Tatiana Linkhoeva’s first monograph, Revolution Goes East: Imperial Japan and Soviet Communism, builds upon ongoing historiographic trends to focus and broaden understanding on post-WWI Japan, looking forward from this moment rather than backwards from the WWII perspective.  Like many nations, peoples, and regions, Japan faced a variety of anxieties in the immediate post-war period. The balance of power in Asia had changed: Japan’s role in the victorious coalition elevated its status to a leading Great Power, long-time territorial rival Imperial Russia collapsed to civil war and revolution, former Anglo-American allies evolved into threats and nationalistic ideologies scorched through China, Korea, and the rest of the continent amidst anti-colonial uprisings. Domestically, the period known as “Taisho Democracy” faced challenges from the masses as grain shortages, disparity of wealth, and anxieties over capitalism amidst economic stagnation and downturn pushed intellectuals to further extremes.

Within this framework, Linkhoeva thrusts fresh interpretations of Japanese intellectual and political responses to the ongoing Russian Revolution in the post-1917 world. Traditionally, Japan and its leadership have been portrayed as staunch anti-Communists following the events from the Siberian Intervention (1918-1923), the responses to the Great Depression and return to militarism in the late 20s and early 30s, the Anti-Comintern Pact (1936) and finally the Tripartite Pact (1940).  However, Linkhoeva argues that while outward appearances varied, Japan’s Soviet foreign policy took the overall shape of continuity and even cooperation from some of the most ardent detractors of communism, while paradoxically leftist intellectuals began to “prioritize the nation and its interests above immediate concerns of international proletariat” (19).  

Revolution goes East explores multiple threads across Linkhoeva’s six chapters providing snapshots of the intellectual and political debates that embroiled the Taisho democratic period without being tied to a specific narrative and showcases the chaotic fumbling and actualization contemporary politicians and theoreticians found themselves in. From pragmatic liberals to uncompromising anarchists and rising fascists, Taisho Democracy opened the door to a brief period of unrealized potentials and ideas before slamming that door shut in the aftermath of the 1923 Kanto Earthquake and resurgent militarist imperialism in the wake of economic upheaval. 

Linkhoeva convincingly showcases the way Japanese statesmen radically swung from a position of hostility represented by the intervention, to one of cooperation and almost necessity in regional stability with communist Russia. Perhaps the most interesting chapters relate to the nascent leftist movements that had to deal with the already complicated theoretical mismatch of Marxism in Asia, the realities of the Russian Revolution and the Comintern, and the possibilities for the Left moving forward. She toes the line of overstating the power and reach of these intellectuals, but generally maintains their context within the wider political movements in Japan, as well as their collapse in their failure to unite ideology and goals. 

Ultimately, history remains a convoluted affair, no clear answers nor definite paths. Instead there are layers of cause and effect, on individual, local, regional, and global scales which all intersect. Revolution Goes East builds our own understanding of the convoluted Taisho period, so often written off in the past historiography. Linkhoeva’s contribution would make a fine addition to all of those interested in Imperial Japan.