Li Dazhao, 1888-1927, was professor of history and librarian at Beijing University and cofounder of the Chinese Communist party with Chen Duxiu.

He was the first important Chinese intellectual to support the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. A leader in the May Fourth Movement (1919), he organized several Marxist study groups and helped found the Communist party in 1921. Although his populist, nationalistic view of the peasant role in the revolution was not favored by the early party, it deeply influenced his assistant, Mao Zedong . He was executed by the Manchurian general Zhang Zuolin.