SOVIET STRATEGIES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

Professor McLane, in this large and heavily researched work, has chosen as his task the historic analysis of the doctrine and operational programs of the Communist parties of Burma, Malaya, Thailand, Indochina, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Obviously, the book's timeliness couldn't be greater. The author proceeds in a matter of fact way to provide a list of determinants of Soviet policy, then goes on to search for the clues that will adequately reveal insights into the Soviet relationship with China and the other nations that make up the East. The difficulties involved in searching for reliable clues are caused by the inaccessibility of some of the key living personalities of the Communist era, and the gaps that exist in documentation. If some of the author's collateral findings must remain provisional, his major theses are boldly stated. Stalin's parochial attitude towards the East and his basic lack of information about the realities of that area, produced fewer dividends in three decades than Khrushchev earned for the Soviet Union in one. Due to the fact that the Chinese and Indochinese movements came to power in spite of, rather than because of Soviet guidance, they came to represent different and possibly alternate templates for the correct procedure of transforming a colonial state into a Marxist-Leninist one. Altogether, Professor McLane has written a highly useful work on a subject that has been more abused than clarified in the past. It is a major addition to the study of Asian affairs.