Alternatives to alternative bookstores at the Rising Tide Bookstore

With the opening of the Rising Tide Bookstore, a new and valuable source of information is available to those of the Washington Community, as well as anyone who is searching for an alternative to the “alternative” (left wing) bookstore. In the process, while researching the kind of material we feel to be the most significant and valuable for the store stock, we found a wealth of responsible and significant literature critiquing Communism and offering a broad perspective in international relations. It is my hope that we can really publicize this material, making it well known and easily available.

A good example is The Comintern and The Chinese Communists, 1928-31, by Professor Richard C. Thornton. Professor Thornton, formerly of the Far Eastern and Russian Institute of the University of Washington, is now Assistant Professor of History and a member of the Institute for Sino- Soviet Studies at the George Washington University.

I had the honor to study under him and have been very impressed by his well-researched and documented work. Essentially, Professor Thornton puts forth the premise that the Chinese Communist Party was not an independent, homogeneous phenomena. Instead, it was the result of the painstaking labor of the Co min tern, especially under Stalin’s leadership, to foment revolution.

Indeed, Thornton claims, the concept of “guerilla” warfare, always considered the brainchild of Mao, was actually a set of tactics developed in the Kremlin. An interesting book, it flows well. In a more personal vein is Erwin Weit’s book, At the Red Summit: Interpreter Behind the Iron Curtain. Published this year by Macmillan, with an introduction by the noted historian Harry Schwartz, this book is nothing less than sensational in its revelations.

It is written by a man who spent 13 years as the official interpreter for Wladyslaw Gomulka. In that time he was present at all the high level Communist conferences and negotiations to which Poland was a party. That such a man was able to freely leave Poland in 1970 is nothing short of miraculous. Indeed, upon hearing of the impending publication of this book (it has been translated and published in the West in 11 languages) East Germany’s Walter Ulbricht protested to the Polish Foreign Ministry and the Polish Central Committee., — and chastised the Polish government for allowing Weit to emigrate to the West after he had been present at so many top-level summit talks.

The account of the summit talks preceding the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia is the high point of his book. Beyond a doubt, this is one of the most important documents ever to come to the West and it is one I highly recommend.