WHEN, HOW, AND IF RUSSIA FIGHTS JAPAN
Utley, Fred A
When, How, And If Russia Fights Japan By FREDA UTLEY DURING the past 8 years, ever since Japan started her war on China, the question has been raised again and again: When will Russia and Japan go...
...He calls attention to the significance of the recent publication in Russia, in spite of the paper shortage, of Stepnov's novel, Port Arthur, about the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05...
...Nor is this all...
...The ground has been well prepared by the Communists and their sympathizers for our making a Mikh-ailovitch out of Chiang Kai-shek and letting the Communists acquire the power in China...
...He writes: "Some may be still more hurt . . . when they wake up to realize that Soviet intervention against Japan inevitably means Soviet intervention in China...
...See R. H. Markham's article in the Mar...
...It might conceivably be that Stalin is seeking above all to reassure his Communists in China lest they be persuaded by Chiang Kai-shek and America to fight Japan under American command...
...For if the saving of American lives is the primary and overriding consideration, as Rep...
...Nor should one forget that Stalin personally is noted for the fact that he never forgives and never forgets...
...Snow tells us that Stalin will enter the Far Eastern War, if at all, on his own terms and only when Japan is so near to collapse that the Soviet Union will not risk heavy losses, and above all, that Stalin will not go to war with Japan in order to establish a Chinese Government under American influence as the "stabilizer of peace in the Far East...
...These people will probably even pretend to be shocked to find out that Moscow has some very concrete ideas about the kind of good neighbor it wants in China...
...as inspired comment...
...19 issue of The Progressive...
...Now Port Arthur is on Chinese soil in Southern Manchuria and the Russo-Japanese war was fought for possession of Manchuria and subsequent hegemony over the whole of China...
...Snow Reveals Red Plan Edgar Snow's article, "How Russia Will Fight Japan" in the Mar...
...We are also told that Stalin, in Asia as in Europe, will demand "friendly governments" on her borders...
...And Chiang Kai-shek's real crime is not the shortcomings of his government or its undemocratic character, but the fact that it is tied to America, having long ago thrown in its lot with the Western democracies...
...Chiang Kai-shek has finally decided, however, that there is no longer any sense in refraining from answering all the Communist propaganda against him abroad...
...In the novel a Tsarist general, described as a "true hero coming from the masses," tells his soldiers that they must die for the glory of Russian arms in the Far East, and that Port Arthur is "Russian soil," having been built by millions of Russian rubles of the people's money and labor...
...Said Mr...
...3 issue of the Saturday Evening Post, gives perhaps as good an insight into Russia's Far Eastern policies as Forrest Davis' officially inspired articles in the same magazine last year gave into President Roosevelt's European policy...
...Following Pearl Harbor American optimists waited only for the day when Russia would join us in the war against Japan which we insisted on regarding as a part of a "global war...
...And he hints broadly that Russia will consider Manchuria irretrievably hers by right of previous Tsarist conquests and ambitions...
...For after all if the primary desire is to save lives, why fight a war at all...
...That is to say Stalin may even now have no intention of fighting Japan...
...The Chinese alone may ask, what is the point of a war in which after you have shed a river of blood, you sacrifice your war aims to save a stream...
...One might ask why the Kremlin wished Snow to give so unmistakable a warning to Americans as to her designs against China...
...Were there not irreconcilable differences and antagonisms between the two countries ? After Germany attacked Russia some prophets expected that Japan would seize the golden opportunity to liquidate the menace which Russia constituted on the very borders of the Japanese Empire...
...It must have beenJargely in the hope of their remaining so that the Chinese Government lent itself to the pretense that the Chinese Communists are not connected with Moscow...
...When, How, And If Russia Fights Japan By FREDA UTLEY DURING the past 8 years, ever since Japan started her war on China, the question has been raised again and again: When will Russia and Japan go to war...
...Snow also tells us that only an "inexpensive campaign in Manchuria and Mongolia for demonstrably important strategic objectives" would be popular in Russia...
