Communists: An Un-Meeting of Minds

We will have nothing to do with your rotten revisionist undertaking!

—China’s reply to the invitation

Ideological differences between the world parties are too deep to be solved at the present time.

—Pravda on the eve

These two views of the possibility of Communist unity more or less set the theme for this week’s worldwide conference of Communist parties in Budapest. Still, it is remarkable enough that it is taking place at all. For nearly eight years, the Russians have been vainly trying to bring about a Communist summit, chiefly in order to embarrass and isolate the renegade Chinese. Now that they have finally got their way, they have few illusions about what will be achieved. In fact, the meeting demonstrates the parlous disrepair into which the once proud Communist monolith has fallen.

Bellicose Course. The last time such a large Communist conference was held was in 1960, when 81 party leaders—including those from China, Albania and Cuba—came to Moscow at the Russians’ invitation. Though China was even then embarked on a bellicose course, it was cooperative enough to sign the meeting’s final communiqué. This time at least 15 parties will boycott the conference. China, of course, is not coming. Albania would rather send a delegate to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. North Korea and North Viet Nam are not expected to show because they fear losing Chinese aid and diplomatic support. Cuba’s Fidel Castro is not sending anyone because he bristles at Moscow’s conservative line in Latin America. Among the Asian parties that are staying away are the Japanese, who are hoping for a rapprochement between their party and China. Revisionist Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, who broke with the Cominform in 1948, was not even invited. Neither were the Burmese, Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian Communists, probably as punishment for their closeness with China.

The Russians did succeed in convincing the lone-wolf regime of Rumania to attend—but at a price. They agreed 1) that the conference would be downgraded to the status of a mere preliminary to a more ambitious future conference; 2) that no party—meaning China—would be “excommunicated”; and 3) that, in order to give the meeting even less importance, party theoreticians such as their own Mikhail Suslov, and not the top bosses, would lead the delegations. Even after getting these concessions, the Rumanians are likely to attend mostly to block any resolutions that might hamper their independence; the same is true of Czechoslovakia’s new party leaders, who are showing increasing signs of a more liberal “revisionist” policy.

However amicable this week’s talks may be on the surface, they are not geared to bring the various parties and their views any closer together. Whatever their quarrels, though, the Communists can still reunite solidly on one point: condemnation of U.S. policy in Viet Nam. Indeed, Soviet bloc party chiefs who met in Prague last week to celebrate Czechoslovakia’s 20th year under Communism spoke ominously of considering in Budapest “a joint program of action in the struggle against imperialism.” That, in Communist parlance, can only mean some new effort by Russia and Eastern Europe to promote the cause of Hanoi.