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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   30744 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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Chiang's only biological son was in Moscow at [t]his time, practically as a hostage.

Compare and contrast, Stalin, who upon his son being offered in a prisoner swap for the German Marshal Paulus after Stalingrad famously replied "I will not swap a lieutenant for a Field Marshal." His son would die in a concentration camp in 1943. It is a matter of priorities:

The refusal to swap Yakov has been treated as evidence of Stalin’s loveless cruelty but this is unfair. Stalin was a mass murderer but in this case, it is hard to imagine that either Churchill or Roosevelt could have swapped their sons if they had been captured—when thousands of ordinary men were being killed or captured. After the war, a Georgian confidant plucked up the courage to ask Stalin if the Paulus offer was a myth. He “hung his head,” answering “in a sad, piercing voice”: “Not a myth . . . Just think how many sons ended in camps! Who would swap them for Paulus? Were they worse than Yakov? I had to refuse . . . What would they have said of me, our millions of Party fathers, if having forgotten about them, I had agreed to swapping Yakov? No, I had no right . . .” Then he again showed the struggle between the nervy, angry, tormented man within and the persona he had become: “Otherwise, I’d no longer be ‘Stalin'...I so pitied Yasha!”

Simon Sebag Montefiore, "Stalin: The Court of the Red Czar", p. 1003

To engage directly with the comparison between the Long Marches...

But Chiang or anyone else in 1935 had precisely zero reason to believe that the Long March will eventually, more than 10 years later, provide the Communist[s] with a suitable base to start out from and conquer the entire country.

I do agree that one can't slag off the KMT leadership too much for failing to anticipate facing a world-historic leader who would successfully rally a multi-decade struggle to take control of the country. Hence "foolishly, as it turned out"; not "idiotically" or "inexplicably." It's a black swan event, one can't be shocked that people were caught off guard. But, the same can be said of US Conservatives! That's what makes it a good instructive parallel! Both chose short term advantage (support of the warlords, support of the white working class of the former Confederate states) which opened up opportunities for their opponent's to inflict long term defeats. Conservatives did not think that liberal dominance of cultural institutions could reach this point; the KMT did not realize that Communism was a virus that would spread if not entirely eliminated.

Chiang would repeat this mistake when he chose to align with Mao against the Japanese. Mao kept his eye on the prize, avoiding conflict with the Japanese and preserving his forces, while KMT forces were worn down in conflict with the Japanese army, setting the stage for the resumption of the civil war after the end of WWII on better ground for the ChiComms. Repeatedly underestimating the determination and ability of Communist leaders was a calling card of the countries that fell to Communism.

Yes, I was meant to write "at THIS time", thanks for the correction, I made the edit.

Compare and contrast, Stalin, who upon his son being offered in a prisoner swap for the German Marshal Paulus after Stalingrad famously replied "I will not swap a lieutenant for a Field Marshal."

That's a good story, but unfortunately there's no documented evidence of this. In all likelihood, it became popular because it appeared in the famous but otherwise mostly unwatchable Soviet multi-part epic war movie Liberation. I wouldn't trust anecdotes of his daughter, or some supposed Georgian confidant. According to Russian Wikipedia, neither Molotov nor Zhukov were aware of any such plans of prisoner swap.

On the other hand, the two situations aren't exactly similar. The USSR wasn't the sworn enemy of the KMT, in fact it was mostly a benefactor and convienient ally, excluding the period between the anti-Communist purges of the KMT in 1927 and the start of the Japanese invasion ten years later.

Conservatives did not think that liberal dominance of cultural institutions could reach this point

I think it's more accurate to say that they didn't care i.e. they never noticed that it's an issue in the first place.

Mao kept his eye on the prize, avoiding conflict with the Japanese and preserving his forces, while KMT forces were worn down in conflict with the Japanese army, setting the stage for the resumption of the civil war after the end of WWII on better ground for the ChiComms.

Chiang simply didn't have that option, however. Since his aspiration was to become the national leader and unifier of the nation, he had to oppose the Japanese attacks which targeted areas he controlled - the Communist were never in such a situation.

Yes, I was meant to write "at THIS time", thanks for the correction, I made the edit.

You know, I didn't even notice it in your original comment I read it "correctly," but then when I quoted it I didn't want to confuse any readers.

The USSR wasn't the sworn enemy of the KMT, in fact it was mostly a benefactor and convenient ally, excluding the period between the anti-Communist purges of the KMT in 1927 and the start of the Japanese invasion ten years later.

