Mao Checks Khrushchev:
NICOLAEVSKY, BORIS I.
MAO CHECKS KHRUSHCHEV and wins victory at recent meeting of 81 Communist parties in Moscow By Boris I. Nicolaevsky THE RECENT MOSCOW CONFERENCE of Communist leaders from 81 countries set a...
...Yet, there was no way to stave off the controversy...
...President Dwight Eisenhower's phenomenally successful tour of India and other Oriental countries, which demonstrated what wide popular support could be won for American activities in the East, and how easily Communist influence, largely bolstered by playing upon primitive anti-Western sentiments in Asia, could be weakened...
...Moscow feared that it might lose control over the Communist organizations of Africa and South America, which were already falling rapidly under Mao's influence...
...In all these matters the Chinese pointed out to the Kremlin the error of its ways, but their warnings went unheeded...
...The Chinese estimate of India was that the Government and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru were now leaning more on imperialism and coming out in their "true reactionary colors in domestic policies...
...But if the Ladakh incident had not taken place, the Indian Government would have cooked up some other issue so that it could divert the people's attention from its shift in foreign policy and also from its reactionary domestic policy...
...Konar reported on the matter at a session of the Regional Council of the CP in Calcutta...
...The situation is different in the East, where the regrouping inside the Communist movement still goes on with a variety of oppositionist or fellow traveler publications as the ideological outlets for such minor groups...
...Khrushchev, however, has used totally different approaches, depending on his audience, in arguing the feasibility of preventing a major war...
...The matter was first broached by the Chinese at a trade union conference in early June...
...Coming to the issues on which the Soviet-Chinese controversy centers, the Chinese said that the alternative to peaceful coexistence was not war: It was cold war...
...A Communist journal published in English in Peking furnishes ample material to bear out the above conclusion...
...In the 1920s and 1930s much valuable inside information on the Comintern and on the clashes between top men in the Kremlin was received through members representing Communist opposition groups...
...In the light of the decisions adopted by the conference of 81 parties, it seems certain that a new policy is in the making, and barring the possibility of another drastic swing, we should expect some major Moscow-inspired adventures involving the "colonial and semi-colonial nations...
...What we know about the conference and the struggle engendered by its convocation is woefully incomplete...
...The Moscow Conference was called to discuss Moscow's relations with Peking—and it ended with Peking's victory...
...Every issue carries accounts of great meetings and friendly talks arranged between Chinese Communists and delegations from Communist parties and groups in Asia, Africa and South America...
...The Chinese position has not yet been commented upon in the general press, save in a brief report by H. K. Konar, the important Communist leader of Western Bengal, who has personally discussed the matter with Chinese Communists, and who now heads the pro-Chinese opposition group in the Indian Communist party...
...To implement this decision, the Secretariat of the CC sent out an 84-page memorandum on the relations between the Russian and the Chinese parties, stating the Soviet position...
...Last fall two Indian Communists from Western Bengal, Damadran and Konar, went to Hanoi as "fraternal delegates" to attend a congress of the Vietnamese Labor party...
...In the Soviet estimation revisionism apparently was no longer the principal foe...
...hence, he thought it his duty to inform them of the Chinese stand in the matter — even though he realized that this constituted a breach of party discipline...
...The basic phases can now be traced...
...When asked point-blank what he had to say about the Chinese "line," he "had no reply...
...In Moscow, and in the Far East, Eisenhower would undoubtedly have been received even more enthusiastically than in India...
...It is interesting to note that only 78 parties are listed as officially participating in the Moscow Conference, presumably attended by delegates of 81 parties...
...At the same time Khrushchev pointed to certain influential groups in the ruling circles of Western democracies who were sincere in their desire for peace and for reaching an amicable understanding with the Soviet bloc...
...The mere fact that they were passed testifies to some basic changes in Soviet foreign policy...
...This would have meant a frustration for Mao and the Chinese Communists, indoctrinated as they had been with bitter antiAmericanism...
...Khrushchev, an old hand at double dealing, wanted no open altercation with Mao...
...Nearly all of the recently admitted parties represent "colonial and seral-colonial nations...
...According to the Chinese, the Government of India came to know of the Ladakh incident from its spies, or from Soviet reports, and began to make a great deal of noise about it...
...Directly after the conference Khrushchev flew to Peking, apparently in a last attempt to come to terms with Mao...
...According to the Chinese Communists, Konar stated, their differences with Moscow began during the first months following Stalin's death...
...Konar's report brought a barrage of questions...
...Soviet leaders considered it an interference with their internal Party affairs—an echo, according to the Chinese, of Tito's complaint against Stalin in 1948...
...Such tactics, however, could be used successfully only for a short while...
