This work has been carried out as part of the implementation of an academic project with the overall title ‘The Russian Left Opposition and the Chinese Revolution: Documents and Materials from the Former Secret Soviet Archives’. The project received financial assistance from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (Taipei, Taiwan), from DePaul University (Chicago, USA), and also from Capital University (Columbus, Ohio) to all of which I would like to express my profound gratitude.
I also wish to express my warmest acknowledgment to Dr. Alexander L. Chechevishnikov, at the Scientific Research Institute of Social Systems of Moscow State University, for his selfless assistance in the discovery of documents, and also to the former Director of the Institute of Modern History of Academia Sinica (Taiwan), Professor Ch’en Yung-fa, who collaborated with me in determining the direction of my investigations. In addition, I am also indebted to the translators of the book, Dr. Steven I. Levine who translated Chapter 2 and Richard Abraham who translated the rest of the book. My heartiest thanks too go to Dr. Richard Ashbrook, Dr. Denvy Bowman, Dr. Mechthild Leutner, Dr. Mikhail Serafimovich Meyer, Dr. Pierre Broué, Father Thomas Croke, Dr. Jean-François Fayet, Dr. Irina Nikolaievna Sotnikova, Dr. Yu Miin-ling, to my mother Nina Stepanovna Pantsova, my daughter Dr. Daria Aleksandrovna Arincheva, my stepdaughter Ekaterina Alekseevna Gribova, Dr. Iurii Mikhailovich Ovchinnikov, Danny Hayward, Hilde Kugel, and also to Dr. Sébastien Budgen.
I value very highly the cordial attitude to my work shown by colleagues in the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI) and the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ARAN), in particular by Dr. Kirill Mikhailovich Anderson, Dr. Valerii Nikolaevich Shepelev, Svetlana Markovna Rozental, Larisa Aleksandrovna Rogovaia, Liudmila Mikhailovna Kosheleva, Larisa Nikolaevna Malashenko, Liudmila Konstantinovna Karlova and Iuri Tikhonovich Tutochkin.
Finally, I would like to express unlimited gratitude and the warmest recognition to my wife, Ekaterina Borisovna Bogoslovskaia, my closest friend and assistant, whose contribution to the preparation of this work for the press was especially valuable.
A.V.P.
Columbus, Ohio
1 January 2020