Shi Yongqin is China’s foremost translator of the works of Leon Trotsky into Chinese. Not only has he translated many of Trotsky’s most important works, including Trotsky’s writings on the Chinese revolution of 1926/27 but also Issac Deutscher’s biographical trilogy on Trotsky.
Shi Yongqin is also a defender of Trotsky’s ideas and methods. Shi Yongqin develops these arguments in his prefaces and introductions of his translated works of Trotsky, as well as in the interviews he has given to journals over the years. In doing so, Shi Yongqin has made a very important contribution in making the real ideas of Trotsky – the ideas of scientific socialism and his struggles against Stalinism – available to a new generation in China.
Shi Yongqin was born in Shanghai in 1949 and taught himself Russian while serving in Inner Mongolia’s Hulunbuir League. This was a rural area of China close to the border with Russia where young students were “sent down” to carry our work with the local population.
He studied at Beijing Normal University from 1978. In 1984, Shi Yongqin joined the Institute of Foreign Literature at the Chinese Academy of Arts, later transferring to the Institute of Marxist Literary Theory, where he worked in translation and research on literary theory.
For more than two decades, Shi Yongqin has focused on translating the works of Leon Trotsky. His published translations in China include Trotsky’s Autobiography: My Life in 1996, Deutscher’s The Prophet Trilogy published in 1999, Trotsky on the Anti-Fascist Struggle in 2012, Trotsky on the Chinese Revolution in 2011 and Trotsky’s Personal Account of the October Revolution published in a 2008 edition.
In addition to these published translations, Deutscher’s has also translated into Chinese; The Challenge of the Left Opposition (three volumes), Trotsky on Culture, Trotsky on Socialist Construction, and fourteen volumes of Trotsky’s collected works from the years after he was exiled from Russia by Stalin (as far as we know, these last works have not yet been published in China).
How was it possible for Shi Yongqin’s translations to be published in China? As he explains in his 2009 preface to Trotsky’s writings on the Chinese revolution: “Following the Reform and Opening-up, [which began from the late 1970s] once Stalin’s aura as the ‘great revolutionary leader and Marxist revolutionary’ had faded, the academic climate in relevant fields within China became considerably more relaxed. Trotsky studies ceased to be a forbidden zone. Over the past decade or so, several publications have addressed and introduced the debates between the two factions of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) concerning the Chinese Revolution, offering assessments far more objective than those of earlier times.”
This thawing of the academic climate regarding Trotsky contrasts sharply with the historic repression faced by those adherents of his ideas in China. Shi Yongqin explains the fate of Trotskyists who continued active work in China until 1952, “when Mao Zedong ordered the complete eradication of Chinese Trotskyists. As a political organisation, Trotskyism ceased to exist. Arrested Trotskyists received sentences ranging from 10 to 15 years’ imprisonment to life imprisonment. Those serving fixed terms were gradually released, while life-sentenced prisoners remained incarcerated until 1972. By that time, only 13 senior Trotskyist figures who had been sentenced to life imprisonment were still alive.”
The persecuted revolutionary
Leon Trotsky was one of the most persecuted revolutionaries in world history. He was hated and feared by the ruling classes of the world due to his role as co-leader of the Russian Revolution of October 1917.
Under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, the Russian working class overthrew capitalism and created a workers’ government for the first time. Trotsky’s role in the construction of the Red Army, which defeated the attempts of twenty-one armies of the capitalist counter-revolution to drown the workers’ state in blood during the 1918–1921 Civil War, added to the loathing of Trotsky by the bourgeoisie internationally.
This hatred was joined in by the Stalinists, who came to power in a political counter-revolution that usurped control from the Russian working class from the mid-1920s. This was only possible because of the isolation of the Russian Revolution to a single, economically underdeveloped country, a consequence of the set backs for the world revolution after the First World War.
Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929 by Stalin for defending the ideas and traditions of Bolshevism. He was denied sanctuary in country after country, not least due to the pressure applied by the Stalinist bureaucracy on social-democratic governments.
It was only when the Mexican government agreed to offer asylum to Trotsky and his wife in 1937 that Trotsky was able to find stable refuge for a period. Stalin ordered Trotsky’s murder; a death sentence that was carried out by a Stalinist agent in 1940.
If Stalin thought that would be the end of Trotsky’s influence, he was profoundly wrong. Despite the persecution faced by Trotsky and his family, he had continued to defend and advance the ideas of Marxism before his murder.
He formed the Left Opposition in Russia 1923, and internationally in 1930, to fight against the corrosive impact of Stalin’s idea of “socialism in one country” and the ruinous policies of Stalinism. These policies led to the defeat of revolutionary opportunities in China, Spain, and Germany, among many others.
