Beginning in the 1920s thousands of Chinese revolutionaries set out for Soviet Russia. Once there, they studied Russian language and experienced Soviet communism, but many also fell in love, got married, or had children. In this they were similar to other people from all over the world who were enchanted by the Russian Revolution and lured to Moscow by it. The Chinese who traveled to live and study in Moscow in a steady stream over the course of decades were a key human interface between the two revolutions, and their stories show the emotional investment backing ideological, economic, and political change. They embodied an attraction strong enough to be felt by young people in their provincial hometowns, strong enough to pull them across Siberia to a place that had previously held no interest at all. After the Revolution, the Chinese went home, fought a war, and then, in the 1950s, carried out a revolution that was and still is the Soviet Union's most geopolitically significant legacy. They also sent their children to study in Moscow and passed on their affinities to millions of Chinese, who read Russia's novels, watched its movies, and learned its songs. Russian culture was woven into the memories of an entire generation that came of age in the 1950s - a connection that has outlasted not just the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the collapse of the Soviet Union, but also the subsequent erosion of socialist values and practices. This multi-generational personal experience has given China's relationship with Russia an emotional complexity and cultural depth that were lacking before the advent of twentieth century communism - and have survived its demise. If the Chinese eventually helped to lead a revolution that resembled Russia's in remarkable ways, it was not only because class struggle intensified in China due to international imperialism as Lenin had predicted it would, or because Bolsheviks arrived in China to ensure that it did. It was also because as young people, they had been captivated by the potential of the Russian Revolution to help them to become new people and to create a new China. This richly crafted and narrated book uses the metaphor of a life-long romance to tell a new story about the relationship between Russia and China. These lives were marked by an emotional engagement that often took the form of a romance: love affairs, marriages, divorces, and "love children," but also inspiring revolutionary passion. Elizabeth McGuire offers an alternative to the metaphors of brotherhood or friendship more commonly used to describe international socialism. She presents an alternate narrative on the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s by looking back to before the split to show how these two giant nations got together. And she does so on a very personal level by examining biographies of the people who experienced Sino-Soviet affairs most intimately: Chinese revolutionaries whose emotional worlds were profoundly affected by journeys to Russia and connections to its people and culture.

About the Author
Elizabeth McGuire is an Assistant Professor of History at California State University, East Bay.

Reviews
...highly readable monograph. * Laurie Manchester, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA, Canadian-American Slavic Studies *
The deep research behind Red at Heart pays off in compelling stories and masterfully observed details. * Gregory Afinogenov, Times Literary Supplement *
Red at Heart brings together an impressive range of sources, including Russian archival material, Chinese literary works, memoirs and oral history interviews. Written both eloquently and sensitively, with an engaging cast of characters, it appeals to a broad audience beyond those working on Chinese and Russian history... The book represents an important first step towards restoring an emotive dimension to the history of Sino-Soviet relations. * Rachel Lin, Revolutionary *
Groundbreaking... Elizabeth McGuire's masterfully researched and ardently narrated epic of how Chinese revolutionaries looked to the Soviet Union for inspiration, guidance, and, in some cases, personal romance convincingly demonstrates the importance of recognizing the role that passions and affects play in world historical transformations... McGuire's book convincingly makes a case that the Sino-Soviet relationship provided the Chinese with a powerful structure of feeling through which they could grasp national modernity, personal becoming, and global infatuations all at once. * Roy Chan, China Journal *
McGuire's book offers a compelling portrait of what the experience of the Sino-Rusian relationship was like for those who lived it beyond the realm of high politics and ideological debate... The book is extremely well-researched, including numerous interviews with key protagonists, and it is a beautifully told and easy to digest entree into the world of early 20th -century Communist revolution. It is ideal for those who want to get a sense of what it was like to travel across Eurasia with dreams of encountering the future and remaking one's homeland in its image. * Jeremy Friedman, The Historian *
McGuire has written a beautiful, elegiac book about ideals, love, and betrayals. If there is a conclusion after reading a text like this, it must be that human happiness is so very hard to achieve in times of revolution, not least because political leaders wantonly destroy it as they build their new states. Yet joy is to be found everywhere, even under the worst of circumstances. In the book's final pages an old couple, driven apart by the horrors they have experienced, find each other again in one last dance, before the curtain falls. * Odd Arne Westad, Slavic Review *
[A] breathtakingly romantic account of the experiences of Chinese revolutionaries in the USSR... The Russians who appeared in their lives were not commanders and manipulators, but friends, teachers and sometimes lovers, and these encounters ultimately gave rise to a uniquely Chinese socialist ideology. Historians of the Sino-Soviet bloc tend to focus on leaders, politics and ideology. McGuire, however, sets her sights on the personal and even the intimate connections between the Russians and Chinese... Implanting communism in China turned out to be the USSR's most geopolitically significant and lasting legacy. China was destined to continue carrying a torch for the Sino-Soviet alliance. * Charles Clover, Financial Times *
McGuire presents a richly researched set of personal stories, involving both the lovers and their children, nested within a larger political story. * Foreign Affairs *
A lively history of Chinese-Russian political and cultural symbiosis. * Kirkus Reviews *
The topic is well chosen, densely researched in Chinese and Russian archives, and eminently readable... This is a valuable addition to an account of twentieth-century global revolution in one of its most consummated historical dimensions. * Rebecca E. Karl, American Historical Review *
McGuire is a natural storyteller... Her point is that there was more than one homeland in the hearts of those young Chinese revolutionaries who fell in love in and with the Soviet Union, and the children who were the product of their Sino-Soviet romance. * Sheila Fitzpatrick, New York Review of Books *
An excellent popular history that brilliantly illuminates a neglected aspect of the Chinese-Russian relationship, this simultaneously chatty and moving story deserves to be known. McGuire's account will appeal to anyone interested in the emotional side of 20th-century international relations. A great read * CHOICE *
Professor McGuire possesses formidable linguistic skills in Russian and Chinese and writes in vivid prose ... Her liberal use of effective quotations from diaries, memoirs, and archives, and information gleaned from interviews with several surviving members of the cohorts she studies make this book a delight to read from beginning to end. * Steven I. Levine, Pacific Affairs *


Awards
Winner of Honorable Mention, W. Bruce Lincoln Prize of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.



Book Information
ISBN 9780190640552
Author Elizabeth McGuire
Format Hardback
Page Count 480
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 840g
Dimensions(mm) 240mm * 164mm * 33mm