Author ｜
Jarkko Haapanen
Abstract ｜
The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the concept of Bolshevism and its relation to the concept of radicalism during the May Fourth Movement period by looking at the writings on Bolshevism and radicalism in the May Fourth Movement journals. The relevance of different views on radicalism lies in their usages in making claims about possible and desirable set of ideas for the future course of China. Authors such as Chen Duxiu, who wanted to support the idea that China should follow Soviet Russian examples in its development, wanted to give the concept of Bolshevism positive meanings. What made these efforts difficult, was that in this context one of the names, namely guòjīzhŭyì (過激主義), which was used to refer to Bolshevism, was also used to refer to the concept of radicalism. This paper shows how many of the May Fourth Movement authors wanted to use alternative names without such negative connotations, such as the one that was based on the phonetics (布爾塞維克, Bùěrsāiwéikè) or semantics (Bolsheviks as 多數派, Duōshùpài, “ the majority party”) of the original Russian version (большевики). Authors interested in Bolshevism saw the name guòjīzhŭyì as an attempt to denigrate Bolshevism. This paper also shows that neither Bolshevik nor anti-Bolshevik propaganda did not manipulate May Fourth Movement authors. They followed international discussion and were well aware that Bolshevism was a controversial issue abroad.
keywords ｜
Bolshevism, radicalism, May Fourth Movement, history of concepts