ABSTRACT
Asian leaders who sought to combine political power, their own cultures, and new ideologies and philosophies to build modern, independent nations. Japan, which saw itself in the vanguard of Asian nationalism, was eventually swept along by a new generation of militant "reformers" who were obsessed with the need to cleanse their nation of corrupting Western influences—and to lead other Asians in doing the same. After Asian claims to self-determination had been spurned at Versailles in 1919, a key concept pushed by Lenin gained strength: Nationalism and anti-imperialism were profoundly linked as motivators of revolutions. Vietnamese nationalism, slow to flourish, developed a fierceness and tenacity that responded directly to the ruthlessness of the French colonizers. Most Chinese were politically tolerant and shunned the idea of class struggle that would later become the hallmark of communist belief. Communism offered a persuasive, concrete alternative to anarchism: the class struggle and the creation of a "dictatorship of the proletariat."
