Mixed constitutions combine executive presidents with assembly-dependent prime ministers. While some analysts argue that these regimes foster stability, their presidents are also often viewed as pivotal actors when such regimes collapse. Russia's First Republic seemed to fit the latter pattern, and this article inquires into whether the addition of an executive presidency to its constitution truly had a destabilizing effect on Russia's first attempt at democracy. Specialists provide different perspectives on this question.

The politics of the Republican period in China (1912-49) are often interpreted as a battle between the Nationalists of Chiang Kaishek and the Communists of Mao Zedong, with the transformative ideology of the latter given credit for their eventual victory. However, the political disunity of the Republic actually gave rise to a whole variety of redemptive ideologies whose aim was to redefine 'the people' and 'save the country'.

A powerful element in twentieth-century Chinese politics has been the myth of Chinese resistance to Japan's seizure of Manchuria in 1931. Investigating the shifting alliances of key players in that event, Rana Mitter traces the development of the narrative of resistance to the occupation and shows how it became part of China's political consciousness, enduring even today. After Japan's September 1931 military strike leading to a takeover of the Northeast, the Chinese responded in three major ways: collaboration, resistance in exile, and resistance on the ground.

At Wanping, around 50 kilometres from the centre of Beijing, the shots that began the eight-year war between China and Japan were fired in 1937. On the site there now stands the Memorial Museum of the Chinese People's War of Resistance to Japan (the museum's own translation of its title, Zhongguo renmin kang-Ri zhanzheng jinianguan). Inside, a wide array of materials is displayed, but among the most prominent are the waxwork diorama reconstructions of Japanese atrocities against the Chinese.