ABSTRACT
From 1921 to 1927 the CCP championed Soviet efforts to renew the terms of the tsarist Russian unequal treaties. Previously, the close coordination between the Comintern's and the Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs' (Narkomindel) policies in China during the 1920s was questioned, with one noted historian even comparing the USSR's "divergent policies" in China to "an acrobat juggling several balls in the air." 1 But the publication of the personal archives of perhaps the most important Comintern agent in China, Maring, has helped clarify that these two Soviet-funded organizations actually worked closely together. 2
This cooperation was especially important during the 1924 Sino-Soviet negotiations, when the Comintern helped rally Chinese public opinion to support Soviet diplomats in Peking. Central to Moscow's success was the Comintern's decision to found the CCP during 1921, and then its order to enter into an alliance with the KMT during 1922 to augment the ability of Sun Yat-sen and the KMT to marshal Chinese public opinion in support of Soviet diplomacy. The Chinese communists then backed the Soviet diplomats both confidentially, in their party resolutions, and publicly, in their official journals like Hsiang-tao Chou-bao [fl~jll¥1i!] (The Guide Weekly) and Ch'ien-feng[8f1$f:] (The Vanguard).
