Word: sovietism
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...last week. At a meeting of the Cabinet at Nanking he wrung his small bony hands and wailed out despairingly one of the most remarkable speeches ever made by a Chief Executive on the eve of war. "Tell me the reason," began Chiang excitedly, "tell me why Soviet Russia can oppress our people...
...dead! We still have a chance to prepare to fight and sacrifice ourselves for the nation. . . . The Soviet peoples believe that we Chinese are Utopians, meaning that we have no sense of order and discipline. That is why they browbeat us. . . . Hundreds of years of degenerate culture have made the Chinese an effete race. Intellectually and spiritually Utopian and physically weak?that is what the world at large considers us. ... Fortunately Russia is in no position to con-duct extensive armed aggression against us. . . . We must wait and be prepared...
What was the reason for such frenzied Presidential "rallying"? Without presuming to guess, observers noted as significant that last week the supreme command of the Soviet forces threatening China was entrusted to a Comrade-Commander who, paradoxically, once served in the Chinese Revolution as staff adviser to Marshal (now President) Chiang Kaishek. The Comrade-Commander is Vassili Constan-tinovitch Blücher, onetime oiler of Tsarist locomotives, today the most important man in Asia...
During 1917-20, when the young Soviet Union was fighting for existence against White Russian Generals Kolchak and Wrangel, the spirit and energy of Comrade Vassili Constantinovitch Blücher four times won him the highest Soviet military decoration, "The Red Banner." Five years later the Soviet Government sent Comrade Blücher to Canton under the alias "General Galen." There he became military adviser to the Chinese revolutionaries who subsequently conquered all China and now constitute the Chinese Government headed by President Chiang Kaishek...
...liked: poker, his Gila monster and alligators, practical jokes with electricity, flattery, a lamp-and-mirror arrangement by which incoming female visitors would see themselves suddenly, the color green, down-and-outers, steak and potatoes, bicycle riding, a personal letter from Russia's Lenin refusing his aid in Soviet electrification...