CRACKS IN THE KREMLIN WALL
Whitney, Thomas E.
Cracks in the Kremlin Wall by THOMAS E. WHITNEY Of all the dramatic developments on the world stage today, few are as currently significant or as potentially decisive as the changing relationship...
...The time may soon come—and sooner than many suspect—when an active, creative, bold American foreign policy may reap a rich harvest for peace...
...They suggest that at the heart of the matter lies Chinese Communist determination immediately to establish domination over the Communist movement in Asia and Latin America and ultimately over all of the world Communist movement...
...The other school of thought would hold that a deterioration of Chinese-Soviet relations presents an opportunity to try to reach settlements of important issues with both China and the Soviet Union...
...His articles have been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Reader's Digest, Look, The New Republic, and The New York Times...
...Describing the work ol Soviet technical specialists in Communist China, it used the past tense...
...The Russians think this idea is absurd...
...It would not, in the light of the rigidity of the Chinese Communist position and the heavy heritage of American policy in past years, be easy to achieve such a situation...
...But it might be worth a try...
...It is also a time of great ferment within Communist countries as well, particularly in those, including the Soviet Union, which only a short while ago emerged from Stalin's cruel oppression into a more relaxed, tolerant, lreer atmosphere...
...Yugoslav Communists who are extremely interested in the question have been commenting quite openly and freely...
...While the Albanians have been attacking "the Khrushchev gang," they have also been organizing Soviet-Albanian friendship meetings at which warm Albanian affection for the peoples of the Soviet Union and fealty to true Marxism-Leninism are stressed...
...It has even been reported— and it may well be true—that the Soviet specialists were pulled out at crucial points in the construction of the enterprises in which they were engaged, that they took away their blueprints, and that Soviet shipment ol equipment to the projects was stopped at the same crucial points...
...Radio Moscow, Radio Tirana, and Radio Peking pour out daily streams of denunciation of American policy toward Cuba, of the "imperialists" in the Congo and elsewhere, and the like...
...The Chinese Communists view the world conflict as a military strug-gle against "capitalist imperialism," which involves a more aggressive, risk-taking foreign policy, while the Kremlin, equipped with an arsenal of nuclear weapons whose destructive power it understands and dedicated to the preservation of the gains of some forty years of Communism, is committed to a more cautious foreign policy designed to prevent war and achieve the worldwide spread of Communism through the struggle ol "peaceful competitive coexistence...
...Once upon a time—and not so long ago—there was one man, Stalin, and one center, the Kremlin, and one movement, and every Communist in the world, except for perhaps a few beseiged Chinese Communists living in caves in Yenan, took orders from Moscow and was either purged physically or expelled from the ranks of the movement if he questioned the center of authority...
...Ghana is perhaps moving towards its own independent African variety of totalitarian socialism...
...The Soviet-Chinese difficulties, in any case, date from long before the Twenty-second Party Congress in Moscow...
...The Russian-language magazine, Friendship, issued by the Soviet-Chinese Friendship Society in Peking for distribution in the Soviet Union, was closed down without explanation in June, 1960...
...Pravda tarried an editorial dedicated to Soviet-Chinese friendship— buried, however, way inside...
...The history of all schisms in the Marxist-Leninist movement is that they never heal and always widen...
...A search in Pravda for January turned up just two items on China, a report of the publication in Peking of the stenographic report of the Soviet Twenty-second Party Congress and a story about a Chinese woman textile worker...
...Ihe suggestion is that the Soviet withdrawal of its China aid program was deliberately carried out in such a way as to cause Peking maximum difficulty and loss...
...Then, too, there is the key consideration involved in the doctrinal disagreement over tactics and strategy...
...And he gets the cheers of all the Communist factions—including both the Yugoslav revisionists and the Albanian dogmatists...
...And yet Panyushkin was recently given this liaison assignment...
...Reading the copious ideological-propaganda material emanating from Communist centers these days, one is certain that the Russian Communists in attacking "dogmatists" and the Albanian heretics are actually attacking the Chinese Communists led by Mao Tse-tung...