...The real consideration in Moscow's eyes is, of course, whether a government is under Russian influence or Anglo-American influence...
...The Real Consideration But the most obvious explanation would appear to be that he is convinced that he has nothing to fear by laying his cards on the table...
...Not until the moment when she can do so with the least possible risk commensurate with the great aims at stake, not till Japan is nearing collapse, will the Soviet Government call upon its people to intervene in a decisive way...
...There was a time when it was confidently predicted that Russia would go to war with Japan at any moment...
...Yet there is no mystery about Russia's preference in China, not so much as there is about our own...
...Relations between China and Russia have remained correct all along...
...And Chiang Kai-shek is the only living ruler or statesman who ever got the best of Stalin, as he did in 1927...
...Snow has long been regarded as a friendly interpreter of Communist policy in Far Eastern pastures, and this article written shortly after his last visit to Moscow should be acceptable to friends of the U.S.S.R...
...The full story of Great Power political jockeying in the Far East is, of course, not now available, but we are indebted to Edgar Snow, friendly interpreter of Soviet Russia's role in Asia, for the candid report that the Kremlin plans to stay out of the war against Japan until we have smashed Japan to the point where, to use his language, she "is nearing collapse"—after which Russia will intervene to claim her share of the booty...
...And Snow intimates that this pattern might be followed by Russia in the Far East unless we do not oppose her designs in Europe after Germany's defeat, and unless we abandon the Kuomintang Government of China or force it to let the Chinese Communists dominate it...
...in 1941 that "We are both Asiatics...
...Instead, Japan, no doubt under the illusion that Germany could do the job alone, adhered strictly to her neutrality pact with Russia, and went to war with us instead...
...This adjective in Communist terminology, as events in Europe have made abundantly clear, means Russian or Communist dominated governments...
...Mansfield has said in his reports on China, then the sacrifice of Chinese interests in order to get Russia into the war might be condoned...
...Snow is good enough to remind us how in Bulgaria the Russians waited until we were negotiating an armistice, and only then declared war on Bulgaria so that they might occupy the country and install a government according to Soviet design...
...He tells us that the Cairo Declaration, which promised to expel Japan from "all the territories she has taken by violence and greed," could be taken to mean letting Russia have the Chinese territories which the Romanoffs once owned or coveted...
...Snow, fresh from his conversations in Moscow : "Soviet diplomacy will make maximum use of the bargaining value of its strategic position in the Far East when pressing home its case at Allied conference tables...
...Even more explicitly than in the case of Poland, the Kremlin has made known where its sympathies lie, what they expect of the Chinese Government, and thus, on what basis they can cooperate with us...
...Was not Russia helping China and were thei'e not frequent border clashes between Red Army and Japanese forces...
...A strange logic is applied according to which if you prove that Chiang Kai-shek's government is not democratic, this means that the Chinese Communists are democratic...
...It would appear that Stalin has already started serving notice to his own people, if not yet to us, that he intends to regain in China all and more than the Tsars lost...
...Russia, Snow tells us, may not actually declare war on Japan but may confine her aid to direct support of guerrilla troops under the 8th Route (Communist) Army in North China and eventually Manchuria, where "such troops will rapidly infiltrate in advance of Chiang Kai-shek's army as Japan's continental forces weaken...
...In this World War, as in the last, Japan has shown that she regards the quarrels of the white races primarily as opportunities to extend her empire at the expenses of China and the West...
...Snow leaves us in no doubt that Russia's role in the Far East is likely to be that of the jackal rather than the lion, as it was in 1939 in Poland and the Baltic states...
...Similarly Stalin has no interest, as a Russian recently told Edgar Snow, in helping "America to step into Japan's shoes...
...For Japan took Port Arthur and Dairen from Russia, not from China, China having previously been forced by Russia to give them up...
...However, the Russians appeared to be no readier to die for "democracy" in Asia than the Japanese were to die for Berlin...
...Perhaps there was something behind Stalin's remark to the Japanese envoy, Matsuoka...
Vol. 9 • March 1945 • No. 13
