Communists: The Place Is Berlin, The Problem Is Peking

Anticipating President Kennedy’s tumultuous West Berlin reception, Nikita Khrushchev hastily arranged a trip of his own. He decided to go to East Berlin, ostensibly to celebrate the 70th birthday of East Germany’s spade-bearded Communist Boss Walter Ulbricht. Just 48 hours after Kennedy, on the west side of the Wall, had cried, “I am a Berliner,” Khrushchev arrived on the east side, bent on showing that he was a Berliner too.

But the thin welcoming crowd was not exactly eager to make him an honorary citizen. Minutes before Khrushchev’s turboprop landed at Schonefeld Airport, an announcer drilled the spectators in a proper greeting: “Now, when our friend steps out of his plane, we will all cheer in unison, hip, hip, hurrah.” When Nikita stepped out of his plane, all smiles, the crowd was silent and only the honor guard of soldiers shouted, officially. In contrast to President Kennedy’s welcome by more than a million West Berliners, a scant 250,000 East Berlin factory workers, secretaries and schoolchildren, marching in closed formations, turned out for Khrushchev. Along parts of the 16-mile route to the Red city hall, the only spectators were the Volkspolizei.

The real reason for Khrushchev’s presence in East Berlin, of course, was not that he wanted to help Ulbricht blow out the candles, nor was it entirely a matter of trying to counteract the emotions stirred up by the Kennedy visit. Most of all, Khrushchev wanted to meet with his East European satellite chiefs to close ranks before the Chinese arrive in Moscow this week to confer on the worsening Sino-Soviet ideological split.

Distribution Problem. Their dispute grew so angry last week that Moscow resorted to expelling Chinese diplomats, a treatment hitherto reserved for Western representatives. Behind this latest explosion was a 24,000-word Peking blast at Khrushchev’s policies, designed to show that his peaceful coexistence line is a cowardly betrayal of true Red revolutionaries, that he is shilly-shallying with the “paper tigers” of imperialism, and that he is “subverting” other Communist parties. When the Russians refused to publish the Peking letter, issued two weeks ago, the Chinese embassy in Moscow started circulating copies, thereby provoking the Kremlin to throw out three embassy attaches and two other Chinese.

Peking called the action “unreasonable and untenable,” noted that it was “unprecedented in the history of the relations between our two Socialist countries,” and accused Moscow of deliberately trying to create obstacles to the scheduled talks. Even as Khrushchev arrived in East Berlin, the Chinese embassy there went right ahead distributing copies of the Peking manifesto to interested bystanders.

Stalin’s Ghost. On hand for talks with Khrushchev in East Berlin were the satellite chiefs of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria. Absent, at least from among early arrivals: Rumanian Red Boss Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, who is not only feuding with Moscow over economic planning but is warm toward Peking, allowed its manifesto to appear in the Rumanian press. What confronted the small-scale Red summit meeting was the picture of the Sino-Soviet rift tearing into the Communist fabric all over the world.

In Moscow, a massive international convocation of female comrades found the Russia-China issue a cause for nearhysteria (see following story). Such Red front organizations as the World Federation of Trade Unions and the World Peace Council have also started squabbling over the issue. In Asia, Africa and Latin America, many Communist parties are feeling the split; where Communism has prospered by appearing “moderate,” party leaders bluntly denounce Red China and are beginning to purge Peking partisans. Even in Western Europe’s overwhelmingly pro-Moscow parties, some young Reds have responded to Peking’s revolutionary zeal, have joined Red Chinese “friendship societies.”

Khrushchev himself busily counterattacked against the Chinese. Before his Berlin trip, at a CentralCommittee meeting in Moscow whose chief task was to cope with the restlessness of Russia’s own intellectuals, Khrushchev dealt with the more urgent Peking problem. Typically, he interpreted President Kennedy’s “strategy of peace” speech at the American University last month as a sign of Western weakness, used it as evidence that his policy of peaceful coexistence is paying off. The Red Chinese, said Khrushchev, are really pessimists in pursuing a now-or-never revolutionary dogma, because they wouldn’t be in such a desperate hurry to start wars and revolutions if they really believed in the long-range, inevitable victory of Communism. Moreover, they use “the national, racial approach” in widening the schism between Communists. Khrushchev also heatedly defended his destalinization drive, attacked Mao Tse-tung (without naming him) for building his own cult of personality. Said Khrushchev, raising his favorite ghost: “We are against leaders who believe that they have been sent by God, and that the people are a mass that must listen only to them and applaud. That was typical of Stalin.”

Amid these exchanges, the atmosphere could scarcely be more unpleasant for the scheduled Sino-Soviet encounter this week—if indeed both parties are not too angry to go through with it. The split, Western observers were careful to point out, was still not “final and formal.” But as an informal quarrel, it seemed to be at least in the quarterfinals.