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Podcast: Commonwealth Club of California Podcast
Episode: Frank Dikötter: Red Dawn over China, How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity
Description: Join us to hear from renowned historian Frank Dikötter, who offers a commanding history recasting how communists seized power in China.
In April 1927, soldiers and detectives descended upon the Russian Embassy in Beijing, revolvers drawn. An hour later, they emerged with a trove of documents, some of them partly damaged by Russians who had tried quickly to destroy them. In these singed and soggy papers was proof that Moscow, despite agreeing three years earlier not to “propagate communistic doctrines,” had, in fact, sent what amounts to millions in today’s dollars—along with shiploads of arms and advis...