In March 2007, Sheng Yue, one of the last surviving students of the Communist University of the Working People of China, died in Palo Alto (USA, California). Sun Yat-sen in Moscow (KUTK, before 1928 - UTK). Most Sinologists know Sheng Yue (Sheng Zhongliang, Mitskevich F. A.) as the author of memoirs about this educational institution, created, like the Wampu Military School, as a result of Sun Yat-sen's policy of rapprochement with the USSR. From 1925 to 1930, many prominent statesmen of twentieth-century China studied at the University: Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Jingguo, Xiang Zhongfa, Zhang Wentian, Yang Shangkun, Ye Jianying, and others. The three rectors of the university were Karl Radek, P. Myth and V. I. Weger. Learning the "science of revolution" in young Soviet Russia, students closely followed the revolutionary movement in China, participated in the party struggle, and communicated with the political leaders of the two countries: Trotsky, Stalin, Krupskaya, Sun Yat-sen's widow Song Qingling, Hu Hanmin, Qu Qiubo, Zhang Guotao, Zhou Enlai, Marshal Feng Yuxiang, and others.

The book "Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow and the Chinese Revolution: personal Memories" (Kansas, 1971) was written by Sheng Yue on the basis of personal memories and testimonies of his classmates, supported by sources and research available in the West at that time. Published in the United States, where the author settled after leaving the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China, this book is both a valuable, highly objective scientific work, and a touching confession of a direct participant in the events described, shedding light on little-known pages of the past, on the fate and relationships of those people who happened to live and work in KUTK. The author himself studied and worked in the USSR from 1926 to 1932, first as a member of the CPC, and then as a candidate and member of the CPSU(b). Having thoroughly recreated the life of KUTK, Sheng Yue provides only very fragmentary information about his subsequent life and work in the Soviet Far East and China. Information about the author's life and activities after his arrest and withdrawal from the Communist Party of China in 1934 was unknown even to specialists until recently. Today, thanks to documents from the KUTK archive and the help of Sheng Yue's daughter, who kindly provided much of the information about her parents published here, we finally have a chance to pay tribute to the memory of this unusual man and briefly present his full biography for the first time.

Sheng Yue was born on July 19, 1907 in Xianyang Village, Shimen County, China. Hunan. His mother was a housewife, and his father was a teacher (employee) and a small landowner who owned 45-50 mu of land on which rice, tea and cotton were grown. After graduating from high school in 1922, Sheng Yue (then known as Sheng Zhongliang) studied for six months at the Changsha Trade Institute. But the young man did not like his studies, so he went to Beijing and entered the political science course of the State Beijing Law University, where he studied for three years. Like many young people of his time, Sheng Yue took an active part in the student movement. In 1922, he joined the Socialist Youth Union of China, in 1923 - the Chinese Komsomol (he taught at the KSM evening school for children of the poor in the suburbs of Beijing), in the winter of 1924 he became a member of the New Army organization, which united the left-wing Kuomintang, but was led by Communists. He was elected a member of the executive committee of this organization and executive editor of the semi-legal print organ Novoe Obshchestvo, which belonged to it. At the end of 1924. Sheng Yue joined the CCP, became deputy secretary of the university's party cell, conducted personnel, propaganda and translation work, and was a member of the party education commission of the city party committee. As a Communist, Sheng joined the Kuomintang in 1925 and, according to his autobiography, participated in an armed attack on Minister Zhang Si-chao.

In October 1926, Sheng was sent to Moscow without graduating from the University of Law, and in December he entered the University of Moscow. According to Sun Yat - sen's autobiography, he wanted to "study more deeply the theory of Leninism and its practice-party building, Soviet administration, etc."

page 217
Having received the "Russian" surname Mickiewicz, Sheng Yue began to study hard and work in the party. After 7-8 months, he mastered the Russian language so much that he became a translator of lectures and meetings of the party cell bureau, receiving a salary for this. In 1928, Sheng was transferred from the CCP as a candidate member of the CPSU (b), took part in the" purge of the party "and, according to the party's description,"actively fought for the Comintern's line on the Chinese revolution, fought against the Chinese Trotskyists and right-wing opportunists."

