rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (01/31/86)
A little more on how impervious the Soviet state is to disaster, parti- icularly when coming from abroad. Even when few nations diplomatically recognized the USSR, Comintern, the international Communist agency run from and by Moscow, functioned abroad on a large scale. Apart from Soviet destruction of foreign Communists under Stalin (nevermind the liquidation of the native Old Bolsheviks) --- of the Polish Communist party in the late 30s/early 40s, of Bela Kun & other leaders of the Communist uprising in Hungary in 1919, & of many other Communist leaders from around the world who sought refuge in the USSR only to vanish forever (ie, murdered), the Soviets by their callous and rigid (not to mention racist) Comintern policy in China nearly wiped out the Communist movement there. Up until and even during Chiang Kai-shek's coup in Shanghai in 1927 in which 27,000 suspected sympathizers and operatives were butchered, Comintern agent Mikhail Borodin insisted that Chinese Party members maintain the now physically suicidal united front policy with the Nationalists; thus, in effect delivering the Communist movement into the hands of Chiang's executioners. Only a few pockets of Communists survived, particularly a band in the mountains of the southern province of Hunan, led by a young relative unknown, who'd ignored the urban united front policy of Moscow and advocated alliance with the peasantry: Mao Tse-tung. Cheers, Ron Rizzo