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PARTISAN REVIEW
possible for the other East European governments. And finally,
mistrust of their leaders has reached its highest pitch and has in many
cases turned into hatred .
For no reason whatsoever, Solzhenitsyn also brings the theme ot
Communist ideology into his discussion of Soviet foreign policy .
Ideology does not explain the Soviet Union's many acts of betrayal of
foreign Communists : the German Communists in the early thirties ,
by Stalin's pact with the magnates ; the Spanish Republicans in 1938
and the Polish Communists in 1939 , by the disbandment of the
Communist Party and the pact with Hitler ; the Indonesian
Communists in the fifties , through the pact with Sukarno , who was
then drowning Communists in the ocean; and today their friendship
with Arab leaders who slaughter their Communists periodically . Even
more astounding is Solzhenitsyn' s statement: "The Soviets have
nurtured Mao Tse-tung instead of the peaceloving Chiang Kai–
shek. ' , The fact is that Stalin betrayed Mao in 1945 by signing a treaty
with Chiang Kai-shek and surrendering the key industrial province of
Manchuria to him. He himself annexed Port Arthur. "We, people of
the older generation," said Stalin, "waited forty years for this day. "
It
was only when Moscow realized that the Communists were winning in
any case that they betrayed Chiang Kai-shek in his turn . "How many
divisions does the Pope of Rome have? " said Stalin. This is the entire
" ideology" of the Moscow leaders in the realm of foreign policy.
And if present-day Moscow extends its reach so far and wide, isn ' t
it acting in the tradition , as Amalrik puts it, of' 'spilling over like rising
yeast dough? " Weren't the Alps for Suvorov and Korea with the battle
of Tsushima, in their day , as remote as Cuba or South America?
Moscow today is more nationalistic than St. Petersburg ever was!
It
uses
other people's hands and other people's blood to pull its chestnuts out
of the fire. Ifone could draw up a balance sheet , calculating how much
Moscow has stolen or bought on the cheap from its' 'wards ," it would
certainly come out in Moscow's favor. Without its requisitions from
East Europe the regime would definitely have collapsed by now. Here
too it is clear that "ideology" is no more than a mask for the
state-capitalist imperialism of a great power.
