1. Compare & Contrast the Russian & Chinese Revolutions
WHAP - Mr. Duez - CH 22 - World Communism

2. Compare & Contrast Russian & Chinese Revolution - similarities:
• ousted old ruling classes and dispossessed landed aristocracies;
• involved vast peasant upheavals in the countryside;
• found their vision of the good society in a modernizing future, not in an idealized past;
• took inspiration from the ideas of Karl Marx;
• pursued both economic and political equality;
• and sought the abolition of private property.

3. Compare & Contrast Russian & Chinese Revolution - in contrast:
• The revolutionary struggle in China lasted decades rather than a single year.
• Unlike Russia, where intellectuals had been discussing socialism for half a century or more before the revolution, the ideas of Karl Marx were barely known in China in the early twentieth century.
• Chinese communists faced a far more formidable political foe than the weak Provisional Government over which the Bolsheviks had triumphed in Russia.

4. Compare & Contrast Russian & Chinese Revolution - in contrast:
• Whereas the Bolsheviks found their primary audience among workers in Russia’s major cities, Chinese communists increasingly looked to the country’s peasant villages for support.
• Chinese peasants did not rise up spontaneously against their landlords, as Russian peasants had.
• Chinese communists ultimately put down deep roots among the peasantry in a way that the Bolsheviks never did.
• Whereas the Bolsheviks gained support by urging Russian withdrawal from the highly unpopular World War I, the Chinese communists won support by aggressively pursuing the struggle against Japanese invaders during World War II.