This book is a comparative study of the endeavors to create a socialist
system of higher education in the Soviet Union under Stalin and in China
under Mao. It is organized around three themes: the convergence of
Maoism with Stalinism in the early 1950s, which induced the
transnational transplantation of the Soviet model of higher education to
China; historical convergence between Stalinism of the First Five-Year
Plan period (1928-1932) and Maoism of the Great Leap period (1958-1960),
which was prominently manifested in Soviet and Chinese higher education
policies in these respective periods; the eventual divergence of Maoism
from Stalinism on the definition of socialist society, which was evinced
in the different final outcomes of the Maoist and Stalinist endeavors to
create a socialist system of higher learning.