RE: UN Ship Nomenclature

On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, John Atkinson wrote:

> Yeah.  Communists wouldn't have suceeded in China without Russian 
> support, plus the Japanese attacking the Nationalists--not intended to

> support Commies, but had that effect.  Russian Revolution would not 
> have been possible without German support.

The Russians didn't give too much support for the Chinese Communists,
other than the fact that some of the CCP leadership were originally
educated in Russia. (that was long before they became politically
important in China, and even then, the orthodox Marxist intelligensia
types were under the control of the likes of Mao Tse-tung)  Most of the
Russian "aid" came after the Communist take-over, most notably in the
50s.
The only thing important before that was the Russians gave the CCP the
equipment of the Japanese army in the Northeast.  That would've wound up
in either Chinese or Russian hands anyways, and the Russians had
absolutely no use for them.  But your point about the Japanese is
well-taken.  They were truly the deciding factor in weakening the
Nationalist gov't.  But even without them, the Communists already had
leaders like Mao who were not impetuous enough to use the failing
city-bound strategy the Communists were using in the early days.
As for the Russian example, I don't really recall what kind of support
the
Germans gave other than sending Lenin to Russia.  Also, what kind of
foreign support did Kerensky's revolution get?	Along a similar line,
what
kind of foreign support did the Chinese Republican revolution (1911)
get?

We are seriously getting off topic here.  I think the original problem
was
J. Atkinson's argument that revolutions don't succeed without foreign
support.  I find that hard to believe.	There are many cases in history
of
indigenous gov't overthrows.