Communists: One-Third of the Earth

Shreds of morning mist drifted across Moscow as the first groups of delegates arrived in Red Square for the opening of the 22nd Communist Party. Congress. On one side, sunlight touched the golden onion-domes of the Kremlin’s 15th and 16th century churches. On the other, it flashed from the glass-walled, modernistic Palace of the Congresses, where fluttered the red flags of the 15 “republics” of the Soviet Union.

The huge auditorium was filled to capacity. The delegates were impressed by their surroundings, and what impressed them most was that everything worked perfectly, from the almost silent escalators to the air conditioning, from the earphones to the hot and cold running water in the marble lavatories. Snack bars and soft drinks were available in the seventh-floor restaurant, which Western newsmen were calling the ”Top of the Marx.” No one bothered to tell the impressed delegates that the tiled floors and kitchen refrigerators had been installed by two British firms, or that the air conditioning and electric wiring came from West Germany.

Such last week was the setting for Communism’s most serious public rift since Tito’s defection from Moscow. Instead of turgid rhetoric, there were revelations about Communism’s recent past that rivaled the purge trials of the 1930’s. Instead of parrotlike unity, there was the thrust of conflict between Red China and the Soviet Union. With typical Communist indirection, Moscow and Peking used tiny, insignificant Albania as the symbol of the quarrel and as their ideological whipping boy.

In the new hall’s vast rows of upholstered red seats—which were comfortable but lacking in leg room—were crowded 4,394 voting delegates and 405 nonvoting delegates from the Soviet Union and 80 other countries. They ranged from giants like Red China to pygmies like Martinique and San Marino. There were such old war-hens of the party as the U.S.’s grandmotherly Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, 71, and overblown Dolores Ibarruri, the famed La Pasionaria of the Spanish Civil War. And there were men whose hands are bloodied by countless executions, like Hungary’s sad-eyed Janos Kadar and Argentina’s fat Victorio Codovilla, who once was Stalin’s top agent in Spain, and such party hacks as France’s Maurice Thorez and Italy’s Palmiro Togliatti, both symbols of failure from countries that, scarcely a decade ago, seemed on the brink of Communism.

Broken Windows. After the visiting Communist VIPs filed onstage beneath a giant silvery head of Lenin embossed on purple plastic, the 13 members of the Soviet Party Presidium came on from stage left, headed by a fit-looking, somewhat thinner Nikita Khrushchev. “I propose we begin to work,” said Party Secretary Khrushchev briskly. “The 22nd Congress is now in session.”

Khrushchev was in top form. For six hours on opening day he ranted and rambled his way through foreign affairs. Next day he held forth for another six hours in an increasingly hoarse voice on the subject of Soviet domestic triumphs. Groggy but game, the delegates stayed with him.

Khrushchev sent a shock wave around the earth by announcing that he would “probably” explode a 50-megaton bomb (equal to 50 million tons of TNT) at the end of this month. The delegates applauded, presumably even those from Kazakhstan and the Arctic north of Siberia, where Soviet bombs are detonated. Nikita added, “We have said we have a bomb equal to 100 million tons of TNT, and it’s true. But we won’t explode such a bomb, because if we do, even in the remotest places, we might blow out our own windows.” Then, unctuously, he went on: “However, as they used to say, may God grant that we may never have to explode these bombs over any territory.”

Speaking relatively softly on Berlin, Khrushchev said he had the “impression” that the Western powers were “inclined to seek a solution on a mutually acceptable basis.” If his “impression” was true, he added, “we shall not insist that the peace treaty with East Germany be signed by all means before Dec. 31, 1961.” All he ever wanted, said Khrushchev, was Western “readiness” to settle the German problem—but presumably still on Russian terms.

