An Opaque View of Asia

...In the five short pages devoted to Sinkiang, for example, there is no attempt to define Kremlin interests or policy or to state what significance the region has for the Soviets...

...Thus, he stresses Molotov's failure to mention the Chinese Communist successes in his October 1948 speech as evidence that "the Russians were still contemplating a settlement in which the Kuomintang would be left in control of a part of the country...

...While this may be true from the standpoint of importance and threat potential, it was not necessarily true from the standpoint of time or expansion potential...

...There is no attempt to relate such events in East and West in Beloff's work...

...As a summary of what is said about East Asia in the Soviet press and as a brief discussion of developments in the various countries there, this volume does have some value...

...It is difficult to understand, then, why he has so studiously ignored them throughout the rest of the volume, which certainly contributes little to an understanding of its subject...

...Again, Soviet policy is not debated in public, and events have taught the futility of reliance on statements in a controlled press or by puppet delegates...

...The possible conspiratorial nature of the round-the-clock activity of the Soviet Embassy in Bangkok in 1948 is dismissed on the basis of an article by Andrew Roth in the Nation...

...To begin with, Soviet diplomacy employs many non-conventional media, ranging from conspiratorial organizations to carefully staged international propaganda meetings...

...For example, Stalin gave his famous interview to Kingsbury Smith with regard to lifting the blockade the day before Peking fell...

...Beloff maintains that the same priority of West over East which was sustained in the Great Debate of 1951 as basic U.S...

...Surely the possibility should be considered that Molotov simply did not want to bring the impending Communist victory in China to the attention of the Western world, which was at that time preoccupied with the Rerlin Blockade...

...For example, he talks of Moscow's "conviction that MacArthur was the true spokesman for the intentions of the United States Government...

...of personnel from the areas involved (57 per cent of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party are Moscow-trained), the role of guerrilla-type operations in economically underdeveloped areas, the use of front organizations, and like items are part of an overall framework which has long been established and must be discussed in any book on Soviet foreign policy...

...The timing and sequence of events connected with the Berlin Blockade and the Communist victory in China are too obvious to be ignored...

...Surely the intensive training within the U.S.S.R...

...Further, because the openly avowed goal of the Kremlin is the expansion of Communism everywhere in the world, its world policy is far more a single interrelated system than are the policies of other states...

...Beloff states that, in the border clashes between the North and South Koreans prior to the outbreak of the war, "certainly there was no confirmation of South Korean claims that Russians were participating in the capacity of commanders or advisers" in North Korea...

...In several of the volume's sections, Beloff discusses local political developments without attempting to relate them to the Soviet policy which is his subject...

...The organization and theme of the book play down the conspiratorial nature of Soviet foreign policy...

...Reviewed by Richard L. Walker Assistant Professor of History, Yale University Infinite difficulties beset any scholar who attempts an analysis of the foreign policy of the Soviet Union...

...Likewise, Soviet policy is woven into the fabric of a doctrine which postulates a whole series of friend-enemy, love-hate relationships...

...policy "held good in the Russian case...

...The consequence is a failure to grasp and portray some of the overall patterns of Soviet policy...

...In arguing at great length about the independent nature of Chinese Communism in relation to Soviet policy, Beloff fails to mention the tons of Chinese-language material which the Soviets shipped to Manchuria after the war, the specially prepared forces of Li Li-san, and other proofs of Soviet faith in the future of Communism in China...

...But, as a work on Soviet policy, it shows little imagination...

...It is on the basis of his reading of the Soviet press that Beloff adds his bit to the theory that the Communist conquest of China was unplanned and unexpected from the Kremlin's point of view...

...In his introductory chapter to Soviet Policy in the Far East, 1944-1951, Max Beloff points out that these and other factors must be kept constantly in mind...

...Although Soviet leaders found it convenient to portray MacArthur in this light, it is doubtful that they were convinced themselves...

...Beloff employs a country-by-country approach (a colleague, Joseph Frankel, does the chapter on Southeast Asia) ; and, while this may make it easier for him to argue his general thesis of the piecemeal nature of Soviet Far Eastern policy, it hardly furnishes convincing proof...

...Again, the conspiratorial aspects of the Communist conferences in Calcutta in 1948, following which armed conflict erupted in Burma, Malaya and Indonesia, are dismissed because there "is no tangible evidence...

...And anyone who has followed the Chinese Communists' sickening "the Soviet today is our tomorrow" line in recent years will have difficulty in agreeing with his judgment that "the necessity for the Chinese revolution to develop internally exactly along Soviet lines was more stressed in Russian than in Chinese statements...

...A great part of Beloff's work is based upon his reading of the Soviet press, and in many cases his book demonstrates the fruitless and often misleading conclusions which can be drawn from it...