The Growing Sino-Soviet Dispute

...Unfortunately, ''there are some people who are not revisionists but well-intentioned persons who sincerely want to be Marxists, but get confused in the face of certain new historical phenomena and thus get some incorrect ideas...

...Formally, there is little difference in the Soviet and Chinese doctrinal positions...

...The Soviet Communists say that "the aggressive essence of imperialism remains, but its potential is declining" and therefore war may be prevented by "the growing strength of the socialist camp...

...A destructive war could only complicate the process of building the new society...

...According to the Chinese Communists...

...The totalitarian states of the 20th century have different aspirations from the 19th-century states that formed the "concert of powers...

...However, there is no parallel between the struggle for power inside the Party and within the bloc, where the contestants are in full control of their respective states...

...The Chinese describe imperialism as a "paper tiger" but consider that the Soviet approach to the animal is bad for the morale of the masses, although—as emphasized in Bucharest—they do not reject "non-peaceful transition to socialism [i.e., revolutionary violence] in some cases...

...There are many voices in the West calling for strengthening Khrushchev's hand in his contest with Mao, on the assumption that he is more "liberal" and less belligerent...

...But it is not likely to be accepted as final in China and there is no institutional solution for settling the differences between the totalitarian states where power rests upon doctrinal legitimacy delegated by the Goddess of History herself...

...Misunderstanding of Soviet policy is not new...

...Perhaps the best illustration that the problem is much more complicated is Khrushchev's continual rocket-rattling, while simultaneously scolding Mao—who still has no rockets—for "adventurism," "ultra-leftism" and a dogmatic attitude to Lenin's pronouncements on the inevitability of war between the socialist and capitalist worlds...

...These pointers are too many to leave any doubt about the present feelings of the Sino-Soviet participants in this "anonymous" dispute...

...Paradoxically, at the time of the "offensive of smiles" and the launching of the campaign for "peaceful coexistence," Khrushchev's internal adversary, Malenkov, was censured for "Bukharinism," and now, when Khrushchev is rattling his rockets, his external competitor, Mao, is accused by Fedor Konstantinov in Kom-munist of "Trotskyism...

...It is still hard to say whether a point of no return has been reached but though the differences between the Soviet Union and Communist China can be patched up on the state level, the struggle for hegemony in the bloc and in the international Communist movement cannot be avoided...

...By Leopold Labedz The Growing Sino-Soviet Dispute Differences of strategy and tactics, not Khrushchev's 'revisionism,' underlie conflict EVER SINCE THE still-bom Paris meeting Soviet Premier Khrushchev has produced a series of menacing gestures and has temporarily put aside his peaceful mask...

...But even though it seems that at the moment the West can do little to exploit the internal fissures of the bloc by positive action, it should be prepared for future developments...

...In the totalitarian movements ideological differences, though real, are bound to be overshadowed ultimately by the question of who is to have the last word about them...

...When the Chinese were heading toward the relaxation of the "hundred flowers" period, they accused the Russians of "great power chauvinism...

...There is little doubt about the acrimony of the dispute...

...Back in the 1920s, Stalin's victory over Trotsky and the defeat of the partisans of "world revolution" were often interpreted as abandonment of Communist expansionism...

...The Leninist motto, "who [shall overcome] whom," is still the guiding attitude, but Kommunist explains that revolutionary infantilism simply will not do in the atomic era and that the methods employed in winning the struggle should be related to "specific situations" and "Leninist compromises" to exploit "the contradictions between the capitalist countries...

...Other pointers to the state of tension between the brotherly Parties are the failure of the Chinese to contribute to Soviet press eulogies on the 90th anniversary of Lenin's birth, the recent general absence of Chinese contributors in Soviet publications, the discontinuation of the Soviet magazines on China (Sovetskoe Kitayovedeniye, Kitay and Druzh-ba), the absence of Chinese delegates at the Orientalists' Congress in Moscow last month, the cancellation of a Congress of Sinologists which was to have taken place in Moscow, the Tanjug Agency report of the withdrawal of Soviet specialists from China, etc...

...In this respect the ostensible issues of the dispute are not always relevant and are sometimes positively misleading...

...At the same time, his ideological spokesmen went on assuring the population that war is no longer "fatalistically inevitable...

...In short, "peaceful coexistence" should end with one side ceasing to exist and not with both sides disappearing from the face of the earth...

...The "well-intentioned" Khrushchev answered this in Bucharest by stressing that "we cannot repeat today mechanically what V. I. Lenin said many decades ago about imperialism...

...Subsequent events have clearly shown how misleading this view was...

...His threats have included rocket retaliation against countries providing bases for American reconnaissance flights (with warning notes to Turkey...

...imperialists' policy of atomic blackmail marks the end of violence...

...In all this ideological confusion one thing is clear: The Sino-Soviet rift is widening and it inevitably takes on doctrinal coloring...

...As long as imperialists exist, wars are unavoidable...

...Norway, Japan and Britain), the brusque ending of disarmament talks in Geneva, rocket threats against the United States for its "economic aggression" against Cuba, fulminations against "Western aggression" in the Congo (including attacks on Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold), and, finally, hints at the possibility of a more active intervention in the Algerian conflict...

...All this is subjectivist logic [and] any attempt to write off or avoid the struggle against imperialism by advancing such arguments . . . can only undermine the morale of the broad masses of the people...

...The question inevitably arises as to what the West can do in this situation...

...It is likely, despite Mao's assertions to the contrary, that Khrushchev considers China to be the more vulnerable of the two...

...The accusations of "dogmatism" and "revisionism" can be resolved only when it is clear who has the authority to interpret the dogma and to say what "a creative development of Marxism" is...

...And the Soviet doctrine of deterrence is elaborated in Kommunist (July, 1960): "The enormously destructive and deadly character of contemporary military technique may in such conditions be a factor in the hands of the forces of peace and socialism, counteracting the possible unleashing of the new war by the imperialists...

...The Polish Trybuna Ludu of June 26 explains: "The imposition of the concept of peaceful coexistence is not an accomplished process and this process will not end until imperialism disappears from the face of the earth...

...Khrushchev feels confident that a strategy of at-trition-cum-subversion is more far-sighted than the more adventurist frontal policy advocated by the Chinese Communists, who have less patience with the "national bourgeoisie" and "neutralism...

...Tse-tung is against it, the average reader being left with the impression that "Russia is for peace" while "China is for war...

...The question is how deep it is and where it will lead...

...One should remember that it was Stalin (and not Khrushchev at the 20th Party Congress) who established the thesis of the non-inevitability of war...

...Whether the deterrent is the Stockholm Appeal or the hydrogen bomb, the victory of Communism was always to be achieved by all means short of global war and the local use of regulated violence...

...The Chinese charge of political naivete was answered by Izvestia (August 14), which said that "only fools and dogmatists can assert that peaceful coexistence is an attempt to establish 'full harmony' between capitalism and socialism, to reconcile the bourgeois and Communist ideologies...

...Now, without abandoning this view, the "centrist" Khrushchev, in turning against the "ultra-leftist" Mao, stresses that "for some states a nuclear war would be literally a catastrophe...

...The real issues are either wrapped in ideological mystifications or embellished by Western wishful thinking...

...The current Sino-Soviet dispute has produced the equally simplified notion that Khrushchev stands for "peaceful coexistence" while Mao Leopold Labedz, one of the most knowledgeable students of Soviet affairs, is associate editor of Soviet Survey...

...China's economic dependence on Russia is certainly a powerful factor for its preservation, but national revolutionaries have been known to act in defiance of economic rationality...

...Proletarian internationalism" is no substitute for authority in the system of national Communist states, and therefore the Sino-Soviet alliance is bound to be increasingly uneasy...

...Red Flag, April 16 and June 15...

...At the same time, the Chinese call the Titoists the "Yugoslav Trotskyists," while Borba (August 16) reciprocates by saying that "even Stalin did not fall into such adventurism as the Chinese...

...now they accuse the Russians of losing their nerve...

...That the Sino-Soviet divergencies are not rooted only in different assessments of the risks of war (implicit in Berlin, Formosa, the Middle East, Algeria, Cuba or the Congo) can be made clear from past as well as present doctrinal squabbles...

...The contradictions within the Communist monolith are no less antagonistic than those inside the Western alliance and are becoming more difficult to reconcile...

...Within the Soviet Union itself the problem of Stalin's succession may be solved by Khrushchev's defeating his opponents and assuming the mantle of authority...