A founder of the Fourth International in 1937, Trotsky wrote some of his most important works after being expelled from the Soviet Union. This vital contribution helped arm those who came after Trotsky’s death, not least those Trotskyists who fought to build on his massive contribution, including the Committee for a Workers’ International.
We continue to fight to build the genuine ideas of socialism and Marxism as a guide in the struggle to overthrow capitalism today. We are therefore pleased to hear about the translation of some of Trotsky’s most important works into Chinese by Shi Yongqin.
We are confident that a new generation of youth and workers in China will be able to find the real ideas of Marxism and workers’ democracy through reading Trotsky’s works.
Below is an extract from a 2015 interview with Shi Yongqin, which is available at the Constellorpublishing.com blog…
“My journey towards Trotsky was a complex one. In our era, attitudes towards major historical figures like Stalin and Trotsky were starkly divided: Stalin was universally praised, while Trotsky was universally condemned. At that time, undertaking research in this field was neither permitted nor feasible.
During my rural placement, beyond farm labour, I sought to enrich myself through learning. My initial study of Russian had no specific purpose—merely a simple desire to read Russian novels in their original language should the opportunity arise. Russia boasts many great novelists and immortal literary works, so this straightforward motivation led me to begin teaching myself Russian.
When I first began learning Russian, I had no clear practical direction or objective. As my proficiency improved, the idea of becoming a translator took root. Naturally, I hoped to translate works of genuine merit. Yet the great works of those renowned Russian novelists had long been translated by predecessors. As a novice, I felt unqualified to retranslate these classics.
Later, I encountered Trotsky’s autobiography. Though I had previously lacked the opportunity to delve deeply into such subjects, through films like Lenin in 1918 and my own experience of the social realities under the Stalinist system—including certain phenomena within Chinese society—I sensed these were fundamentally at odds with the true ideals of socialism. After reading Trotsky’s autobiography, many of my previous questions about the history of the Soviet Communist Party, along with my doubts about certain actions carried out under the banner of socialism, were resolved.
From that moment, I resolved to dedicate my life’s work to translating Trotsky’s writings. His autobiography became the first of his works I translated, and also the first Trotsky text to be publicly published in China. Although some of his works had been published previously, they were only circulated internally. The translator’s preface I wrote for this book was the first piece in mainland China to offer a positive assessment of Trotsky.
Trotsky’s autobiography only recounts events up to his expulsion to Turkey in 1929, as the book was published in 1930. I felt it necessary to compile a comprehensive biography of Trotsky. Subsequently, through contact with the esteemed Mr Zheng Chaolin in Shanghai, I obtained the translation of Isaac Deutscher’s Prophet Trilogy that he had organised. I coordinated the translation of the third volume. Due to concerns over the quality of the translation, I proofread the first edition a full six times.
During the proofreading process for this volume, I repeatedly consulted the original text, reading it six times over. Each reading profoundly moved me. Particularly his analysis of the German Communist Party’s erroneous policies in the anti-fascist struggle, alongside his incisive and profound critiques of the Third Period theory and the theory of social fascism, left me in awe, applauding his brilliance.
Through the experience of translating and proofreading The Prophet Trilogy, I established my core focus as a translator. Since Trotsky was first and foremost a revolutionary, I prioritised his guidance on revolutionary practice. Although I have yet to translate his works on the Spanish Revolution, I have translated his collection of writings on the October Revolution, Trotsky on the October Revolution. Subsequently, I translated two further works: Trotsky on the Chinese Revolution and Trotsky on the Anti-Fascist Struggle.
It is worth noting that The Prophet Trilogy has received widespread acclaim in mainland China, with a third edition published last year. The three books I mentioned earlier—Trotsky on the October Revolution, Trotsky on the Chinese Revolution, and Trotsky on the Anti-Fascist Struggle—were all published by Shaanxi People’s Publishing House. Particularly noteworthy are the high ratings on Douban: Trotsky on the Chinese Revolution received 8.9, while Trotsky on the Anti-Fascist Struggle achieved an impressive 9.7.
I contend that the intra-party struggles within the Soviet Communist Party during the 1920s constituted a pivotal turning point in the history of the Communist International. This conflict precipitated the formation of the Stalinist system and marked the genesis of bureaucratic structures within socialist states. Indeed, Trotsky’s expulsion from the country signified, to a certain extent, the expulsion of Marxism from the Soviet Union. Additionally, I have translated the three-volume English edition of The Challenge of the Left Opposition, along with Trotsky on Culture in the Transition Period and Trotsky on Socialist Economic Construction. My current undertaking involves translating the fourteen-volume collection of Trotsky’s writings from his final years in exile.
My ability to dedicate my life to translating Trotsky’s works stems from the education we received in our era. We believed communist society represented the inevitable direction of human development and the most advanced form of human society. Though I occasionally write articles, these are merely by-products of my translation work; translation remains my primary focus.”