...In previous years, in even greater contrast, the anniversary was given splash play—with lead editorials, articles, reports on meetings attended by leaders, exchanges of messages, relevant photographs, and cartoons...
...What has happened to this Communist monolith...
...Yet all the division and differences within the former "Socialist Camp" pale in comparison with the split between Moscow and Peking...
...And the Soviet Union, which recently traded spies with the United States and sent Adzhubei to have lunch with the President, has made an interesting gesture in the area of possible scientific connection with space flights...
...Another Albanian broadcast described Khrushchev as anti-Marxist and pictured him as giving forth bellows of "counter-revolutionary" shouting...
...He served for three years as Chief of the Economic Section of the American Fmbassy in Moscow and for six years as Moscow correspondent for the Associated Press...
...Meanwhile, a virtual state of "cold war" developed between the Soviet Union and Albania...
...the Albanians from the international Communist movement...
...The Pravda editoiial made another telling point...
...The Russians on their part have been expressing a great deal of sympathy for the "oppressed" Albanian people, labeling the Albanian party line as "vicious and slanderous" and directed at "undermining THOMAS P. WHITNEY has studied and written of Soviet affairs for a quarter of a century...
...Ever since the Soviet Twenty-second Communist Party Congress in October, 1961, which saw the launching of a bitter assault by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and his colleagues against the anti-Khrushchev, pro-Peking line of the Albanian Communist leadership headed by Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu, bad feeling between Moscow and Peking has been partly out in the open...
...It is equally not entirely beyond the realm of possibility that Communist China might show sudden interest in some kind of Far Eastern settlement with the United States...
...Cracks in the Kremlin Wall by THOMAS E. WHITNEY Of all the dramatic developments on the world stage today, few are as currently significant or as potentially decisive as the changing relationship between the two giants of the Communist world, the Soviet Union and Communist China...
...The Chinese are said to believe that the Soviet Union must sacrifice its own rate of development in order to provide economic assistance on a truly gigantic scale to China and other underdeveloped Communist coun-Dies until they have caught up with the Soviet Union...
...the unity" of the world Communist movement...
...The Soviet-Albanian feud has gone much further than words...
...The two countries can, if they feel impelled to, patch up their internecine differences for the time being, agree to disagree about the Albanian heresy without bitter recriminations directed at each other, and find common ground in the violence of diatribes against imperialism and "imperialist" powers...
...The best Tirana barb-of-the-month, unquestionably, was the solemn Albanian commemoration of the anniversary of the Soviet victory of Stalingrad —with the commentary that the sacred name of Stalingrad (renamed Volgograd by Khrushchev in the fever of de-Stalinization)—had gone down forever in history...
...A bearded Latin dictator discovers a couple of years after he has already imposed totalitarian socialism on Cuba that he was really a concealed Marxist-Leninist all the time...
...The era of polycentric Communism has arrived...
...On the surface, a frigid truce is being carefully preserved between Moscow and Peking for the time being...
...What are the basic issues between the two parties right now...
...And it is a time of development of schisms between Communist countries and the growth of wide differences in their methods and views in the area of social-economic organization and practical politics...
...As the New York Tunes reported, Panyushkin is believed to be persona noil grata with Mao Tse-tung and his appointment "was regarded as a calculated effront to the Chinese Communist leadership...
...and, soon to be published, "Russia in My Life...
...And in the history of the relationship between the two parties there is much bitterness that goes back to the end-of-Stalin era and before...
...Among some recent invective heard from Radio Tirana was a bitter attack on Alexei Adzhubei, Khrushchev's son-in-law, for his visit with President Kennedy, with the commentary that Josef Stalin did not send members of his family to dine with "imperialists...
...It is a time of extension of totalitarian socialism into new areas, continents, and cultures...
...The Marxist-Leninist movement, and the general movement toward totalitarian socialist forms of rule, continues to develop and expand...
...These seem to be indications that various Communist countries are seeking to improve their relations with the non-Communist countries...
