The assistance rendered by the Soviets in the application of tested propaganda methods to a revolutionary situation resulted in vast changes. The Russians found that approximately the same devices could be used in China as in Russia without affecting the fundamentals of Nationalist philosophy. Integration and regularization of the party machinery, formulation of immediate programs to bring large groups into the Nationalist fold, development of large-scale propaganda techniques, and other improvements designed to enlarge and speed up the Nationalist advance were effected within the Kuomintang. Throughout, Sun Yat-sen worked in close collaboration with Borodin. The details of Nationalist party reforms and of Nationalist participation in local politics are now part of the history of the modern Far East. These details, while significant, tend to blur the cardinal change: the transformation of the Nationalist party from a revolutionary elite with long-range effectiveness into a mass organization designed for propaganda and immediate general measures. The Russian Communists made it possible for the Kuomintang to perform in weeks what had been planned for the decades, or at least to reach the equivalent of the contemplated performance. A new era had begun. At first the Nationalists had proposed to develop a parliamentary government which would gradually foster a modernized ideology, and to govern China well in the meanwhile; when this hope vanished with the rise of Yüan Shih-k'ai's military power, in 1913, they had to reroute the revolution. Had they relied upon the experience of the liberal nations, they might have resigned themselves to a policy of gradualism. The Communist process of conversion was different from the Confucian. The Confucians had gradually built up a body of the most public-spirited men and permeated the ruling intellectual class with Confucian ideas. Their slow process of persuasion triumphed with the elevation of their main texts to the status of bibles in China and with their monopoly of advanced education. The Communists proposed to take a few simple, obvious issues, to present them dramatically, to win as many people as possible to the support of immediate policies and to reach power through such support. Once political and military authority had been established, they expected to go further in the "education" of the masses of the people.