Which was extremely foolish and shortsighted on the part of the KMT! The USSR were avowed backstabbers of anything that smelled like capitalism! The USSR had a long track record (albeit not as long at the time) of using, then liquidating, putative allies who were not under the party umbrella. Unless Chiang intended to ultimately swear allegiance to the comintern, the USSR should always have been an enemy; the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but the friend of my enemy is my enemy. And the guy who says he has an absolute ideological aversion to every aspect of your existence is definitely an enemy. Trusting ComIntern Communists was a really bad idea, they are never long term reliable allies for any capitalist state or organization. I disagree with Kulak's overall point but the basic idea stands: trusting Communists while being anything other than a loyal communist is extremely foolish and shortsighted.*

I think it's more accurate to say that they didn't care i.e. they never noticed that it's an issue in the first place.

Which is the same thing, just phrased differently. They never thought it would be an issue that the left was slowly gaining control over the mass of cultural institutions, because they never thought it would reach the extent it has. Watching old movies or reading old books, the wild and ideologically extreme student is present in Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile, in Golddiggers of 1937 (or maybe it was 38, it was late and i was stoned watching TCM), in La Boheme, in Victor Hugo's great novels. The disappearance of the stern and staid professor, a fixture from Faustus to Belushi, is a remarkable cultural innovation. But they should have seen that coming if they wanted to rule America!

And because it's remarkable you can say "Well, who can blame them, no one could have known!" Just as you can't really blame the KMT leadership for not realizing that Mao was Mao until it was too late. But when you aspire to rule the world, or at least one of the largest countries in it, you have to know these things, or you lose to someone who guessed right. You've got to be looking out for black swans. Second prize is a set of steak knives, third prize is you're fired.

*Trusting them while being a loyal communist is merely very, rather than extremely, foolish and shortsighted.

It's not like the KMT had many options in that regard either. No nation was willing to help their armed struggle against the Japanese besides Weimar Germany and the USSR.

Sure, I'll take that, but recognize that now we've negotiated down to "it seemed like it was the best of a series of bad and worse options." It turned out to be a really bad idea, but I appreciate that there wasn't an easy sacrifice free "win now" button that Chiang refused to press.

If the KMT had chosen to trade land for time against the Japanese, murdered the ChiComms, then turned against the Japanese and hope they'd overextended themselves and pissed off America by then, there's a better chance the KMT or a related government rules china today.

Same deal with the conservatives in the USA. Maybe the anti intellectual turn was the best call, maybe trying to play literate and skipping the southern strategy costs them a term of Nixon or Reagan or Bush II. But they're paying the cost today, with dissident rightists trying to scheme to start whole new universities. Hopefully not as steep a cost as the KMT has paid.

That's one of the few anecdotes I've heard of Stalin apparently having feelings (along with sparing Boris Pasternak). Quite interesting.

See my comment above.

He was quite lively, I don't know why people buy the Man of Steel persona – is it the paranoia of the last years, or the sheer volume of his terror? Georgians are emotional and gregarious in general, and he was not much of an exception. In this specific case I assume he had some lingering feelings for Yakov because by all accounts he loved Yakov's mother.

Her death was announced in a newspaper, Tsqaro (წყარო, "Source"), and a funeral was held at 9:00am on 25 November in the same church she had married Jughashvili. Svanidze was then buried at a church in the Kukia district of Tiflis. According to the Georgian Menshevik Ioseb Iremashvili, Jughashvili was very distraught at the death of his wife, and at the funeral allegedly said "This creature softened my heart of stone. She died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity."[24] He would also later tell a girlfriend that he "was so overcome with grief that [his] comrades took [his] gun away from [him]."[25] During the burial, Jughashvili also reportedly threw himself into her grave, and had to be dragged out. As he had been trailed by Okhrana agents, Jughashvili fled before the service ended. He left Tiflis and returned to Baku, abandoning 8-month-old Iakob to be raised by his Svanidze relatives.[26] Jughashvili would not return to visit his son for several years.[27][h]

The strongest 20th century leaders truly were larger-than-life, anime characters compared to our oh-so-professional Goldman Sachs analysts with frozen HR-approved grimaces. At least Sunak won't be deporting entire peoples into Kazakhstan.

Isn't this him saying himself that this event basically turned him into a sociopath (except maybe in regards to Yakov who was his last connection to it)? Wouldn't that explain his later ice cold behavior?

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