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.
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