...There may not be any open break or violent eruption between Moscow and Peking now—and perhaps not for a while ahead...
...Subsequently Peking, showering attacks on "revisionists" in the international Communist movement, used every opportunity to stress warm feelings for the Albanian leadership...
...Albanians can shout any oaths they please at the Kremlin...
...One of the Soviet officials listed in Pravda February 14 as attending the Soviet-Chinese friendship meeting in Moscow was A. S. Panyushkin, described as "Head of a Section of the Central Committee...
...His books include "The Communist Blueprint for the Future," "Has Russia Changed...
...It is not entirely beyond the realm of possibility that the Soviet Union, despite the recent rash of belligerent statements, might yet show a sudden interest in some genuine, practical, and enforceable form of control over nuclear weapons which would prevent Communist China from acquiring such weapons...
...It would hold that in the Far East the United States ought to get tougher than ever with the Chinese Communist regime, tighten the blockade further, try to force European allies to stay in line with it, strengthen to the maximum possible extent the Chiang Kai-shek government, and meanwhile exert maximum pressure to keep Communist China out of the United Nations...
...The Soviet-Albanian feud is important in itself, but its significance is greatly magnified because the feud is a point of disagreement between the Soviet and Chinese Communist Parties...
...For the anniversary of the signing of ttic Soviet-Chinese Pact of Friendship and Alliance on February 14, Pravda and other Soviet papers relaxed their ban on China material, but in stub a backhanded way as to be almost an insult...
...It probably declined still further in 1961...
...There is at least the possibility that we are now entering a whole era in international affairs in which the lines between sides will be drawn much less sharply than they were— an era in which conditions will be more complicated and elastic than they have been since before World War II...
...It would hold in particular that American policy in the Far East is in a blind alley and that the United States can hope for reasonable benefits from a new and promising situation only if it tries to reach some moderately satisfactory, long-term modus vivendi with Red China in which American diplomacy can in some measure play the Chinese off against the Russians and vice versa as the situation indicates...
...The section he heads is the agency entrusted with loreign intelligence, a rather curious place in which to look for the man to head up liaison between the Soviet and Chinese Communist Patties...
...Similarly, the Chinese Communists, in bitterly attacking Yugoslav and other "revisionists," are actually attacking Khrushchev and the Russian Communists...
...The Soviet press has been pursuing a policy of saying virtually nothing about China...
...If relations between Communist China and the Soviet Union de-terioriate further, it is probable that there will be two opposing schools of thought in Washington as to how to take advantage of the ensuing situation for maximum practical benefit for the United States...
...The Russians have pulled out Soviet advisers and technicians, withdrawn their diplomatic representation, expelled the Albanian diplomatic delegation from Moscow, virtually ceased trade relations, and kicked the Albanians out of the Warsaw Pact and the East European Council for Mutual Economic Assistance...
...Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., special aide to President • Kennedy, recently returned from a worldwide tour for the White House with the report that perhaps the single most striking fact he found in both Asia and Europe is the deepening conflict within the Communist world...
...That is possible—and it is also possible that the coming opportunity to make peace, if there really is one, may be the last...
...The recent brilliant scries of articles by Harrison Salisbury in the New York Times following his last visit to the Soviet Union pointed up clearly and re-vealingly the sharp division in the Soviet body politic between the liberals who are seeking an expansion of freedoms and a genuine democratization of the system and the neo-Stalinists who, while paying lip service to de-Stalinization, are supporting authoritarian methods of rule and ruthless suppression of opposition, much on Stalin's pattern...
...Neither Pravda nor Izvcstia carried New Year's messages between Moscow and Peking, though a number of other messages were published, including some from "imperialist" countries like the United States...
...Even in its present stage, it has important implications for world peace and American foreign policy...
...There was also a report and photograph of a Soviet-Chinese friendship meeting...
...One school would hold that if the SovietChinese alliance has collapsed into rivalry and conflict, then the United States can well afford to get tougher and more intransigent on all principal issues with both the Soviet Union and Communist China...
