Two Revolutions: Village Reconstruction and the Cooperative Movements in Northern Shaanxi, 1934-1945.

By Pauline B. Keating (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1997. xvi plus 340pp. $49.50).

The Yenan [Yah'an] Way in Revolutionary China, Mark Seldon's controversial study of the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region, that barren area of Northwest China governed by the Communist Party (CCP) from 1935 to 1947, was, for many years, the pivotal study of revolutionary change. Its supporters praised it while its detractors produced studies of other wartime bases showing that the Yan'an model could not be applied universally. After the initial flurry of activity on the region, scholars turned away from Yan'an utilizing newly available source materials to study other areas and other times. In recent years, however, scholars have returned to the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region and are, once again, examining revolutionary change there. Several excellent studies have resulted, one of which is Pauline Keating's Two Revolutions: Village Reconstruction and the Cooperative Movement in Northern Shaanxi 1934-1945. based upon a variety of new sources, this is an in-depth study of the process through which the Communist Party consolidated its state-building and rural development strategies in two of the five Border Region's subregions, Yanshu and Suide. Rich in detail and analysis, it is a valuable work for scholars of the region and of revolutionary change but a complicated treatment that may well be beyond all but the most advanced students.

In 1942, Mao Zedong proclaimed the cooperative movement as the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region's "second revolution" (the first being the land reform of 1934-1936). The idea, as epitomized in the Great Production Drive (1943), combined community building and state making by establishing a solid and stable revenue base for the state while honoring the revolutionary promise that the poor would prosper under the new government. Village cooperatives not only served as grassroots bases through which the CCP listed directives to the people but were also promoted as a means of developing community self-help and economic self-sufficiency, and village democracy. Keating argues that, while the concept was praiseworthy, it did not work well in all areas of the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region. Because the varied social ecologies and political cultures in Northern Shaanxi produced different approaches to the revolution, the author concludes that the process of state-building that worked in one area did not necessarily work in another.

To illustrate her point, she presents case studies of two vastly different subregions: Yanshu and Suide. Yanshu, the area around the capital of Yan'an, became the model for the Yan'an Way even though, Keating argues, it was atypical of other areas of the Border Region and other wartime bases. A vast, underpopulated wasteland with low tenancy rates and few remnants of the gentry class, Yanshu lent itself well to the cooperative movement. Land reform (1934-1936) penetrated the area deeply and gave rise to a peasant middle class who embraced the CCP. Cooperativization worked in Yanshu because it opened up land and supported this middle class. On the other hand, the cooperative movement ran into obstacles in Suide which was densely populated, land starved and had high tenancy rates and a strong landlord class. Land reform had not penetrated this area nearly so deeply. As a result, in 1943, the poor remained very poor and the rich remained anti-Party. While CCP authorities willingly shared power with the non Party patriots of Yanshu, they balked at sharing power with the local elites of Suide. Cooperativization in Suide, unlike Yanshu, came from the top down with the heavy hand of authoritarianism.

According to Keating, the revolution was not entirely of the Party's making. Village society changed radically only where the intrusions of outside revolution were less direct and where local initiatives were allowed to develop with minimal intervention. The CCP came closer to achieving their goals in atypical Yanshu than elsewhere because the area's ecological and sociological conditions made for good state-peasant intercourse. Suide was far more typical of other Party base areas. There, cooperativization was more a product of central initiative, state funding and top down authoritarianism. The author concludes that the Yan'an Way worked in Yanshu because the environment was more pliable. When the model was adapted elsewhere, the result was not state-peasant interaction but rather a widening distance between structure and agency.

It has long been accepted that the revolution took many forms and that the Yah'an Way was not universally applicable; so, in that regard, Keating presents no new theories. Nevertheless, I recommend this book highly. It is well-researched and argued (although a bit jargon ridden), and adds valuable information for anyone interested in how the rural revolution in general and the Shaan-Gan-Ning in particular worked at the grassroots level.

Patricia Stranahan University of Pittsburgh