There's a 1979 pamphlet I'd like to get my hands on titled Socialism Cannot be Built in Alliance with the Bourgeoisie: The Experience of the Revolutions in Albania and China, contrasting the two countries. If I do I'll be sure to distribute it on RevLeft.
I like it how whenever I read your anti-Maoist polemics, I agree with everything. Agreeing with MLs makes me feel dirty inside.
According to Hoxha, Mikoyan said after Stalin's death that he and others had discussed "getting rid" of Stalin at one point. Molotov said in the 70's and 80's that Beria claimed to have "saved you all" (directed at Molotov and others) in-re Stalin dying.
"Stalin's murder"? I thought I was the only RevLefter that believed in the whole Stalin was assassinated theory.
And this guy actually says Poland should have sued for peace with Hitler(as if Hitler would have stayed true to the terms; just ask Czechoslovakia what Hitler's treaties meant for him - for fuck's sake he attacked a de facto member of the axis with 4 million men in June 22 1941) in order to sign a mutual defense pact with Stalin, Hitler's then-ally.
Hmm I'm reading more of this link you told me to read and it's more idiotic than I thought. The man is no historian. He completely ignores that Romania and Poland were allies and that Romania was going to come to Poland's defense but didn't because Poland asked it not to for the moment, so as to use Romania's official neutrality to bring in supplies from Britain and France, and eventually their armies, through Romania without being disrupted. The man is ignorant of the fact that the Polish government fled to Romania only temporarily, they fled to Romania in order to move from Romania to France, as that was the safest path. The Polish government didn't "intern itself" in Romania, Romania was threatened by Hitler and Stalin into "interning" the Polish government. Either way, if Obama and his cabinet go on a trip to Canada, that doesn't somehow mean that the US government stops existing.
I gave Furr what you wrote and he replied, "That Polish soldiers were still fighting is completely irrelevant. The army existed; the Polish state did not." And on Romania, " They had a big problem -- they didn't want to pay for supporting the Polish army for the duration of the war. No doubt they were glad when the Polish soldiers slipped away. But the Romanians kept the former Government officials throughout the war."
After all, Hitler was still hoping he'd get Britain to agree to a peace the moment Poland fell and a swift falling of Poland required Soviet assistance. Furr is either lying or is grossly misinformed when he says that by September 17, the Polish state has collapsed. It's estimated that the Polish army still had almost a million men under it's command and 140,000 square kilometers of territory under it's control. Even universities and schools were still open Eastern Poland. The Polish adminstration was far from collapsing. He also forgets to mention that the Polish government crossed the border to Romania on the 17, the day of the Soviet invasion, and Romania only interned it's members because Stalin and Hitler were threatening them. And actually, Romania had no problems with hundreds of thousands of persons crossing the border into their country; I think around 150,000 Polish soldiers actually did cross the border, afterwards they moved on to France and Britain.
And he did it for good reason too, without the aid from his Soviet allies, the Polish army might have held the Romanian bridgehead through the coming winter, with hundreds of thousands of men under it's command and an allied Romania to the south.
Hmm, interesting stuff, but his argument is very weak. Most of all he seems to completely ignore that the Soviet Union invaded Poland only after the Germans begged him to; Hitler was asking his Soviet allies for help since the day he invaded, the first of September, the Soviets waited until the 17th because they were still a bit busy fighting with the Japenese(the Battle of Khalkin Gol officially lasted from May to September 16, and apparently the Japenese still had 75,000 men in the border area in August) and also to minimize their casualties when they do invade(sort of like when Mussolini didn't declare war on France until June 1940, and by then Paris was already abandoned).
