COMMUNISTS: Behind the Doors

Somewhere amid the onion domes of Moscow last week the leaders of 80-odd Communist parties from all over the world were apparently locked in titanic struggle. After two solid weeks of argument, the supreme junta of world Communism was still threshing out the grand party line. Either way, it still meant to sweep the world, but Mao Tse-tung was arguing for more militancy and bellicosity than Nikita Khrushchev thinks necessary.

The very duration of the meeting bespoke its lack of results. But there were other confirmations of its failure. In Peking last week, the People’s Daily blasted “modern revisionists” who show themselves not “strong enough in the struggle against imperialism.” At that, Moscow’s Pravda roared back that the “main danger” to Communist progress nowadays was “dogmatism and sectarianism,” i.e., Peking’s refusal to accept Khrushchev’s doctrine of conquering the world by the slower techniques of coexistence.

The Line-Up. For the first time, Western correspondents in Moscow were permitted to refer openly in their dispatches to the Russian-Chinese quarrel, were even allowed to quote “well-informed” sources on the line-up of forces within the Red summit meeting. When hollow-cheeked Liu Shao-chi, Red China’s titular head of state, delivered a scathing four-hour denunciation of Khrushchev’s policy, the varied reactions in his audience clearly revealed the true quality of the dispute between Peking and Moscow. Outwardly an ideological quarrel, it is in fact a fight for power between Russia, the established conservative, seeking to maintain its predominance in the Communist world and China, the thrusting newcomer, driving for its own sphere of influence.

Predictably, Peking’s call for an aggressive approach appealed primarily to those leaders of Communist parties that have not yet come to power, or hold it only shakily, and are not under direct and complete Moscow discipline. The most wholehearted approval of Liu’s blast reportedly came from the leaders of none-too-sizeable Communist parties in four Latin American countries—Venezuela, Colombia, Uruguay and Chile—as well as from Albania, Indonesia and North Korea. Some delegations apparently split—e.g., Argentina’s intellectual Communist wing leaned to Liu, while its old-line trade unionists backed Moscow. At least one delegation played it down the middle: East Germany’s Walter Ulbricht professed devotion to Khrushchev but wanted a tougher policy on Berlin.

Solidarity No More. As the meeting dragged on, European Communists began busily to plant abroad the notion that Khrushchev had persuaded the majority to stick with peaceful coexistence for the next months while he sizes up the policies of President-elect John Kennedy. This had all the earmarks of a calculated leak designed to con the West into accepting Khrushchev as its favorite Communist. So did the report that Chairman Liu had boasted that his country now has four nuclear reactors in operation and will soon explode its first atom bomb. Once again, Moscow appeared to be trying to use the threat of China’s nuclear potential to disarm the West, while simultaneously telling Peking that with just a few years’ patience Communism could peacefully attain absolute military and economic superiority over the West.

At week’s end, there was still no comrades-united communiqué. Perhaps one could yet be agreed upon. But the Communist world was faced with the co existence of two truths—one in Moscow and one in Peking—and any pretense to “monolithic solidarity” was becoming more and more a mere façade.