Before Mao: The Untold Story of Li Lisan and the Creation of Communist China
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Book Overview
The first biography of Li Lisan, the first head of China's Communist Party, whose fiery independence led to forced exile under Stalin and eventual execution at the hands of Mao. Combining an exceptional love story with a gripping tale of incarceration in Stalin's gulag and later in Mao's concentration camps, Patrick Lescot's Before Mao is a deeply moving, beautifully told saga of Li Lisan, Mao's predecessor at the head of the Communist Party, a key member of the Russian and Chinese revolutions. Told in an engaging, highly dramatic style that reads more like a novel than a standard history, Lescot skilfully unfolds this page-turning biography. Li, who led the Chinese Communist Party in the 1920s, was a rare survivor among the Chinese members of the Internationale. Moving from China to France to the Soviet Union and finally back to China, Before Mao is an extraordinary chronicle of the indomitable human spirit 'allowing us to share in some true moments of emotion, where love wins over totalitarianism's destruction of individuality' (Le Monde).
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0060084650
ISBN13:9780060084653
Release Date:February 2005
Publisher:Ecco Press
Length:400 Pages
Weight:1.29 lbs.
Dimensions:1.1" x 5.6" x 8.8"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
A Must read
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 21 years ago
Renewed interest in Pre-communist china ahs brought this wonderful book to us along with other reads on Chang-Kai Shek among others. This is a needed contribution to the scholarship. Li Lisan was co-founder of the Communist party and went on to study in France and then settle in Russia. Although this book focuses on his love affair with Elizabeth Kushkin, it also tells a weaving fascinating story of the links between international communism and cracks within it. Excellent portraits are given of the mercurial Stalin, who jailed Lisan along with many international communists who didn't toe the party line. In the end Lisan returned to China, saw the civil war to communist victory and then was finally killed in 1967 in the cultural revolution, just prior to the large scale military skirmishes on the China-Russia border that showed the final split between Moscow and Beijing. A wonderful book. A must read for any Chinese or communist enthusiast. This book brings back to life the heady days of warlords, Sun Yet Sun and the birth of communism in China during the chaos of the early 20th century. Seth J. Frantzman
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