At the end of 1928, after two years of study and two years of working as a university translator, Sheng Yue was sent as a party agitator to the Far East and spent more than two years in Vladivostok, as an organizing instructor of the city party committee for work among Chinese workers. Judging by the sparse lines of his autobiography, during this period there were important changes in Sheng Yue's personal life - he married a local garment factory worker, a candidate of the CPSU(b). In 1931, Mickiewicz became a member of the CPSU (b) and worked as the executive secretary of the regional Chinese newspaper Rabochy Put-the organ of the regional committee of the CPSU(b) in Khabarovsk. On July 19, 1932, after six years in the USSR, Sheng was seconded to the ICCI, deposited his party card, and left for his homeland.

After returning to China in January 1933, Sheng Yue worked as the head of the propaganda department and then as acting secretary of the underground party bureau of the CPC Central Committee in Shanghai, responsible, in particular, for selecting candidates to be sent to study in Russia, as well as for communication with the international department of the Comintern, the representative of the Profintern, etc. But on October 5, 1934, he was arrested in a safe house, and during the arrest, Kuomintang agents seized the only radio station that provided communication between the CPC Central Committee, the Dalbyuro, and the ECCI.

Shortly before that, Sheng's wife, Qin Manyun (Avilova, 1901 - 2001), also a graduate of the KUT, was also captured, and before her arrest, she was in charge of the secretariat and accounting department of the CPC Central Committee in Shanghai. Trying to save his wife was probably one of the reasons for Sheng Yue's own failure. According to some reports, shortly before his arrest, Sheng Yue met with a member of the Kuomintang leadership - possibly a classmate of his in the Communist Party, or even Sun Yat-sen's widow, Song Qingling, whom he knew personally and had clandestine contacts in Shanghai.

Thanks to the efforts of friends, Sheng and Qin were released, although the price paid for their rescue, according to the usual Kuomintang practice of those years, was their "voluntary" renunciation of communist views, leaving the CCP, and Sheng's participation in the recruitment of other arrested communists. As a result, after his release, Sheng Yue left his revolutionary work forever and returned to his native village with his wife and first child, who was born in 1935. At one time, he earned a living as a freelance political columnist for the Nanjing Daily newspaper, and later published a monthly magazine with friends.

As for the Chinese Communists, for them, almost any party member who was imprisoned in those years and then stopped the revolutionary struggle was obviously a fraud.-

page 218
re-cast as a traitor. In any case, in the special list of "traitors to the party", received in 1939 by the ICCI from Deng Yingchao (wife of Zhou Enlai), both Sheng Yue and Qin Manyun are officially called traitors and traitors.

According to the memoirs of relatives, with the outbreak of the anti - Japanese war (1937-1945), Sheng Yue joined the army and was sent to work in the Air Force Affairs Committee, because he knew Russian perfectly. Sheng Yue's first assignment was as a liaison officer at Lanzhou Air Base (prov. Gansu), which was a refueling and rest point for Soviet volunteer pilots who fought in China. After the events of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Sheng was promoted to Major General and assigned as a senior political officer to the New First Army in the Indo-Burma theater of Operations during World War II.

In 1946, Sheng Yue was finally reunited with his family in Nanjing (by which time four of his five children had been born). Then he joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China, served as a member of the UN delegation, and also headed missions in the Middle East (Iraq) and Latin America (Uruguay). From 1955 to 1960, while already living in Taiwan, he worked as head of the Department of West Asian Affairs, which was responsible for relations with the USSR and the Middle East. After leaving the diplomatic service in 1963, Sheng Yue settled in the United States and did research at the University of Kansas and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 1970, Sheng Yue and his wife retired and settled in Palo Alto, California.

On March 29, 2007, Sheng Yue passed away just five months before his centenary. According to the will, on August 23, 2007, his ashes, along with those of his faithful wife, were lowered into the waters of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Santa Cruz. "After an outstanding life, the sea has become their last resting place. After so many life-changing experiences, the weather was clear and the sea calm on the day of their funeral. They rested forever, and the sea took them in its arms, " wrote their daughter Xiaolong.

Permanent link to this publication: