Expertise Mixed with Scuttlebutt:
JUDY, RICHARD
Expertise Mixed with Scuttlebutt Dragon in the Kremlin. By Marvin L. Kalb. Dutton. 258 pp. $4.50. Reviewed by Richard Judy Fellow of the Russian Research Center, Harvard University "FROM a...
...After last year's student rioting in Tokyo, such a description strains credulity...
...If Moscow is giving no more thought than Washington to these implications, both are in for some surprises...
...Many persons have traveled to Moscow, and many others make it their business to know something about Sino-Soviet relations...
...The result is more a travelogue than a serious study...
...The "story" was developing with incredible speed while Kalb was writing it, and this accounts for part of the book's unevenness...
...The author correctly stresses the crucial role of the overseas Chinese in many Southeast Asian countries...
...In New Delhi, Kalb thought that a power struggle within the Chinese Communist party between "Chinafirsters" and "Russia-firsters" might "prove to be one of the important explanations for the contradictions that have arisen in the alliance...
...Events in 1960 moved so rapidly that most of the last chapter of the book is a frantic attempt to keep up with them...
...Unfortunately, this book contains too little systematic and topical analysis...
...The interviews in Taipei with various Mainlanders revolved around the power struggle question...
...Kalb believes that the communes constituted a "dramatic challenge for the ideological supremacy of the Socialist world," and concludes that this was "possibly the most irritating question ever to arise in the RussianChinese alliance...
...Opinions, prejudice and testimony are lumped together indiscriminately, and little attempt is made to distill the relevant from the puerile...
...Nothing could be more obvious than that this day will carry the gravest implications for both the United States and the Soviet Union...
...Brain-picking on a global scale is probably most useful as a complement to careful evaluation of published materials...
...Profoundly skeptical of Soviet abilities to analyse correctly revolutionary situations and distrustful of Soviet policies, the Chinese suspect the Russians of a willingness to temporize and to coddle imperialism...
...The great outburst of recriminations between the two great Communist powers that thundered to a crescendo in Moscow last November led Kalb to conclude that the "major divisive issue is that of war or peace...
...By the time he arrived in Asia, the commune question seemed paramount: "In every interview, in every capital, the commune question throbbed like an infected sore...
...While it does stimulate an awareness of the dangers that the alliance poses, it fails to supply much new information...
...The book was not meant to be definitive, and it isn't...
...Dragon in the Kremlin is the product of that search—a product of most uneven quality...
...Frictions on these specific matters mount as each of the Communist colossi competes for support from the fraternal parties...
...Eventually, in Taipei, five Asian capitals and 72 pages later, we returned to the "power struggle...
...Others believe the history of pre-1949 relations between Moscow and Mao Tse-tung left traumatic imprints on Chinese memories—the disaster of 1927, Stalin's attempt to dissuade Mao from revolution in 1945 and the Soviet dismantlement of Manchurian industry...
...Kalb concludes that all of the Southeast Asian Communist parties, except the Vietnamese, now support Peking...
...Kalb reasoned that their combined knowledge, if tapped, would enable him to write the "story" of the alliance...
...the interviews range in quality from the provocative excellence of Richard Lowenthal in London to the superficial mediocrity of scuttlebutt overheard in the Raffles Hotel in Singapore...
...My own guess is that the commune controversy was a relatively minor tiff representing a clash between Chinese pride and independence on the one hand, and on the other, a pragmatic Russian concern lest the communes fail...
...Differences of approach and outlook imply different policies for the revolutionary movement, for relations toward the national bourgeoisie and for attitudes vis-à-vis the Western powers...
...But his assertion that "a well-conceived and administered land reform has given the [Formosan] peasant a personal stake in President Chiang's future" is not likely to convince skeptics...
...Nearly everyone with whom he talked in Taiwan appeared to have his own axe to grind, and Kalb's agnostic view on this possible source of conflict appears justified...
...For example, many Asian Communists, and especially the Chinese, appear convinced that economic growth and material prosperity have contaminated the Russians with bourgeois ideas and cooled their revolutionary fervor...
...He discusses various explanations of the origins of these Sino-Soviet differences...
...standing alone it seems gossipy and rather superficial...
...Their own history convinced the Russians that the communes would wreak havoc with Chinese agriculture...
...In June 1959, he embarked on a globe-circling search for opinions about Sino-Soviet relations...
...such a catastrophe would seriously harm the Communist movement in Asia, and Russia would have to bail China out...
...Kalb does little to lead us through this bewildering thicket of conflicting opinion...
...All experts are expert, of course, but some are more expert than others...
...There are several interesting and important things in this book that do not touch directly upon SinoSoviet relations...
...Fourteen of the book's 15 chapters report Kalb's interviews in various cities of the world—from New York to Europe, India, Southeast Asia and Japan...
...Some experts believe the alliance to be a "marriage of incompatibles" because of the Chinese contempt for foreigners, the ancient Chinese vision of China as the "middle kingdom" and other wide divergences in mental outlook...
...Reviewed by Richard Judy Fellow of the Russian Research Center, Harvard University "FROM a Western standpoint," writes Marvin Kalb, "there is an unprecedented and dangerous shortage of information about the RussianChinese alliance...
...Hardly anyone, I think, would cavil at this estimate of our ignorance, and Kalb's efforts to illuminate this dark corner are laudable...
...Calling the Japanese intellectuals and students coffee-sipping nihilists who "have no interest in treaties, wars, or dignity" is hardly consistent with his discussion of the Zengakuren...
...When the author left New York for the European capitals two years ago, it seemed that the most important issues in the Moscow-Peking dispute were the Chinese role in Eastern Europe in 1956 and the Chinese communes...
...In the New Delhi chapter, for example, I was just warming to Kalb's dissection of a "power struggle" within the Chinese Communist party when it was time to pack my mental bags and be off to Bangkok...
...Kalb is on firmer ground when he tells us that the day is close at hand when China will possess nuclear weapons and earth satellites...
Vol. 44 • July 1961 • No. 28
