ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that revolutionary expansion lasted longer in Asia than in Europe because both national claims and transnational networks in Eurasian borderlands were powerful revolutionary tools that were less present in the West. New scholarship on transnational communism also helps us to rediscover and rethink the Leninist moment when Russia became a centre for anti-imperialism. However, the precocious encounter with Bolshevik Russia and the united front strategy favoured the transfer of a Leninist style party in Asian political movements largely beyond the communist parties themselves. The chapter argues that Lenin’s anti-imperialism and the pariah situation in which the former Russian Great Power was placed played a major role in making the Soviet regime attractive in Asian countries. Moreover, the Bolshevik impact benefitted from the specific hybridity of the East in a Russian context, which was both domestic and foreign.