As usual, Nikita railed at the U.S. as the “center of world reaction,” whose agents roam the world seeking to impose a new “colonialism” on recently independent nations and forever inciting “quarrels” among the peace-loving Communist countries. But today, he cried, “it is not imperialism, with its wolfish habits, but socialism, with its ideas of peace and progress, that is becoming the decisive factor in world development.” Conceding that the Communists in the U.S. had dwindled to a dismal few, Khrushchev reported that, nevertheless, the U.S. authorities were deathly afraid of them. He likened the U.S. Communist Party to a “small but valuable gold coin.”

Fun for Journalists. Khrushchev wrestled manfully with the persistent crisis in Soviet agriculture. He scolded farm leaders for ignoring party directives to plant corn instead of oats, and joked menacingly: “If these officials continue to be stubborn and keep land in oats, we will feed them oatmeal. And I do not mean oatmeal for children, but the coarse stuff, the kind about which Red army men in the Civil War used to say, ‘You cannot tell, damn it, whether you are getting your own ration or your horse’s.’ ”

Recalling that three years ago he had boasted that Russia would catch up with the U.S. per capita meat production by 1961 (instead, Russia has fallen even farther behind), Nikita remarked jovially: “American journalists are here. They like to make fun of this. But, gentlemen, may I tell you that if we talk that way our people are sure to do it.” All that was needed, he declared, was for the Congress “to call on the Party and the people, and the people will perform miracles.”

He soared to impressive adjectival heights in describing the Communist heaven awaiting those Russians who can manage to hang on for another 20 years. By 1980, he promised, the gross national product will have grown fivefold, industrial production sixfold, and total farm output 3½ times. No one would then work long hours for low pay, and every family would have its own rent-free apartment. Best of all, Nikita promised that by 1965 each Russian would have the incredible bounty of “almost three pairs of shoes per year. “Some of the 1980 “miracles” compared with current U.S. levels:

U.S. 1960 RUSSIA 1960 RUSSIA 1980

College Students 3,500,000 2,500,000 8,000,000 Steel (millions of tons) 99.3 72 250

Grain (millions of tons) 175 135 300

Pig Iron (millions of tons) 68 52 72

Electricity (billions of kw/h) 896 294 320

Even if the Russian forecasts are taken literally—and judging from past performance there is no reason why they should be—they are not really impressively ahead of present U.S. reality and probable future U.S. growth.

Slight Doze. With Communism thus briskly bounding forward in all directions all at once, it was curious that Khrushchev saw almost as many enemies at home as abroad. Nearly a decade after Stalin’s death, and years after Khrushchev presumably eliminated the last remaining Stalinists from positions of power, he found it necessary lengthily to repeat his past criticism of the “personality cult” and all the attendant evils of the Stalin era. Then Khrushchev proceeded to fill in some details of his fight with members of what he called the “antiparty” group, who had “violently opposed” his critique of Stalin because they wanted to perpetuate the bad old ways.

For the first time, Nikita publicly named Old Bolshevik Kliment Voroshilov, former President of the Soviet Union, as an anti-party man who “had joined the Devil, but then apologized.” The delegates applauded, and aging 80-year-old Voroshilov, sitting as an obscure member of the 41-man Congress Presidium, dutifully joined in by clapping his hands at his own condemnation. Nikita then went on to denounce Nikolai Bulganin, who was straightman in the touring company of Khrushchev and Bulganin until his 1958 demotion. Bulganin, in the audience as a delegate, seemed to wake from a slight doze at the mention of his name and made a few notes. The other anti-party villains—Molotov (relatively safe in Vienna), Kaganovich, Malenkov, Pervukhin, Saburov and Shepilov —seemed like candidates for dismissal from the party, prison or worse.

All at once, Khrushchev switched his attack to the smallest and least important of Red countries—Albania (see map). He complained that the Albanian Communist Party had remained Stalinist and added darkly: “We cannot make a concession on that fundamental point, either to the Albanian leaders—or to anyone else.”

