Decline in Influence and The Rise of Maoism
Once the Bolsheviks in Russia had consolidated their power, they immediately sought to expand their sphere of influence. Their interpretation of Karl Marx’s prediction that the revolution would be global was that – as the vanguard – it was their role to use the resources at their disposal to instigate and support Bolshevik-style revolutions all over the world. In keeping with Vladimir Lenin’s doctrine on imperialism, their focus was on the undeveloped nations, because they believed that once those nations had thrown off imperialism, Western capitalism – deprived of the material support and raw materials it required – would collapse. They also specifically targeted countries with already established revolutionary movements, and China clearly qualified.
In 1919 the anarchists played a significant role in the May 4th Movement which swept the country. It was at this time that the first Bolsheviks started organising in China and began contacting anarchist groups for aid and support. The anarchists, mistaking the Bolshevicks for allies & unaware of how the Bolsheviks had subordinated the soviets to their party apparatus, helped them set up communist study groups – many of which were originally majority anarchist – and introduced the Bolsheviks into the Chinese labor and student movements.
Read more about this topic: Anarchism In China
Famous quotes containing the words decline in, decline, influence and/or rise:
“Families suffered badly under industrialization, but they survived, and the lives of men, women, and children improved. Children, once marginal and exploited figures, have moved to a position of greater protection and respect,... The historic decline in the overall death rates for children is an astonishing social fact, notwithstanding the disgraceful infant mortality figures for the poor and minorities. Like the decline in death from childbirth for women, this is a stunning achievement.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)
“Considered physiologically, everything ugly weakens and saddens man. It reminds him of decay, danger, impotence; it actually reduces his strength. The effect of ugliness can be measured with a dynamometer. Whenever anyone feels depressed, he senses the proximity of something “ugly.” His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride—they decline with ugliness, they rise with beauty.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Exhaust them, wrestle with them, let them not go until their blessing be won, and, after a short season, the dismay will be overpast, the excess of influence withdrawn, and they will be no longer an alarming meteor, but one more brighter star shining serenely in your heaven, and blending its light with all your day.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)