File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-03-09.201, message 8


Date: Thu, 6 Mar 1997 17:50:56 -0500 (EST)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: M-I: Dr Bedggood's keen sense of history



Our resident Australian pecker-head writes:

>There have been several exchanges...about the Stalinist 
>betrayals of the Chinese CP in 1927...[C]ome up with your
>defense of Chiang Kai-shek as an honorary member of
>the Comintern...

Doubtless,  the good "doctor" gets most of his knowledge from the funny
papers and TV Guide,  but if he had actually worked in the Trotsky Archives
(Boxes T934 - T944) at the Hoover Institution,  or if he had read any
reputable comprehensive history of the Chinese CP (such as Hans J van de
Ven,  *From Friend to Comrade: The founding of the Chinese Communist Party,
1920 -1927* [Berkeley & Los Angeles,  1993: University of California
Press]),  he may have discovered that among those who proposed Chiang
Kai-shek  (later known to the Americans as "Cash My Check") for membership
in the Comintern was....Leon Trotsky.   It wasn't,  in fact,  until less
than a month before the massacres of the Chinese Communists,  in March 1927,
that Trotsky committed himself to the idea that it might behoove the Chinese
to leave the Kuomintang.    His main focus,  even then,  however,  was that
the Chinese CP must itself be purged of "Menshivik elements".    Right up to
the time of the massacre,  he still believe that "one can be an ally of
Kuomintang.." (Adam Ulam, *Stalin: the man and his era* [New York, 1973:
Viking Press], p. 276).

Those who are interested in the early history of the CCP should check out
the highly specialist *CCP Research Newsletter*,  an invaluable and uniqure
irregular series edited by Timothy Cheek of Colorado College.   An
invaluable font of hard to get information.

Louis Godena



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