Who the “anyone else” might be became evident as the delegates broke into thunderous applause—all, that is, but Red China’s Premier Chou Enlai, who, arms folded, stared into space.

Brother Countries. In the devious rhetoric of Communism, Khrushchev was speaking plainly enough. His blasts against the “antiparty” group, which has long since been put out of action, and against little Albania were really aimed at Red China. The presumed differences: Peking’s familiar “Stalinist” demands for more militancy against the West and less talk of peaceful coexistence, and its striving for Chinese pre-eminence over Moscow in Asian affairs. A sign of Russian worry over Red China’s ambition came last week in one of those veiled moves that can have considerable significance in the Communist world: the obscure Soviet oblast (province) of Tuva, on the border of the undecided satellite of Outer Mongolia, was abruptly raised to the status of an “autonomous Soviet Republic.”

Next day Chou En-lai coolly accepted the challenge. Striding to the podium, he announced that Red China was a friend of the Soviet Union and of “all other countries in the Socialist camp, which extends from North Korea to East Germany, and from North Viet Nam to Albania.” A scattering of applause was swiftly silenced when the nearly 5,000 delegates saw that Khrushchev and the other members of the Party Presidium were sitting motionless.

Chou En-lai went on to chide Khrushchev for his “public denunciation” of Albania: “To openly display in the enemy’s presence disputes between brother countries cannot be regarded as a serious Marxist-Leninist approach, and can only distress friends and delight our enemies.”

Chou then delivered a typical harangue against the U.S., but no one was really listening. As succeeding speakers came to the stand, each was clearly casting his vote in the row between Nikita Khrushchev and China’s Mao Tse-tung, the exalted twosome of Communism. One after the other, Khrushchev’s Soviet comrades called down fire and brimstone on the anti-party group and defiant Albania. Poland’s Wladyslaw Gomulka, East Germany’s tottering Walter Ulbricht, Hungary’s Kadar, Czechoslovakia’s Novotny and Rumania’s Gheorghiu-Dej followed suit.

Satanic Gossips. Some delegates sounded like gossip columnists on a satanic news sheet. Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan claimed that Albania’s Premier Mehmet Shehu said Stalin made two mistakes: he died too soon and he did not destroy the “present leadership of the Soviet Communist Party.” Culture Minister Ekaterina Furtseva told the Congress that Lazar Kaganovich was personally responsible for the execution of hundreds of railroad executives in the 1950s; the Ukraine’s Nikolai Podgorny labeled Kaganovich a “degenerate” and a “real sadist.” A Byelorussian delegate charged that former Party Secretary Georgy Malenkov helped the secret police frame innocent men by charging that they belonged to an anti-Soviet underground movement.

Communist leaders from the West quickly joined the chorus. But Chou En-lai was not totally friendless in the Palace of Congresses. North Viet Nam’s wisp-bearded Ho Chih Minh and North Korea’s chunky Kim II Sung refused to join Khrushchev in condemning Red China by denouncing Albania.

The Same End. With the two major Red powers locked in a struggle for leadership, and East and West choosing sides, little Albania at week’s end was sounding more and more like the voice of the opposition. From Tirana, the Albanian radio sneered at Khrushchev as an “anti-Marxist” and a “splitter” of Communist unity. The radio crowed: “We shall win because we are not alone. Albania will not bow before the attacks, calumnies or pressures of Khrushchev and his followers.”

There was a natural tendency in the free world to rejoice at this falling out, and perhaps to root for Russia’s “soft” line to triumph over Red China’s “hard.” While it must and can exploit Communist rifts, the West is in danger of deluding itself on this issue, for “soft” and “hard” are relative. While Khrushchev may seem soft to Peking, he appears exceedingly hard elsewhere. These terms are, ultimately, only labels for different strategies aimed at the same end: the overthrow of capitalism, the triumph of Communism. That is a simple but important fact that the West cannot disregard without peril, in dealing with the men who rule one-third of the earth’s people.