A well-made book belongs, as indicated in the output data, to the number of scientific and educational publications. The author has done a lot of work on collecting and systematizing material on a very complex topic, as evidenced, in particular, by the bibliography attached to the text. However, the text itself is so full of event descriptions, names, and details that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to use it for educational purposes. And as a scientific monograph, it is clearly inferior to many others, who otherwise choose the topic and goal. My idea boils down to the fact that when creating a work on such a topic, you should probably prefer a different genre, less capacious in terms of texture, but more saturated with understanding what exactly happened to China over the recent past century. I do not want to say that there is no author's position or not enough. The concept that interprets the material as a whole, with its voluminous cycles, not precisely defined terms like "formations" and the obvious desire to be in the presentation and interpretation of events as if above the battle (the Chinese and the West, the Kuomintang and the Communists, the Maoists and their opponents) is constantly present, obsessively and repeatedly repeated and explained. But the weakness, from my point of view, is that it does not give the impression of being thoroughly thought out and strictly verified. And this is despite the fact that the author has written more than one book about China in the XX century. However, maybe that's why. So much has changed in the world, in Russia, and in thinking in the decades that have passed since he and I lived together in science that it is not easy to compare what was written about and how it was written in the past with what it actually was and even more so looks like today. Much has been left unsaid by the author. That is why my comments will be primarily not on the text (although there are many of them), but on what is not in the ... Читать далее