Comintern China specialist who cultivated the 28 Bolsheviks
In January 1931, at the CCP's 4th Plenary Session in Shanghai, Mif appeared in person as the Comintern representative and directly secured Wang Ming and his group's landslide entry into the Politburo, orchestrating the ascent of the '28 Bolsheviks' on the spot.
He joined the Bolshevik party in his teens, fought in the Civil War, and studied at Sverdlov Communist University. Named rector of Moscow's Sun Yat-sen University at just 26, he personally cultivated the Chinese student cohort known as the '28 Bolsheviks', including Wang Ming, shaping a pro-Soviet orthodox faction that would prove decisive in the early Chinese Communist Party. As deputy head of the Comintern Eastern Secretariat from 1928 to 1935, he steered Comintern policy on the Chinese revolution, then served as Georgi Dimitrov's political assistant on China. He was a pioneer of Soviet Marxist sinology, authoring numerous works on the Chinese revolution and the colonial question.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1917–1920Civil War participant, political commissar
- 1925–1927Provost, Sun Yat-sen University
- 1927–1929Rector, Communist University of the Toilers of China
- 1928–1935Deputy head, Eastern Secretariat, ECCI
- 1930–1931Secretary, Far Eastern Bureau, ECCI
- 1935–1937Political assistant to Dimitrov on China
- 1937Director, NIINKP
Related historical events
The 1930–1931 Shanghai Mission and the Remaking of the CCP Leadership
Mif became deputy head of the Comintern's Eastern Secretariat in 1928, and in December 1930 he was sent back to Shanghai as the Comintern's representative. The CCP was then divided over Li Lisan's adventurist line, and the Comintern judged that the Third Plenum of September had failed to correct it. On his arrival Mif summoned Wang Ming for a separate briefing, and under that pressure the Central Committee agreed to convene a Fourth Plenum of the Sixth Central Committee.
Held secretly in Shanghai on 7 January 1931, the plenum was chaired by Xiang Zhongfa but in substance directed by Mif. Beforehand he personally drafted the plenum's resolution, drew up the roster of incoming Politburo members, alternate members and Central Committee members in the name of the Comintern Far Eastern Bureau and the CCP Political Bureau, and selected the delegates. Wang Ming delivered a long speech attacking Li Lisan and Qu Qiubai, and Mif concluded that Wang stood firmly on the Comintern line. The result was that Wang, who had not even been a Central Committee member, vaulted onto the Politburo while Li Lisan and Qu Qiubai lost their seats. Xiang Zhongfa remained general secretary in name, but real authority passed to Wang.
After the plenum Mif convened the twenty to thirty people who had opposed Wang's entry into the Politburo and forced them to accept his leadership. He recognized, however, that Wang and other newcomers lacked the standing to sustain the whole Politburo, and so retained existing members including Zhou Enlai. When Mif returned to the Soviet Union in August 1931, the Comintern fully endorsed the Fourth Plenum and Wang's rise in its resolution on the tasks of the CCP, and from then on the Wang Ming line dominated the party for four years.