Khrushchev vs. Mao: Principles or Power?
Geltman, Emanuel
Khrushchev is no less a Russian Communist today than yesterday, nor is Mao Tse-tung more of a Chinese Stalinist than he was the day before. The thaw did not, so to speak, produce the...
...Rumor has it, anyway, that Chiang's son intends to seek an accommodation with Mao when Chiang goes...
...At this point it is well to remember that Khrushchev is not being challenged by workers and peasants ready to fight tanks with bare hands (Hungary...
...And the barbarians, in the Czar's day as well, had their eyes on this land—as did more remote upstarts like Great Britain, France, and the United States...
...Whether they were in a position to be is another matter...
...Nor is it Khrushchev's intention to permit that now...
...Yes, and we have a right to expect reciprocation in various ways —perhaps an agreement not to proceed with the development of nuclear missiles, as other nations have restrained themselves...
...The same can be said for Kennedy...
...That Tito has persecuted Djilas and harassed others does not alter the fact that the break itself was a good thing...
...Political decency suggests that disaffection cannot be encouraged by self-de[ eating extremes of rigidity...
...Both policies are "acceptable" only under the intolerable condition of a world divided into gigantic (and stultified) spheres of influence: Russian and American...
...The difference lies in the times...
...Its differences with Russia are not ideological in a principled sense, but within the complex of international Communist relations they are no less serious for that...
...Its trade with Japan (a natural business relationship) has grown, as has its trade with Canada and other nations...
...Similarly, a disengagement vis-a-vis China will not liberate China's trampled millions, but it may reduce political fallout in Asia...
...Despite appearances to the contrary, it is also a cautious dictatorship— hesitating to involve itself in adventures that do not guarantee a political or economic profit, but engaging in aggressive moves where the pay-off is clearly worth the risk...
...Both are bureaucratic collectivist—or state capitalist if you prefer...
...And good sense requires that we not grumble about those things that are, on the face of them, unobjectionable — like China's pact with Pakistan...
...EMANUEL GELTMAN...
...Khrushchev attempted a provocation in Cuba, and pulled back when the risk boiled over...
...China is an immense country, with an immense population, immense needs, terrifyingly immense hunger, and doubtless immense pride...
...It is certainly indecent to expect of the Chinese that they remain docile members of the Russian Communist empire...
...Khrushchev wants no international applecarts overturned...
...If Gomulka leaps to Khrushchev's side it is not so much because Poland does not have ideas of its own, as because propinquity, the choice of alternatives, and events since 1956 have buttered that side of the bread...
...he well appreciates the risks—though he takes them when it seems to Russia's advantage to do so...
...We oppose tyranny best if we ourselves act as a people with a conscience first...
...We can put out feelers in the direction of offering credit for essential needs, encouraging instead of hindering trade with the West...
...Times reports Premier Ikeda of Japan as saying that Japan would not develop commercial relations with Communist China "at the risk of injuring trade with the free West...
...Thus, in a particularly interesting article that appeared in the August 17 New Republic, Cyrus H. Peake writes: The Chinese want an alternative to Soviet aid and hegemony...
...It is also damned foolish...
...Kennedy is pursuing the futile policy of his predecessors...
...Within the limits of propriety, these differences are best encouraged...
...It is equally indecent to rush into the breach for the new "socialist fatherland" as the—well, the indecentSweezyHubermanites (Monthly Revicw) have done...
...In the spirit of the detente Khrushchev prefers a more cordial tone to the belligerent noise from China...
...And while Rumania had to pull in its horns this summer, it is clearly not satisfied with the economic role it has been assigned in the satellite empire...
...It is also a brutal dictatorship, but its brutality is not at issue in its dispute with Russia...
...perhaps a commitment to relieve neighboring nations of any threat of military pressure (e.g., India...
...And, so far as we can see, for Mao...
...Mao, in fact, did take a fling at planting a "hundred flowers," though he quickly dug up the seeds before they took root...
...Who threatened the injury...
...None of this precludes voicing the democratic world's horror at every sign of internal repression...
...The thaw did not, so to speak, produce the recent violence of conflict between the USSR and China...
...The U.S.-Russian detente is surely a factor, though the conflict between Russia and China antecedes it by many years...
...who shall hand down the line...
...But there will be less contamination of the air, there may be more time to work on our problems, and both of these are worth something...
