1928-1938 : Violence et totalitarisme en Asie centrale

Abstract

The decade 1928-1938 has been marked in East Asia by the dramatic upsurge and ascent of totalitarian violence. As in Europe, it took two forms : communism (in China) and fascism (in Japan). The latter has proved much more powerful and obnoxious in that period, but early maoism foreshadows not only the massive use of terror of the post-1949 years, but also, in some ways, Stalin’s Great Terror of 1937-38. The unfortunate Chinese population has been the victim of both totalitarianisms, on an enormous scale since the inception of the China-Japan war, in July 1937. The Emperor’s Army almost immediately committed countless war crimes, prefiguring many of World War II atrocities, especially those committed in USSR by the Nazis. China, like Spain, was a training ground of fascist aggression. Consequently, the primacy and peculiarity of European developments in the Interwar and War years should be seriously questioned. Several of their major features may be discerned in Asia too, sometimes more precociously.