"A comparative account of the roots of Communist revolution in Russia and China."@en
"An "exploration of how the social idenitities of peasants who left their villages to work and settle in St Petersburg, from the 1880s to 1917, and in Shanghai, from the 1900s to the 1940s, were transformed under the impact of capitalist modernity ... how changes in their social identities contributed to the political, social and cultural ferment that eventuated in revolution"--Introduction."@en
"This book is a comparative account of the roots of Communist revolution in Russia and China. Steve Smith examines the changing social identities of peasants who settled in St. Petersburg from the 1880s to 1917, and in Shanghai from the 1900s to the 1940s. Russia and China, though very different societies, were both dynastic empires with backward agrarian economies that suddenly experienced the impact of capitalist modernity. This book argues that far more happened to these migrants than simply being transformed from peasants into workers. It explores the migrants' identification with their native homes; how they acquired new understandings for themselves as individuals and new gender and national identities. It asks how these identity transformations fed into the wider political, social and cultural processes that culminated in the revolutionary crises in Russia and China, and how the Communist regimes that emerged viewed these transformations in the working classes they claimed to represent."