A quote from the godfather of Communism Karl Marx captures the ideal theme behind Partisan Warfare. Marx realized that any mass of people, without coordination, could fight on a common front against an enemy with superior organization and communication. It is this concept that appealed to the Soviet Union and explained why it was so commonly used. The Soviet Union is a nation that contains nearly 1/7 of the earth's land. Much of the country is thousands of rural villages connecting major cities. Modernization of communication to this date is not common. This opportunity for organization and planning that the Soviet people lacked forced those who wished to exert resistance towards the Germans to embrace Marx's ideas of mass uprisings by revolutionary methods, which were achieved without sufficient communication. From Marx's publication to the 20th century, guerilla warfare briefly had its presence felt in the Russian Revolution of 1917. While Marx's idea captured the basic idea behind guerilla warfare, it lacked organization and insight. This led to the precise and definitive military thought introduced when communist revolutionary Mao Tse-Tung published his book On Guerilla Warfare in 1937. It served as a handbook for any student of the subject, providing principles and guidelines to Marx's idea. To Mao, "The [guerilla] unit may originate in any one of the following ways: from the masses of the people, regular army units temporarily detailed for the purpose, regular army units permanently detailed, the local militia, deserters from the ranks of the enemy, and former bandits and bandit groups" (Mao 66). Primarily communists around the globe studied the book. Many nations passed on this military thought claiming it to be insignificant and not achievable on a large scale, which it wasn't, but that very reaction was the cause of its whole success. And it was that opportunity in which the partisan "call to arms" in World War II took place.