in China." For in that article Lenin praised Sun
Yat-sen as a progressive bourgeois democrat, while at the same time
warning that underlying Sun's Socialist ideas was "petty-bourgeois
'Socialist' reactionary" theory. 10 The ready availability of this volume
at Sun Yat-sen University was ironic indeed. It demonstrated, of course,
that the relationship between the Russian Communists and the KMT
was not based upon any ideological affinity, but upon political considerations
and tactical expediency.
From all that has been written above, one can draw some conclusions:
First, the usual four-year course was completed in two years'
time. The work was so intensive that the students had to spend eight
hours a day in the classroom. Second, from the nature of the courses
one sees that the ambition of Sun Yat-sen University was no less than
the complete molding of a student's thinking, starting from the very
fundamentals of philosophy and world view. The final goal was to
enable him, in whatever circumstances, to grasp the essentials and
arrive at ready-made answers through a ready-made methodology.
And, finally, while Sun Yat-sen University nominally was supposed to
train KMT cadres, in fact it was designed solely to turn out students
oriented towards furthering the Communist movement in China.
SOME CLASS ARRANGEMENTS AND SPECIAL FACILITIES AT THE
UNIVERSITY
Sun Yat-sen University was a veritable catchall of personalities different
from each other in education and in status. About five hundred
persons made up the first and second graduating classes of the university.
My own student identification card was 527, which indicated
that by the time I enrolled at Sun Yat-sen University at the end of
1926, 526 students had enrolled previously, and there were, of course,
enrollments which followed mine at about the same time. However,
students left the university from time to time without having graduated.
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