Communists: The Era of Many Romes

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A month ago he was anathema: the Yellow Peril, the shameless Pervert of True Marxism-Leninism, the terrible Trotskyite Deviationist and Splitter. Last week, as he stood bundled in a greatcoat and karakul cap atop Lenin’s Tomb watching the rockets roll by, Red China’s Chou En-lai presumably was still all these things to the fallen Nikita Khrushchev, who was nowhere to be seen, and possibly to many other Russians who have little love for the Chinese. But officially he was the honored guest from the great fraternal Chinese People’s Republic, and this just three years after he stormed out of the 22nd Party Congress and thereby ignited China’s momentous ideological feud with Russia. Now he was back, as cautious and cool as a man defusing a bomb.

When Red China’s Premier accepted Moscow’s invitation to the 47th anniversary celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution, it became obvious that Communism’s two big powers are trying to ease their unseemly, downright embarrassing differences, which had become something of a personal obsession to Khrushchev. There is no likelihood that the split will be healed in the foreseeable future, but it will obviously not remain the same. With Chou’s arrival in Moscow alongside delegations from every Communist nation in the world except Albania (which is being more Chinese than the Chinese), the post-Khrushchev era of Communism had begun.

Conference Pitch. Night was falling as Chou and his six-man entourage arrived at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. With him was Liu Shao-chi, China’s President. In the flare of flashbulbs, Chou’s face appeared hard and unyielding. Significantly, he was greeted by only half of Russia’s new diarchy, an equally sour-faced Premier Aleksei Kosygin. There were no bear hugs for Chou, though Kosygin did bring a bouquet of flowers. Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev stayed home, possibly to show that Russia was not overeager and to keep the visit a formal matter of governments, not an ideological meeting of parties.

Next day, Brezhnev addressed a jampacked audience in the Kremlin’s Palace of Congress with an appeal for Communist unity, and pitched hard for a world conference of Communist parties to deal with the problem. Chou, staring indifferently over Brezhnev’s shoulder, was the only man on the stage who failed to applaud. Khrushchev had called just such a meeting for Dec. 15, but with the intention of setting the stage for Peking’s excommunication from the Communist movement. Since Brezhnev, Kosygin & Co. still claim to be the legitimate heirs to Khrushchevism, Chou could not readily agree to the meeting, even though Brezhnev’s tone was more wheedling than warlike.

Brezhnev hewed closely to basic Khrushchevian doctrines, though he was vastly more subdued in tone. He praised peaceful coexistence and argued that “world war is not inevitable,” extolled the nuclear test-ban treaty, which Peking refused to sign, and made all the right noises about better relations with the U.S. while keeping Russia’s guard up. Sounding like a Western executive or politician promising that things were going to get efficient or he would know the reason why, Brezhnev proclaimed his intention “to combat resolutely red tape and window dressing.” He called for “fuller use of the material incentive,” meaning the profit motive, in “overcoming the lag of agricultural production.” In an indirect slap at Chinese collectivization, Brezhnev announced the removal of “unfounded restrictions” on private farming-“the plots of land worked by farmers, factory and office workers”-restrictions that Brezhnev even more than Khrushchev realizes are a drag on Soviet output.

A Call on Stalin. About the only concessions Brezhnev offered to China were promises to back Peking’s claims on Formosa and pledges to support “the national liberation struggle of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America,” thus hinting at a more pressing pursuit of revolution than Khrushchev had espoused. Both Chou and Castro’s henchman, Ernesto (“Che”) Guevara, applauded vigorously when Brezhnev warned: “Hands off Cuba.” As to restoring unity within the bloc, Brezhnev said: “There is every objective condition for cooperation between Socialist countries to grow stronger.” And at the Red Square anniversary parade, Brezhnev wound up old Rodion Malinovsky, his Defense Minister, for a rocket-rattling speech aimed as much at Chou’s ears as at the West’s. As new thermonuclear behemoths rumbled by -among them a submarine missile which was meant to rival the U.S.

