Li Dazhao
Meisner's doctoral dissertation was prepared under the Sovietologist Leonard Haimson and developed in further year of research at the East Asian Research Center at Harvard. It was later published by Harvard University Press. In it, Meisner studied the original contributions to Chinese revolutionary theory by the co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party, Li Dazhao to show that the adaptation of Marxism to China which had been attributed to Mao Zedong had actually been accomplished by Li.