...But no matter how the Chinese and Soviet Communists handle their mutual relations in the future, one thing is certain: It will never be possible to restore even the appearance, and even less the essence, of "monolithic unity" of the international Communist movement...
...One thing is certain: The way to increase the strong centrifugal forces at work within what was once called the "Socialist Camp" is to aid and abet in every imaginative way possible relaxation of international tension...
...There were several other Chinese-Soviet "friendship" gatherings in Moscow—one addressed by Foreign Minister Gromyko— which were reported perfunctorily in the Soviet press...
...If relations between Communist China and the Soviet Union deteriorate further, some exciting opportunities may open up...
...It is worth noting that personal dislike between Khrushchev and Mao, which may be founded on such traditional national attitudes as Russian contempt for the Chinese and Chinese feelings of superiority to all foreign barbarians, including the Russians, may be an important factor...
...Somehow one feels that any dynamic, aggressive, xenophobic Chinese regime, regardless of its social-political makeup, would be certain to incur, sooner or later, the hostility of a Russian regime with these same characteristics...
...It seems unlikely that in the long run it can be smoothed over...
...Unnoticed, an Arab variety of totalitarian socialism which hardly pays even lip service to Marxism-Leninism is being imposed on Egypt...
...To some extent there is a similar division of opinion in other Communist countries, particularly those of Eastern Europe...
...The Communist Chinese can intrigue for control of parties in Southeast Asia and elsewhere against the Russians...
...There have been reports that Soviet specialists have been pulled out of China...
...But no longer is there one man, one center of authority, one discipline, one movement...
...Chou En-lai, the Peking delegate at the Soviet Congress, openly attacked the Soviet position on Albania, then walked out of the Congress and went home...
...The Moscow-Peking dispute does not appear to be founded in transitory factors but imbedded in fundamental political dynamics...
...The Albanians, who do not have good relations with any of their neighbors—neither Greece, nor Yugoslavia, nor Italy— are as isolated as any country can be, with their only friends, the Chinese Communists, thousands of miles away and not in condition to provide help in any case...
...Another Yugoslav comment is that the crucial issue is whether it is right or not lor the Soviet Union to continue its pell-mell pace of industrial-economic development and enter into that state of society defined by Marxists-Leninists as Communism at a time when such countries as China and other underdeveloped socialist nations are left far behind...
...Soviet-Chinese trade declined by an appreciable percentage in 1960 compared with 1959...
...The revolution, which accomplished its first seizure of political power in Russia in 1917, rolls on...
...What are the roots of this conflict...
...This is a conflict which if it goes further will rend the entire Communist movement...
...Communist China, which during the last two years made large grain purchases from Canada and Australia, evidently is quietly expanding its trade with such Western countries as Britain and Germany and also looking toward Japan...
...This school would hold, for instance, that on the issue of Berlin, instead of seeking some more permanent and satisfactory modus vivcndi than that of the present, the United States ought to try to force an unconditional backdown of the Soviet Union from its demands for a reexamination of the Berlin situation...
...The Russians have encouraged all their allies and friends to ostracize...
...A propaganda conflict, comparable in bitterness of tone to that between Stalin and Tito from 1948 to 1953, is raging continuously between Moscow and Tirana...
...Last year, in contrast, the anniversary editorial was front-paged in the Soviet press, and Pravda turned over an entire page to the Chinese Communist newspaper, The People's Daily...
...Nikita Khrushchev got less than an enthusiastic reception in late 1959 when he visited Peking...
...On a different plane, Albania has made known its interest—to the accompaniment of Soviet jeers—in the establishment of relations with Western European countries...
...In this year's report on the anniversary, one little item was both ironic and meaningful...
...The meeting was outstanding for the absence of the most important Soviet leaders and for being held in a hall of minor importance...
...The independent Yugoslavs, having established their right to go their own way, can try to get the best of both worlds, maintaining good relations with the Soviet Union and the United States and getting economic help from both as well...
Vol. 26 • April 1962 • No. 4
