Soviet political economy textbooks in China (1920-1940s)

The paper reconstructs the process of dissemination and assimilation of Soviet political economy textbooks in Republican China. During the period of revolutionary struggle, the Chinese left-wing audience needed an accessible explanation of the political economy of capitalism, along with a theoretical summary of the experience of the USSR's economic development. The choice to use textbooks by Soviet authors in China was independent and deliberate. The earliest translations were A.A. Bogdanov's "Short course of economic science" and "Introduction to political economy: in questions and answers". Later in the mid-1930s I.A. Lapidus and K.V. Ostrovityanov's "Outline of political economy: Political economy and Soviet economics" gained prominence. From the second half of the 1930s to the end of the 1940s, L.A. Leontiev's "Political economy. A beginner's course" was exceptionally in?uential in China. Some of these translations were based on Japanese language editions. Chinese Marxists saw the ?ow of publications of revised and expanded versions of textbooks in the USSR as evidence of the progressive development of Soviet economic science. The determination to understand these changes led to the translation of these textbooks into Chinese and the critical comparison of the old and new versions. By the middle of the 20th century, the textbooks by A.A. Bogdanov, I.A. Lapidus and K.V. Ostrovityanov, as well as by L.A. Leontiev, were published in China in various translations with different titles by many publishing houses. This paper attempts to structure and summarize information about these books. It concludes that translated textbooks contributed to the popularization of Marxist economic theory in China and prepared the ground for the widespread adoption of Soviet political economy in the 1950s.