SOVIET STRATEGIES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA.
An Exploration of Eastern Policyunder Lenin and Stalin. By Prof. CharlesB. McLane '41 (Government). Princeton,N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1966.563 pp. $12.50.
It is common to approach the subject of the international operations of Communism with strong preconceptions. The dominant American preconception has been of a rigidly centralized network, where mindless party fanatics in farflung lands await orders from Moscow headquarters on tomorrow's target. Recently, as the depth of the Sino-Soviet disagreements has become undeniable, there has been an attempt to transfer the old monolithic image to a new category, "Asian Communism," which has, if anything, less substance to it than the former worldwide species.
Professor McLane of the Government Department has produced a major study of the relations with Moscow of one segment of the Communist movement and has, in the process, further revealed the unreality of the monolithic image. His central focus is Soviet policy toward Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaya, Burma, and Thailand from the Bolshevik Revolution until the death of Stalin, and he skilfully delineates its phases. He also gives detailed resumes of the history of the Communist movement in each of these countries (he has added significant information from interviews with Southeast Asian leaders in and out of the Communist movement).
It is the great strength of the book that it is based both on a penetrating understanding of Soviet objectives and behavior and on a wide knowledge of 20th Century Southeast Asian history. Accordingly, Professor McLane is able to discern where Soviet policy was determinant in the behavior of a local Communist party and (what has been so often ignored) where the independent actions of the local party, responding to local conditions, has in effect determined Soviet policy or has proceeded in the absence of any coherent Soviet directives.
The detailed narratives of developments in the Communist movements locally and their relation to the Soviet Union (and to the Chinese Communist Party and the party in the colony's metropolitan country) are placed in the context of early Communist theory about revolution in the colonial world. His perception of revolutionary theory, as well as of the nature of Comintern and Kremlin politics, enables him to bring new insights to a subject much studied from the Chinese perspective: Stalin's interventions in the alliance between the Chinese Communists and the Kuomintang in the 1920's.
Professor McLane concludes: "Drift and indecision, then, characterize Soviet Eastern policy during most of Stalin's rule. . . In a manner that is, ironically, reminiscent of a school of criticism of the State Department only a few years ago, he notes that the leaders of the International were always more attuned to European than Asian developments and that there persisted in the Asian case a "sharp discrepancy between words and actions." The major exception in this whole period was the effort in China in the mid-1920's, and this turned into a disastrous failure.
Stalin, in the judgment of the author, "does not emerge as an effective or even very attentive leader of world Communism." It was not that Moscow did not imagine itself to be leading a worldwide movement; nor did Southeast Asian Communist leaders reject inspiration and guidance from the revolutionary citadel in the Kremlin. But the Russian leaders were neither omniscient nor sufficiently interested, and, in any case, local conditions had a way of prevailing against any universal scheme.
Assistant Professor of History
