The Sino-Soviet Split Comes into the Open
In 1960, the conflict between the Soviet and Chinese leaderships, which hitherto had been carried on “behind closed doors,” became an open struggle. This was signaled by an article entitled “Long Live Leninism” in Red Flag, on the occasion of the anniversary of the birth of Lenin.
O. Edmund Clubb has said of this article that it “was a polemic against those who, in the light of changed world conditions, would revise ‘the truths revealed by Lenin.’ It leaned upon the Moscow Declaration of 1957 to condemn the ‘modern revisionism’ that would (allegedly) contend that Marxism-Leninism was outmoded. It cited the Sino-Japanese War in (spurious) support of a favorite Maoist theory that man, not technique, determines the fate of mankind. The introduction of nuclear arms into national arsenals had not altered the basic characteristics of the epoch in which, according to Lenin, proletarian revolution confronted imperialism. ‘Until the imperialist system and the exploiting classes come to an end, wars of one kind or another will always appear. … Revolution means the use of revolutionary violence by the oppressed class, it means revolutionary war.’ And if there were nuclear war, ‘the result will certainly not be annihilation of mankind.’”
The article also strongly attacked the “Yugoslav revisionists.” However, Clubb noted, “By this time it was crystal clear that, if Tito had been selected as official whipping boy, the real object of Mao-Tse-tung’s aroused ‘Leninist’ scorn was Nikita Khrushchev.”[33]
Meanwhile, other events underscored the growing antagonism between the Chinese and Soviet leaders. On June 20, 1959, the USSR canceled its 1957 agreement to provide China with a sample atomic bomb and technical information on how to produce one.[34]
In July 1960, the Soviet Union ordered the withdrawal from China of all the Soviet technicians who had been aiding China’s economic development efforts. In all, some 4,000 people, including these experts and their families, were quickly returned to the USSR.[35]
In November 1960 there took place the last serious effort to settle the Sino-Soviet conflict.[36] This was a meeting in Moscow of representatives of eighty-one Communist parties—of the eighty-seven then recognized. That meeting drew up a joint statement. According to Clubb, “That lengthy document incorporated important elements of compromise with the Chinese point of view. It obviously did not represent fun conviction by the two chief contending parties that the words before them constituted the gospel truth as they saw it respectively. But any ambiguity that had crept into the phrasing to carpet over differences inevitably left the door open for individual interpretations as occasion might arise. In the circumstances, probably no other arrangement was possible: it had to be that way, for ‘agreement.’ … Khrushchev or Mao might equally define the Truth.”[37]
O. Edmund Clubb concluded with regard to the November 1960 conference, “It remained to be seen, even so, how useful the Statement would prove to be in practice as a renovated foundation for the Sino-Soviet relationship. The Soviets, from long habit, remained firm and categorical in the positions they had assumed—evidently more for pragmatic reasons having to do with Russian national interests than for considerations of dogma. The Chinese, for their part, ceded nothing to the Russians in terms of egocentrism and under Mao’s direction they had evolved a doctrine, termed true Marxism-Leninism, designed to serve the Chinese national interest—regardless of what might happen to the rest of the world. Accommodation of the two Romes, each purporting to be the seat of doctrinal orthodoxy, was evidently a near impossibility.”[38]
The Albanian Issue
Of all the ruling Communist parties, the only one that had expressed support for China was that of Albania, the Albanian Party of Labor. As a consequence, by mid-1961 economic sanctions were levied on Albania by the USSR and some of its Eastern European allies. Then, in October 1961, Nikita Khrushchev, in the Secretary-General’s report to the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, made a strong attack on the Albanian leadership, which was answered by Chou En-lai, who headed the Chinese fraternal delegation to the Congress. There were eighty parties represented by fraternal delegates, sixty-six of whom spoke before the meeting, and two-thirds of these joined in the denunciation of Albania.
Chou En-lai, after delivering his speech, rather ostentatiously laid a wreath on the grave of Joseph Stalin, with a ribbon saying “To the Great Marxist-Leninist, J. Stalin.” He thereupon left Moscow before the Congress was over, and was greeted by Mao Tse-tung on his arrival in Peking.
Following these exchanges, the Soviet Union broke virtually all relations with the Albanians. As it had done with China, it withdrew all of its economic experts and suspended virtually all other aid. Finally, it closed its embassy in Tirana and demanded that the Albanians close theirs in Moscow. At the same time, China began providing substantial aid to the small and weak Albanian economy.
In this period, polemics between the Chinese and Russian parties used Albania and Yugoslavia as proxies for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the CPSU. Chinese attacks on Yugoslavia were in fact directed against the USSR, while Soviet outbursts against Albania were really attacks on China.[39]
For more than a decade and a half after these events, the Albanian party and government were to remain the staunchest allies of the CCP and the Chinese People’s Republic.
In the years between the CPSU 22nd Congress and the fall of Nikita Khrushchev in November 1964, polemics between the Chinese and Soviet parties continued and intensified. These polemics took place in many forums. One of these was the series of “letters” exchanged by the two parties. Another was congresses of various other Communist parties, in which Soviet and Chinese fraternal delegates launched attacks upon one another.
Another forum consisted of the various “front organizations” of the International Communist Movement. These included the World Peace Council, the World Federation of Trade Unions, the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization, and the World Women’s Congress. Starting as early as 1960, conflicts between the Chinese and Soviet delegates took place in these and similar groups. In all cases, the Soviet Communists had effective control over these groups. In the end, the Chinese withdrew from all of them.[40]
The polemics in this period centered on a variety of issues. For instance, the Chinese were critical of Soviet behavior before and during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, while the Soviets took a “neutral” position, basically in favor of India, in the short Sino-Indian war later in 1962.
One particularly fertile source of dissention was the question of holding another full-blown congress of Communist parties. One of the most important documents in this exchange was a Chinese Central Committee statement of June 1963 setting forth “25 points” that should be discussed at the proposed conference.[41]
Of this document, O. Edmund Clubb has commented that “the hard-line positions assumed by the Chinese ideologues with respect to the moot issues made compromise agreement at the upcoming conferencing highly improbable. The pontifical, condescending tone of Peking’s communication, the arrogance with which the Chinese leadership defined the true Marxist-Leninist line, and the reversion to pure polemics at the end of the message, practically guaranteed the failure of the meeting. Peking in effect still insisted, as it had all along, that Moscow accept Maoism as the true Marxism-Leninism, with validity for world Communism. If Moscow refused, it was by definition revisionist.”[42]
41
See Keesing, op. cit., page 43; see also