Polaris-Malinovsky darkly warned that Russia’s armed forces would “protect the fatherland and all countries of the Socialist community against any plots of aggressors.” If Chou was impressed, he did not show it. To demonstrate his continued disdain for Khrushchevian wrong-think, he ducked around the back of Lenin’s Tomb and paid a reverential visit to Stalin’s modest grave outside the Kremlin wall.

Two Empires. “Moscow is the third Rome,” goes an old Russian saying.

“A fourth there shall not be.” The first, of course, was the Rome of Augustus: the second was Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire after the great schism split the Roman world.

The Chinese are obviously determined to prove the prophecy wrong and make Peking a fourth Rome.

The western Communist empire under Moscow is the more powerful in terms of armaments, industrial potential, living standards and education. The eastern empire under Peking is far more populous, and as a revolutionary force, it has the advantages of its very shortcomings: want makes it more spartan; envy of the good life makes it fiercer: having less to lose may make it willing to risk more. Moscow sounds more realistic in its appreciation of overwhelming Western strength; Peking sounds more fanatical in its insistence that the West is only a paper tiger-although beneath the propaganda it is unlikely that ancient China is really as unrealistic as all that. Willy-nilly, Moscow is more committed to “polycentrism,” while Peking still demands greater discipline among the Asian Communist parties in its domain.

But the fact is that nationalism, even though Communism can often exploit it, remains Communism’s greatest enemy; neither Moscow, nor in the long run Peking, will really be able to establish itself as a supranational, imperial center. The Communist era after Khrushchev is bound to be more than ever an era of not one or two but a great many Romes.

Independent Dependencies. Brezhnev made this explicit in his speech when he said that “the choice of one or another method and form of Socialist construction is the sovereign right of each people.” It was to safeguard this right that the Eastern and Western European parties had objected to Khrushchev’s China policy: a Moscow crackdown on Peking, they felt, might re-establish too much of Moscow’s old authority. But to safeguard that same independent right, the Western parties now also felt free to criticize Khrushchev’s ouster.

The most significant area of independence is represented by the Eastern European satellites, whose growing tendency to be more European than Eastern is one of the really important facts of the time. The tendency, of course, is not uniform, and some satellites are more satellitic than others. The lineup:

>East Germany remains as anxious as ever to please Moscow. Despite earlier muted objections to the handling of Khrushchev’s ouster, Party Boss Walter Ulbricht took pains last week to show his allegiance to the new “collective leadership” of the Kremlin. He flattered B. & K. by imitating them, showed up in Moscow trailing his puppet Premier, Willi Stoph, in a show of “collective leadership” of his own.

Never before had the spade-bearded Saxon shared billing with an underling at a major state function. But Ulbricht’s aping of B. & K. is only to be expected as long as 20 Soviet divisions occupy his country. He is jubilant at the prospect of a Sino-Soviet détente, particularly if it leads to a tougher Russian policy toward the West and renewed pressure on Berlin.

> Bulgaria, whose tubby top-dog Todor Zhivkov was Nikita’s best behaved satellite leader, has mixed feelings about both Khrushchev’s fall and the prospect of a detente with China. Fearful of angering the new Kremlin rulers, Zhivkov refrained from putting in a good word for his ousted protector, busied himself by promising his people greater democratization and streamlining of the Bulgarian economy, which is closely tied to the Soviet’s.

> Rumania is delighted both with Khrushchev’s fall and the prospect of keeping Red China within the pale of the Communist movement. Nikita was threatening to make things hot for independent-minded Rumanian Boss Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, whose refusal to turn his oil-rich nation into a “gas station” for Comecon threw Khrushchev’s bloc-wide economic scheme out of kilter.

Since last March, Dej has been trying to avoid a complete Sino-Soviet rupture, while believing that a complete rapprochement is neither possible nor desirable. Dej wants an amorphous Communist “commonwealth” in which Peking would provide steady ideological opposition to Moscow, thus permitting individual nations like Rumania to maneuver between the two poles. To show his continued independence, Dej himself stayed away from last week’s Moscow meeting, instead sent Premier Ion Gheorghe Maurer, his glad-handing traveling man.

