SDHF Newsletter No. 405 The Road to the Greater East Asian War Part 26, Chapter 8-1

THE ROAD TO THE GREATER EAST ASIAN WAR
Nakamura Akira, Dokkyo University Professor Emeritus
(English Translation: Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact)
Part 26, Chapter 8: Revolutionary China and Communism – 1

April 26, 2024

In March 1919 a founding congress, held in Moscow, was attended by communist party members and left-wing socialists from nations all over the world. It was there that the Communist International (usually shortened to Comintern), also known as the Third International, was established, in accordance with a proposal from Lenin and the Bolsheviks. It was Lenin’s intention to create a worldwide revolutionary organization under Bolshevik leadership whose members would form identical groups using the same strategy and tactics the world over.

In order to join the Comintern, each nation’s party was required to embrace the party platform, which comprised 21 conditions. Particularly noteworthy is the mention of two indispensable essentials: “propaganda and agitation” and the “dictatorship of proletariat” (Condition 1). The Comintern was formally an international organization to which communist parties of member nations belonged. But total control was in actuality in the hands of the Soviet Communist Party, which considered each nation’s communist party as a subdivision of itself through the Comintern. Consequently, the Soviet Communist Party, armed with two weapons, the Soviet government and the Comintern, two identical organizations, set out to create a communist world.

Having failed to transform Germany into a communist state, the Soviet communists turned their gaze toward the East and zeroed in on China. The Xinhai Revolution seemed to have stalled there and chaos prevailed. The Soviets chose flattery as their bait: the two Karakhan manifestos.

The first manifesto, dated July 1919, proclaimed that all the secret treaties concluded with Japan, China, and the former Allies would be annulled. The Soviet Government then proposed that the Chinese Government start negotiations to annul the treaty of 1896, the Peking Protocol of 1901, and all agreements concluded with Japan between 1907 and 1916. The Soviet Government renounced Tsarist Government conquests that deprived China of Manchuria and other areas. The Soviet Government would return to the Chinese people without compensation of any kind the Chinese Eastern Railway, and all mining concessions, forestry, and gold mines seized from them by the government of Tsars, Kerensky, and other outlaws.

Both Karakhan manifestos were nothing more than sugar-coated poison. For instance, the return of the Chinese Eastern Railways “to the Chinese people without compensation of any kind,” as promised in the first manifesto, was retracted and replaced with a reference to the conclusion of a special treaty relating to the railroad “for needs of the RSFSR,” in the second manifesto. Moreover, when it comes to territorial matters, the main focus of the manifestos, the USSR has yet to return even one square centimeter of Amur region and what is now known as Maritime province, lands wrested away from China by Tsarist Russia via the Convention of Peking (1858) and the Treaty of Aigun (1860), to China.

In any case, the Karakhan manifestos were, pure and simple, deceptive tactics intended to use gestures of friendship to dispel China’s distrust of the Soviets and lay the groundwork for the eventual communization of all China. Soviet efforts to communize China progressed steadily.

URL: https://www.sdh-fact.com/book-article/2195/
PDF: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/Road26E.pdf

MOTEKI Hiromichi, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact