Revolution and the People in Russia and China by S A Smith

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Summary

A unique account of how the experience of capitalist modernity changed the social identities of peasants who left their villages to settle in St Petersburg and Shanghai. Steve Smith explores how the changes in migrants' social identities contributed to the processes that culminated in Communist revolution in Russia and China.

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Revolution and the People in Russia and China by S A Smith

A unique comparative account of the roots of Communist revolution in Russia and China. Steve Smith examines the changing social identities of peasants who settled in St Petersburg from the 1880s to 1917 and in Shanghai from the 1900s to the 1940s. Russia and China, though very different societies, were both dynastic empires with backward agrarian economies that suddenly experienced the impact of capitalist modernity. This book argues that far more happened to these migrants than simply being transformed from peasants into workers. It explores the migrants' identification with their native homes; how they acquired new understandings of themselves as individuals and new gender and national identities. It asks how these identity transformations fed into the wider political, social and cultural processes that culminated in the revolutionary crises in Russia and China, and how the Communist regimes that emerged viewed these transformations in the working classes they claimed to represent.
'… pleasant for readers being interested in modern history … high quality of analysis of the industrial capitals of Russia and China' Labor History
Steve Smith is Professor of History at the Department of History, University of Essex. His previous publications include Like Cattle and Horses: Nationalism and Labor in Shanghai, 1895–1927 (2002), A Road is Made: Communism in Shanghai, 1920–27 (2000) and Red Petrograd: A Revolution in the Factories, 1917–18 (1983).
SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9780521713962
ISBN 10 052171396X
Title Revolution and the People in Russia and China
Author S A Smith
Series The Wiles Lectures
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Paperback
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Year published 2008-04-24
Number of pages 264
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.