...Mao's victory was possible only because of the ambivalent position taken by the Soviet Communist party which would not support Khrushchev in some of his basic propositions...
...By putting forward the thesis that war would break out if peaceful coexistence were given up, Soviet leaders, according to the Chinese, were trying to create a panic among the people and thus deaden the edge of the anti-imperialist and anti-war struggles of the people in capitalist and colonial countries...
...According to some reliable reports, Mao, infuriated by the attack, hinted at breaking off relations with Khrushchev, and for that reason Frol Kozlov, not Khrushchev, reported on the Bucharest congress at the July plenary session of the Central Committee (CC) in Moscow...
...they thought the campaign to end the cult of Stalin a mistake...
...Of particular interest among these is Konar's report on Sino-Soviet relations in the weekly journal The Link, published in India...
...Today, few such groups exist in the West, and their ties with the official Communist movement have become rather tenuous...
...rather, in the current circumstances, it was inflexible dogmatism that had to be combatted...
...The President's visit was scheduled for MayJune 1960, immediately following the Paris summit conference, which was to convene in mid-May...
...They disapproved of what the Soviet leaders had done to Lavrenti Beria...
...Khrushchev could not have been defeated by a straight majority vote...
...Once in Hanoi, however, the two delegates were unable to avoid mingling with Chinese Communists—or perhaps they didn't want to (in fact, this seems to be the tenor of the present charges against the Bengali Communists...
...The Russians were then told by the Chinese: "If you do not fight revisionism, we will have to take up the battle against all distortions of Marxism single-handed...
...Recent press reports on pro-Communist elements in Laos and in Stanleyville being supplied with Soviet arms indicate clearly the direction in which future developments are likely to unfold...
...Khrushchev's sharp criticism of Mao on that occasion was upheld by every delegate, except those from Albania and Mongolia...
...In the later part of June top Communist leaders from many countries met unofficially at a congress of the Romanian Communist party in Bucharest...
...About the approach to the bourgeoisie and the governments of the newly liberated countries, the Chinese said that capitalism in Asia was weak in relation to imperialism and was bound to line up with imperialism whatever the attitude adopted by it earlier as a result of the pressure of the people...
...A direct consequence of his travels was U.S...
...At the time of the "counter-revolution" in Hungary the Soviet position was a "vacillating one...
...It was only with great difficulty," Konar went on, quoting from Chinese informants, "that the Chinese succeeded in convincing the Soviet leaders to take a firm line and proceed to the defense of the Hungarian revolution...
...The Chinese complained that even at the time of the 1957 Moscow Conference Soviet leaders would not take a firm stand and were ready to make major concessions to the Yugoslavs...
...As a result, the Indians brought back some Chinese comments on SinoSoviet relations...
...There was a swing toward the right in the governments of these countries...
...The other three parties were omitted...
...The Yugoslavs refused to sign the amended declaration, and later the Soviet leaders also went back on the declaration...
...Soviet and Indian party leaders need have no fears on this account...
...they were against any and all concessions to Tito, condemning the Soviet position with respect to Yugoslavia as subservient...
...The best illustration of Khrushchev's double dealing may be found in his thesis negating the inevitability of war...
...The Chinese also told Konar that while the American Embassy in Moscow was allowed to bring out its journal in Russian, the paper published by the Chinese was closed down because it sought "to propagate ideas in conflict with the official Soviet line...
...Fully in keeping with these facts, the decisions adopted by the Conference of 81 parties emphasize above all the struggle against "imperialism" and "colonialism," to which all other Communist parties' activities must be subordinated...
...Today the ratio has sunk to 41 per cent...
...and so forth...
...The Chinese Communists, headed by Mao, are clearly making a bid for world leadership in "the liberation movement of colonial and semicolonial nations" and are ready to defy Moscow on that score...
...With some qualifications, this information may be said to reflect correctly the position of the Chinese Communists...
...Mao, who doubtless thinks of himself as the world leader in the struggle against "colonialism" and "imperialism," charges that Khrushchev's policy interferes with "the liberation movement of the world's colonial and semi-colonial nations...
...This is the real reason behind the CPSU tactics at the MoscOw Conference of the world's 81 Communist parties...
...Apparently Moscow did not see fit to name these parties, although their representatives participated in the conference...
...Such anti-colonialist decisions could obviously have been blocked by the CPSU...
...A discussion would, in effect, have undermined the very foundations upon which the unity of the Soviet bloc rested...
...The Chinese also dismissed the possibility of peaceful transition to socialism...
...His overtures to the West were couched in terms calculated to be interpreted by the Western world in a way quite different from Khrushchev's own interpretations in addressing the Communist camp...
