Research Materials on KMT Left-Wing Radicalism Come to Hoover

The Hoover Archives has recently acquired the personal papers of J. Kenneth Olenik, a retired historian who has devoted most of his time to the study of Deng Yanda (1895–1931), a well-known leftist in the Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT). Deng was born in 1895 in Huiyang, Guangdong Province. In 1920 he was recruited to the Guangdong Army under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen. When Sun embraced an alliance with Soviet Russians and allowed members of the Chinese Communist Party to join the KMT, Deng was a strong supporter of the new policy. He became a deadly enemy of Chiang Kai-shek when the latter broke with the Soviets and expelled the Chinese Communists out of the party in 1927. Sometime between 1927 and 1930, Deng left China for Russia and Europe. Upon his return to China, Deng founded a new political force, which was generally called the “Third Party” (later, in 1947, it would officially be named the Chinese Peasants’ and Workers’ Democratic Party).  He became a fierce critic of Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist regime. In 1930, with Deng advocating the anti-Chiang secessionist movement in South China, Chiang lost his patience. Deng was arrested in August of that year and was executed in Nanjing three months later. In today’s People’s Republic of China, Deng is generally recognized as a revolutionary martyr in Communist China’s historiography.

The arrival of the Olenik collection introduces a welcome addition to Hoover’s rich archival holdings on Nationalist China. It complements existing historical materials that are largely aligned with the Chiang Kai-shek camp, presenting a competing ideology and value system that momentarily flourished in China in the 1930s and beyond.

 

 

 

 

 

 

^{Image: J. Kenneth Olenik (right) with a descendant of Deng Yanda in front of Deng’s historic home in Huiyang, Guangdong Province.}