Description:

Madame Soong May-ling Chiang Kai-shek
n.p., February 24, 1978
Madame Chiang Kai-shek TLS On "Anti-Bolsheviks… forsaken at the very last without warning and left to the tender mercies of the Reds…" Re: Allied Intervention in Russian Civil War - Also Mocks the Japanese!
TLS
A 1p typed letter in English by Madame Chiang Kai-shek (1898-2003), also known as Soong May-ling, wife and translator of Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, signed by her as "Mayling Soong Chiang" at lower right. February 24, 1978. N.p. On a leaf of watermarked paper with a red chop mark in the letterhead at upper left. A PSA/DNA sticker is affixed below Madame Chiang Kai-shek's signature at lower right. Expected light wear including flattened transmittal folds and a few extra wrinkles. A non-rusted paper clip impression at upper left. Else near fine. 8.375" x 11." Accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity from PSA/DNA Authentication Services, certification number D13428, matching the PSA/DNA sticker on the item.

Madame Chiang Kai-shek wrote this letter to William LaVarre (1898-1991), the explorer and journalist. A conservative anti-Communist and anti-Semitic crusader, LaVarre had edited the far right-leaning monthly "The American Mercury" from 1957-1958.

Madame Chiang Kai-shek wrote in part:

"…Yes, I do recall the expeditionary Forces comprising the major allies at the time and also the comic fact of the Japanese force which for ever [sic] and anon wanted to have their Commanding General outrank the other commanders either in rank or in seniority.

I realize that Archangel is 4,000 miles from the Manchurian border as the crow flies but in my letter I did not make myself too clear on this point. What I meant was that those Anti-Bolsheviks who were given the impression that they would be evacuated by the Allies in the Archangel area were forsaken at the very last without warning and left to the tender mercies of the Reds whereas those who fled east towards Manchuli did not suffer the same cruel fate.

Thank you again for Colonel Faymonville's memoirs…"

From the historical context of this letter, we know that the pair were discussing the Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1918-1925, specifically the evacuation of Anti-Bolsheviks from the Soviet Union, which mostly occurred in 1919-1920. This letter thus offered Madame Chiang Kai-shek an opportunity to inveigh against two of her most formidable political opponents: the Japanese and Communists.

The Japanese had allied with the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, France, India, China and others beginning in 1918 in an attempt to mitigate the damage caused by the Russian Revolution in 1917 and Russia's separate peace with Germany in 1918. The Allies had attempted to infiltrate Russia, and after 1922 the Soviet Union, on multiple fronts: from the Northern, Southern, Siberian region, and Baltic region borders. The Japanese were heavily militarily invested in the Siberian front, since they wanted to form a buffer state there. Madame Chiang Kai-shek is likely referring to this - the Russian Civil War-era Japanese military presence in Siberia - when she satirizes the Japanese desire to "have their Commanding General outrank the other commanders either in rank or in seniority…"

Madame Chiang Kai-shek mentions the failed evacuation of Anti-Bolsheviks from Archangel, referring to Arkhangelsk, the Russian port city on the White Sea. She differentiates evacuation efforts there with those undertaken thousands of miles away, in Manchuli, or present day Manzhouli, a city on the Russian-Chinese border near Mongolia. Her ironic statement about the "tender mercies of the Reds" is scathing.

The subtext behind this historical case is Madame Chiang Kai-shek's suggestion that her mortal foes, the Japanese and the Communists, were always and would always be enemies. It was a different historical context, yes, but the players were still the same. After all, the Japanese Allies of the early 1920s would invade Manchuria in the 1930s and become one of the Axis powers, and the Bolsheviks inspired the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, opponents of the Kuomintang.

Colonel Philip Ries Faymonville (1888-1962) was a high-ranking American military official who was suspected of being a Communist sympathizer. Faymonville served as Military Attaché to the U.S.S.R. from 1934-1939 and as Chief of the American Supply Mission to the U.S.S.R. from 1941-1943.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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  • Dimensions: 8.375" x 11"
  • Medium: TLS

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