...Khrushchev's foreign policy inevitably weakened the very basis of Communist successes—especially in the East—as was apparent from Khrushchev's 1959 trip to the Far East...
...MAO CHECKS KHRUSHCHEV and wins victory at recent meeting of 81 Communist parties in Moscow By Boris I. Nicolaevsky THE RECENT MOSCOW CONFERENCE of Communist leaders from 81 countries set a landmark in the evolution of world Communism...
...consequently, little interesting information now reaches us through these channels...
...It was by no means a coincidence that in April 1960, on the occasion of the anniversary of Lenin's birth, the Chinese Communists came out openly against Khrushchev and his policy for the first time...
...The Chinese party countered with an even longer memorandum of its own...
...The Indian CP on the whole has sided with Khrushchev and passed a 13-page resolution to that effect...
...to discuss these matters openly was to invite disaster...
...It should be emphasized that Mao's claim to being the spokesman for the colonial and semi-colonial nations coincides with some important shifts in the balance of forces inside the Communist camp...
...This view, the Chinese asserted, followed from the fact that the Russians themselves had gone over to revisionist positions...
...This report merits attention all the more because it is not anonymous...
...The Chinese assured the Indians that they had no intention of crossing the MacMahon Line...
...A great many such delegations are sent to Peking, where they are received with open arms and given material aid...
...The idea has been made the pivotal point of Khrushchev's strategy as an all-too-obvious move to exploit the sincere yearning for peace and the enormous aversion to war shared by Soviet and Western peoples alike...
...Even the Indian Communists went along with him...
...When finally reported, it was treated in a vague, ambiguous manner...
...in fact, Khrushchev was on the verge of withdrawing Soviet troops from the country...
...Some highly significant communications have appeared in these periodicals, which, unfortunately, have been completely ignored...
...The trip had been approved by the Indian party leaders though A. Ghosh, secretary of the Indian CP, who instructed them not to engage in any talks with the Chinese...
...They believed that the Soviet line of peaceful coexistence and peaceful transition arose out of an incorrect understanding of "the nature of imperialism and the role of the working class...
...Soviet leaders did not like the "political education" of the technicians which the Chinese Party arranged as a gesture of its fraternal feelings for the Russians...
...Such an agreement, Khrushchev maintained, seemed both possible and advantageous for the Soviets...
...After the U-2 incident, Mao's position was greatly strengthened, and open discussion of his conflict with Khrushchev became inevitable...
...In this controversy the Communist parties of the entire Soviet bloc, except Albania and the Mongolian People's Republic, sided with Khrushchev, who in addition was supported by every Communist party of Europe, North America, Australia, etc...
...Mere allusion to the internal contradictions implicit in such an argument would have been sufficient to threaten the entire policy line evolved on this basis...
...Indian Communists, Konar pointed out, were familiar only with the Soviet interpretation...
...Mao's victory seems especially significant inasmuch as it is not justified by the relationship of forces within the Communist camp...
...It was only then," the Chinese added, "that the Russians agreed to accept the Chinese amendments to the draft declaration of 12 parties...
...The attempt failed and Khrushchev's personal relations with Mao deteriorated further...
...Any Western attempt to use force against the Communist bloc, Khrushchev has claimed, would be crushed by the force of Soviet arms...
...At a conference of Communist parties in 1957, 48 per cent of the delegates represented Western countries, including the Soviet bloc...
...By insisting that peaceful coexistence was possible, Soviet leaders were creating illusions about imperialism...
...Boris I. Nicolaevsky, co-author of Forced Labor in the Soviet Union, has written for Problems of Communism...
...All he would say was that he had merely related what was said by the Chinese...
...An even greater potential threat was seen in Eisenhower's proposed trip to the Soviet Union, which was to be followed by a tour of Japan, Korea and the Philippines...
...The part played by subjugated peoples is rapidly gaining in importance...
...Complaining bitterly about the unfriendly attitude of the Soviet leaders since then, the Chinese held that all the Russian technicians had been withdrawn from China even before their term of contract had ended...
...At the 20th Soviet Party Congress, Moscow chose to ignore the Chinese when they criticized the "distortions of Marxism" by Soviet leaders...
...it would have dealt a mortal blow to Khrushchev's foreign policy line...
...An ambiguous policy was bound to collapse if openly debated either with the West or in the Communist camp...
...The same factors also account for the conference's outcome...
...For a while the controversy between Mao and Khrushchev was kept out of the Communist press...
...The plenum officially approved Khrushchev's position, but also deemed it necessary to bring the matter into the open to be discussed by the Communist parties of the entire world...
...The victory, though partial, is Mao Tse-tung's and the statement issued after the conference, pervaded as it is with the spirit of compromise, is much closer to Mao's ideas than to Nikita Khrushchev's...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 3