> Poland shares the Rumanian attitude, but is more anxious than Dej to please the new Russian leadership. Party Leader Wladyslaw Gomulka allowed himself to be talked out of his misgivings over Khrushchev’s fall, was quick to endorse B. & K. Gomulka wants to preserve his country’s relative “Liberalism” and fears that a final split would cancel his freedom of action. The Polish public, however, fears that a détente with China might encourage the influential Stalinist elements that lurk within the Polish Communist Party.

> Hungary, where Janos Kadar enjoyed a “special relationship” with Khrushchev, has more internal freedom and more contact with the West than any bloc nation, despite the continued presence of Red Army troops. Last year some 70,000 Hungarians traveled in the West, while 200,000 Westerners-mainly Austrians, Italians and West Germans, as well as 12,000 Americans-came in and spent money. Budapest, with its fine but expensive restaurants, its Magyar beauties in beehive hairdos, its “Rockola” jukebox parlors, its elegant Hotel Gellert surrounded by Jags, Mercedes and Alfa Romeos, is by far the most European city in the bloc.

Kadar wants to keep it that way, last week struck a milestone diplomatic agreement with neighboring Austria that established a mixed commission to adjudicate border conflicts, may eventually raise the mine-strewn Iron Curtain between the two countries.

> Czechoslovakia, whose precariously balanced boss Antonin Novotny faces “elections” this month, was also tied closely to Khrushchev. Novotny failed to show at Moscow last week, sent his second-in-command, Party Secretary Jiri Hendrych, instead. At the same time, the Czechs announced sweeping economic reforms that effectively reject the Soviet system of centralized control, reoriented Czechoslovakia’s lagging industry-once Eastern Europe’s most advanced-along more Western lines. The profit motive is being given fuller play, and factory owners are permitted to work out their own supply-and-demand schedules.

Chances of Reconciliation. The satellites’ continuing desire for a richer, relatively more capitalist consumer economy is one major reason why a true reconciliation between Moscow’s world and Peking’s world is so difficult. Mao Tse-tung’s China still regards all this as a dangerous betrayal of Marxism. Thus the deep differences over economic policies, and the national and racial rivalries, remain. There is no sign that Peking will or can give up its competition with Moscow for the allegiance of the underdeveloped nations.

With the added prestige of its new atomic bomb, Peking has no reason to give an inch to the Russians. Last week People’s Daily in Peking again blasted Khrushchev and “modern revisionism,” which “emasculates the revolutionary working class.” While Peking also urged Russia to join China “against the common enemy,” Mao was not about to give up his version of Communism.

And what could Russia really do to patch the rift? B. & K. are saddled with a weak economy, cannot afford the massive economic aid that, before 1960, kept Peking tied to Moscow’s side. Token technical aid could be offered, and the new Russian leaders might win some Chinese good will by showing a more aggressive face to the West.

As a result of these distinctly limited possibilities, the anniversary “summit” fell far short of being a reconciliation meeting. Still, there were soundings and sniffings to find approaches to unity. In an anniversary message, Mao called for Communist unity to make the imperialist camp “shudder.” At the very least, all parties hoped to avoid a return to the vitriol and vituperation that had marked the conflict during Khrushchev’s last days. Both sides could benefit from a truce. And even a semblance of unity between Communism’s two empires could make the West’s life somewhat more difficult. Western policymakers have become extremely fond of the Communist split: whenever they ran out of ideas, they could always bank on the troubles the Reds were having among themselves. But whatever their differences with Moscow, the Chinese are fighting the U.S., not Russia, in Viet Nam and, more or less directly, throughout Asia. In short, no doubt Moscow will continue to have a serious China problem in dealing with Asia’s tough, arrogant and infinitely patient giant. But Washington has a China problem too, and one that is considerably more serious and pressing.