- Li Dazhao
Li Dazhao (
October 29 ,1888 -April 28 ,1927 ) was a Chinese intellectual who co-founded theCommunist Party of China withChen Duxiu in 1921.Biography
Early life
Li was born in
Leting (a county ofTangshan ),Hebei province to a peasant family. From 1913 to 1917 Li studied political economy atWaseda University inJapan before returning to China s in 1918.As head librarian at the
Peking University Library, he was among the first of the Chinese intellectuals who supported theBolshevik government in theSoviet Union . He also wrote in Chen's New Youth and his works had a major influence on other Chinese as well.Mao Zedong was an assistant librarian during Li's tenure at the library, and Li was one of Mao's earliest and most prominent influences. By many accounts, Li was a nationalist and believed that thepeasantry in China were to play an important role in China's revolution. As with many intellectuals of his time, the roots of Li's revolutionary thinking were actually mostly inKropotkin 's communist anarchism, but after the events of theMay Fourth Movement and the failures of the anarchistic experiments of many intellectuals, like his compatriots, he turned more towardsMarxism . Of course, the success of the Bolshevik Revolution was a major factor in the changing of his views. In later years, Li combined both his original nationalist and newly acquired Marxist views in order to contribute a strong political view to China (Meisner 1967, 178).Under the leadership of Li and Chen, the CPC developed a close relationship with the
Comintern . At the direction of the Comintern, Li and Chen were inducted into theKuomintang in 1922. Li was elected to the KMT's Central Executive Committee in 1924.Death
Tensions between the Comintern, the KMT, and the CPC presented opportunities for political intrigue and opportunism. With the outbreak of the
Chinese Civil War , Li was captured during a raid on the Soviet embassy in Peking (Beijing ) and, with nineteen others, he was executed on the orders of the warlordZhang Zuolin on April 28, 1927.References
* "Original text based on [http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/l/i.htm#li-dazhou marxists.org article] , released under the GNU FDL."
* Meisner, Maurice. "Li Ta-Chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism". Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1967.
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