...In this essay probing the potential and actual differences between China and the USSR, Labedz cautions against oversimplifying estimates of their conflicts, but insists that Sino-Soviet contradictions are no less antagonistic that those of the Western alliance and are increasingly difficult for them to reconcile...

...Having condemned the Chinese for "left sectarianism," Khrushchev promptly proceeded to stoke the imperialist fires, from Cuba to the Congo...

...The supposed unity of ideals is more likely to explode than to cement the alliance...

...In Khrushchev's picturesque language, imperialism is already more like a wolf than a tiger...

...Khrushchev's need to justify his actions in ideological terms has involved him, in the first place, in forthright falsification of Lenin, who never used the term "peaceful coexistence," and now, faced with the Chinese ideological barrage, he has been compelled to "develop Leninism creatively" by bringing Lenin up to date (without, of course, abandoning the false premise of his "peaceful coexistence" propaganda...

...Voluntary abandonment of sovereignty by such states in favor of some central Communist authority above all parties is most unlikely, and so is a voluntary division of the spheres of interests, a classical solution for "normal" states...

...It is conducted in a more veiled form (the targets of abuse remaining anonymous), and the doctrinal doubletalk is on a more esoteric level...

...As in Stalin's time, the disagreements are about the assessment of risks involved, of the prospects of success, about the directions of assault and about the sacrifice of sectional interests in the Communist movement...

...Doctrinal schisms can develop over the interpretation of quibbling jots and tittles, but there is usually only a remote connection between what the protagonists say and what they actually do...

...He concluded that "the possibility of the imperialists unleashing war cannot be ruled out" but confidently predicted that "we will make the imperialists fry like fish in the pan—without war...

...Thus Khrushchev has disappointed those who hoped for "normalization" of Soviet foreign policy on the basis of "legitimate state interests" (just as Stalin had disappointed them...

...It is the increased might and influence of the Soviet state that will bring the Communist victory nearer, explains Frantsev...

...For example, some of them say that the failure of the U.S...

...To be afraid of war and so to oppose all wars, even denying support to just wars, and to dream of begging peace from the imperialists will sap one's will to fight, bind one's own hands and feet, and weaken preparations against the imperialist war...

...Both sides profess to be against war and both agree that "imperialism" has not changed its nature...

...To complicate the picture, the still-surviving Trotskyists, in their organs, La Quatrieme Internationale and The Militant, support the Chinese argument that Khrushchev's policy dampens the revolutionary ardor of the masses...

...Professor Yuri Frantsev, the head of the High Party School (the Academy of Social Sciences) and chairman of the Soviet Sociological Association, explained in Pravda (August 7) that "leftist sectarian" attitudes can have a "demoralizing effect on the builders of the new society": "One cannot fail to see that war in modern conditions would result in considerable damage to productive forces, including the most productive force—the workers, and that mankind will face enormous difficulties in erecting a new social order after the catastrophe of a war...

...Pakistan...

...What has been called "the Tal-mudic debate over the inevitability of war" is a. basic discussion about Communist strategy and tactics "at the present stage of historical development," but at the same time involves the no-less-important problem of power relations within the Communist bloc...

...Thus it is differences of strategy and tactics that underlie the Sino-Soviet dispute—not the "revisionist" Khrushchev's change of the ultimate aims of the struggle...

...The outcome of the struggle will affect not only the distribution of power within the Communist bloc but may necessitate a reappraisal of Western political strategy...

...Despite Mao's frequently quoted statement about half of the Chinese population being able to survive a nuclear war, it is doubtful if this can be taken as a serious indication of his attitude toward war—just as Soviet military doctrine is not, and never was, an indication of real Soviet political strategy...

...Its implications are more far-reaching than the "ideological debate" about "socialism in one country" that went on in the '20s, but it is bound to be misunderstood if it is taken literally...

...But this can ultimately lead only to Western suicide by installments—it would just help Khrushchev prove that he is as good a Communist as Mao in his struggle against "imperialism...

...It is also interesting to recall that in the Malenkov-Khrushchev struggle Georgi Malenkov was castigated for the idea that war might result in a catastrophe for both sides, and this "rightist deviation" was replaced by a view (better for morale) that it would only result in the "end of capitalism...