This is actually two questions: First, why did the Soviets support the Sun Yat-sen/Guomindang government in Canton between the January 26, 1923 Sun-Joffre Joint Statement and the GMD break with the Chinese Communists (and the Comintern) in the Shanghai Massacre of April 12, 1927? Second, why did the Comintern support Feng Yuxiang during his various transformations in 1925 and after?

The two situations are similar, in that in each case the Soviets were looking for allies in China who were available and ideologically compatible and Sun and later Feng were looking for both a foreign ally and ideas. The Sun/Comintern relationship was far more important however. Support for Sun Yat-sen and the Guomindang was a key part of Soviet debates over the correct policy for international revolution, and Sun was a major figure in China’s revolutionary development. Feng was…less important, both in China and in terms of his importance in Soviet ideological debate.

First, some background. Sun Yat-sen was the Father of the Chinese Revolution, but he had only the most limited real power. By the time of the October Revolution in Russia he was basically a symbolically important has-been in Chinese politics. China mattered in Soviet politics because the revolution was supposed to be a world revolution. How would the revolution spread outside of the old Russian Empire? China was probably the most important country in Asia for this debate, in that it was big, and the main place in East Asia were there were existing Russian interests.

I can’t do justice to the full complexity of Bolshevik debates about revolutionary Asia, but as you might expect, the key figures are Lenin, Trotsky, M.N. Roy, and Stalin. Lenin was convinced that Asian (and “backwards countries”) more generally needed a bourgeois-democratic revolution (or a national revolution, if you want to be more polite) before having a socialist revolution. In fact, with appropriate help they could skip the capitalist phase of development entirely. Obviously this would require finding a bourgeois-democratic revolutionary leader and party. Sun and his party fit the bill. Lenin claimed that Sun was a "revolutionary democrat, endowed with the nobility and heroism of a class that is rising, not declining, a class that does not dread the future, but believes in it and Sights for it selflessly." but also claimed that China’s proletariat would eventually have to move beyond the "petty bourgeois utopias and reactionary views of Sun Yat-sen" (Gregor pg..32). I bring up these two quotes because they reflect the contradictory attitude the Soviets had towards leaders like Sun. They were useful, but only for a while.

Sun was chosen in part because he was available and willing to work with the Soviets. Bolshevik representatives met with Wu Peifu, Zhang Zuolin and Chen Jiongming. Sun seemed the best choice for both ideological and practical reasons. Sun’s ideas were….eclectic… but he was clearly anti-imperialist and some of the ideas in his Plan for National Reconstruction sounded like socialism, or at least state capitalism. Lenin could criticize Sun as a utopian dreamer, but that element was not missing from Soviet thought either.

Probably more importantly, Sun got along well with the Comintern reps he met, and he had few other choices. He had alienated the British and Americans by opposing China’s entry into WWI, He had cut a deal with Japan, even after the 21 Demands of 1915, which did not make him popular in China. He was unconcerned with the status of the old China Eastern Railway in Manchuria (a bone of contention between the Russian Reds, Whites, and the Peking government, see Leong). Sun was really attracted to the Bolshevik model of a party with strong centralized control by an unquestioned leader. These pragmatic reasons are probably more important than the ideological reasons.

The agreement between Moscow and Sun was not universally supported by all Communists. M.N. Roy (and later Trotsky) favored a more radical path, and pretty much all the local Chinese Communist groups were originally opposed to the United Front. Roy had met Sun in 1916, and considered him a petty-bourgeois radical. Sun’s plans for economic development were to be "carried out not only by foreign capital, but under the supervision of foreign experts." (Gregory pg. 39) So he was really an agent of foreign imperialism. The Communists would be far better off creating their own revolutionary movement, built on workers and maybe peasants, rather than trying to unite with the likes of Sun. (Sun was still trying to come to some sort of agreement with the Americans while he was negotiating with the Soviets.) While Roy’s views did not win the day, you can find elements of his thinking in some of the early Comintern resolutions on revolution in Asia (See Pantsov, 43-46) and the debate never really ended.

The Chinese Communists were mostly initially unhappy about the alliance, although they did fall in line. Like Roy, many of them were unwilling to trust the bourgeoisie, and favored a more radical revolution. Also, many of the rank and file Communists were young May Fourthers, interested in things like breaking up the old family system and sweeping away old culture. Sun was formally in favor of the May Fourth student movement, but he did not put much effort into pretending to care about or even understand their issues. (He was born in 1866!)

It is worth pointing out that both the debate in Moscow and that in China were fairly abstract. Soviet leaders did not actually know much about what was going on in China, and Chinese knew very little about Marxist/Leninist ideas. The debate in Moscow about the proper course of the Chinese Revolution (especially the later Stalin/Trotsky debates) were more people using China as a backdrop for other ideological issues. Likewise, later debates inside the CCP (like between Mao and the 29 Bolsheviks) were not always based on a clear understanding of Marxist-Leninist theory, even if they referred to it a lot.

So it is best to see the Sun/Moscow alliance as being more practical than ideological. The agreement that the Comintern worked out with Sun was that Moscow would send Canton (where Sun was based) money, arms and military and political advisors. Sun would ally himself with the tiny Chinese Communist Party, but he required CCP members to join the GMD as well, and thus be under party discipline. Sun was less amenable to Comintern advice than had been hoped, and after he died the GMD eventually came under the control of Chiang Kai-shek. Although the foreign press called him “Red Chiang” at first, after he broke with the Communists he remained a Leninist, in favor of a strong party leadership and a unified party/state.

Feng Yuxiang is therefore closer to the Sun Yat-sen example than you might think. Feng was the stereotypical uneducated military man who became a warlord. He was a Qing military guy who went through phases as a more or less bandit and train robber, and gradually moved up in power. He tried all sorts of ways of legitimizing his position, from Christianity to writing poetry like a traditional literati/general. He talked a lot about protecting the laobaixing (common people), so I guess that makes him something of a populist from a Marxist perspective.

At first Feng was only willing to accept military help from the Soviets, and kept their political advisors out. After his trip to Moscow he became more “leftist” if that has any meaning for a him. Once he was allied with the Guomindang he did get more “Leftist” political advisors, but from Canton rather than Moscow. In his later career he was something of a gadfly, usually part of the GMD system, but always a bit “leftist” or at least he talked a lot about helping the common people and tried to dress like one. He was quite critical of Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao spoke well of him after his death in 1948, Like Sun, I would really call him more a pragmatist than a Communist.

Sources

Bergère, Marie-Claire. Sun Yat-Sen. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.

Gregor, A. James. A Place In The Sun: Marxism And Fascism In China’s Long Revolution. New York: Westview Press, 2008.

Leong, Sow-Theng. Sino-Soviet Diplomatic Relations, 1917–1926. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1976.

Pantsov, Alexander. The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution, 1919–1927. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000.

Sheridan, James E. Chinese Warlord: The Career of Feng Yü-Hsiang. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1966.