...Khrushchev is essentially pursuing Russia's traditional (Stalin's too) policy toward China...
...What kind of disengagement...
...If we are not yet prepared to recognize mainland China, and that hardly seems the most urgent issue at the moment, we can at least recognize that Chiang's Kuomintang no longer governs China, and is not likely to...
...Their differences originate in a vital controversy over who shall ultimately dictate the internal and foreign policies of the Communist states and what these policies shall be at a particular moment...
...but by tyrants who would themselves flay a resisting population...
...It is certainly time to discontinue the childish pretense that Red China does not exist as a nation—except when our plenipotentiaries meet its plenipotentiaries in Poland...
...These are, after all, a people with an ancient and intricate culture who scorned the barbarians around them...
...Party control of the state, and state control of industry— here there is basic agreement...
...Thus, compassion and ordinary, unqualified human decency require that we do something for China's hungry millions, somedung concrete—like sending food...
...There are no differences on totalitarianism versus democracy...
...For all the appearance of an uncompromisingly rigid antagonism toward the West and its Eastern outposts (presumably unlike Khrushchev's genial accommodation), China appears to regard trade as being satisfactory, except with the United States, and evidently expects to do better—which may account in part for the timing of its self-assertion...
...They now account for 55 per cent of China's imports, compared to 30 per cent in 1959...
...Khrushchev has not, at least not in anything I have read, demanded of Mao that he relax his repressive measures...
...The September 13 N.Y...
...The Russians, according to the available evidence, have never been generous in trade, economic assistance, or credit...
...may be, no matter how unreconstructed certain elements in both countries are, the slightest easing of tension is in itself welcome...
...Obviously, there is more to it than that...
...Stalin could not arrest the break with Tito in another context (I was tempted to say, in "another geography"), nor could he, any more than Khrushchev, have arrested the conflict with Mao...
...Khrushchev is no less a Russian Communist today than yesterday, nor is Mao Tse-tung more of a Chinese Stalinist than he was the day before...
...Once aroused, the aspirations of the national Communist states, with their own bureaucracies and their own ambitions, are not easily stifled...
...However feeble the current detente between the USSR and the U.S...
...Even a lickspittle like Hoxha in Albania can get into the act, defying Khrushchev...
...If memory serves, Truman helped Yugoslavia survive its break with Stalin by supplying food at a tense moment in 1948 to a hungry population...
...It is accordingly neither a patriotic mission to urge Khrushchev to give the Chinese what for, nor a socialist duty to join the "apostles of revolution" in raising the Chinese banner...
...Stalin leashed and unleashed the Chinese Communist party, as it suited his (Russia's, the Cornintern's) international policy...
...Well, we might, for example, offer to lessen the provocation of military bluster from Formosa...
...It was never his intention to permit a strong, economically viable, independent nation in China, whether under Kuomintang or Communist rule...
...Since the failure of the Great Leap Forward they have turned, despite their militant ideology, to the "imperialists...
...As for the U.S., we can spread sweetness and light without succumbing to idiocy or callousness...
...The seeds of dissension have been there from the day Chiang was chased off the Chinese mainland, and it can be fairly argued that they were there before that...
...The other consideration would be the desperate needs engendered by its past policies...
...The non-Communist nations have given China short-term credits for over $100 million since 1959, while the USSR has apparently given none in the same period...
...If, because of ideological ties and the absence of an alternative, it seemed to be dependent on Russia for a time, Communist (very well, Stalinist) China no longer is or wants to be...
...Kennedy gambled on a game of chicken over Cuba, and pulled it off...
...Trade between the USSR and China dropped 67 per cent in the same period, and trade with the other Communist countries has fallen sharply...
...policy...
...The bombs are still stockpiled, the basic issues are unresolved and will remain so for a long time to come, all of our problems remain...
...Without yielding an inch to Khrushchev or Mao, it is possible to encourage the dignity of China's millions, and with it their will to freedom, by recognizing the advantages latent in the Russia-China split...
...I offer that view as a democratic socialist, but it does not seem to me too far out or radical as an element in a rational U.S...
...Mao struck at India, and stopped short of an irrevocable commitment to total war...
...It won't work, and if it did we would have to rise up against it, for it would be a world in which half was doomed to repression and the other half pushed toward it...
Vol. 10 • September 1963 • No. 4
