Li Dazhao

Li Dazhao (lē dä-jou), 1888–1927, professor of history and librarian at Beijing Univ., cofounder of the Chinese Communist party with Chen Duxiu. He was the first important Chinese intellectual to support the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. A leader in the May Fourth Movement (1919), he organized several Marxist study groups and helped found the Communist party in 1921. Although his populist, nationalistic view of the peasant role in the revolution was not favored by the early party, it deeply influenced his assistant, Mao Zedong. He was executed by the Manchurian general Chang Tso-lin.

Bibliography

See M. J. Meisner, Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism (1967).

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Li Dazhao

 or Li Ta-chao

(born Oct. 6, 1888, Hebei province, China—died April 28, 1927, Beijing) One of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Chief librarian and professor of history at Beijing University, Li became inspired by the success of the Russian Revolution and began to study and lecture on Marxism. In 1921 the study groups Li had created formally became the CCP. Li helped the new party carry out the policy of the Communist International (see Comintern) and cooperated with the Nationalist Party of Sun Yat-sen. His career was cut short when he was seized and hanged by the warlord Zhang Zuolin, but his ideas of a revolution of the impoverished peasantry were brought to fruition by Mao Zedong.