CHAPTER SEVEN

Soviet-Chinese Relations on the Eve of the
“Cultural Revolution”

A comparatively short period, that from October 1964 to August 1966, holds a particular place in the history of Sino-Soviet relations.

At this time the Chinese situation was characterized as one of sharp aggravation of antagonisms which, after long development in darkness, blossomed in the fall of 1966 as the so-called “cultural revolution.” The basis of the political crisis encompassing the entire sphere of Chinese society was the growing contradiction between the antisocialist course of Chinese foreign and domestic policies and the development of the PRC along the socialist path. Maoists and their cohorts could not engage in open battle with their antagonists. Moreover, as time went on, they were forced to reckon with the opposition and occasionally even retreated to await a propitious time for decisive counterattack. The struggle of the various forces within the Chinese leadership left its imprint on the PRC’s internal situation and led to peculiar circumlocutions in domestic and foreign policies.

Overall, however, the greatest influence on development of Sino-Soviet relations came to be the nationalist clique in the CCP. Chinese Communists living under conditions flagrantly violating socialist democracy and completely negating Leninist norms of party life could not successfully withstand the intense pressure of the Maoist leadership, which even resorted to physical violence against those of different persuasion. The Maoists were successful in continuing and strengthening the course leading to open political struggle against the Soviet Union, an important condition for the “cultural revolution.” Anti-Sovietism became the most cogent aspect of its political program.

So far as it concerned the USSR, the period under discussion is notable for increased activity in the struggle of our party to return the PRC to the path of friendship and cooperation with all socialist countries in the spirit of proletarian internationalism. The CC CPSU based its decisions on Leninist consistency and the principled approach inherent in its organization, guided by cardinal interests of the Soviet and Chinese peoples and the interests of world Communist and national liberation movements.

1. Sino-Soviet talks of November 1964

A number of new steps were taken after the CC CPSU October plenary session, all designed to create a situation favorable to normalization of relations between the CPSU and the CCP, and between the Soviet Union and the PRC.^* The CC CPSU proceeded from the position that when ideological disagreements arise, it is necessary to strive for unity in practical actions, first by developing ties along interstate lines in the struggle with imperialism. The CPSU, supported by other Marxist-Leninist parties, unilaterally ceased press criticism of the Chinese leadership, thus opening prospects for resumption of direct contacts between the Central Committees of the CPSU and the CCP.

However, as before, this failed to suit CCP leaders, who tried pressuring the CPSU to deviate from positions of principle, and from the general line of the world Communist movement. Pertinent is the fact that on the very day the Chinese Central Committee received information on the CC CPSU October plenary session decisions, the PRC exploded its first atomic bomb. Thus Peking appeared to be informing the Soviet Union that its relations with the Soviet Union would be based on a position of strength.

The atomic bomb tests in the PRC were used to inflame further nationalist fever among the Chinese population. Whereas not too long before, Peking propaganda had consistently tried to justify the thesis that the nuclear weapon was nothing but a “paper tiger,” now it began to boast of the sharply increased might of China and her corresponding influence on the course of world events.

CCP leaders dampened somewhat their more vulgar anti-Soviet attacks in the first days after the CC CPSU October plenary session, but this was done for tactical considerations. Chinese propaganda briefly refrained from naming the CPSU and the USSR in its attacks, preferring instead to use such terms as “modern revisionists,” “one of the great powers,” and the like. But the Chinese population, drilled by Maoists, was quite well aware of the real targets of these provocative labels. For all practical purposes Chinese leaders did not for a minute cease their anti-Soviet activities.

The Chinese population, at meetings held in the second half of October, was told that the new Soviet leadership “is, as before, revisionist,” that “the changes in evidence are essentially no changes at all.” Anti-Soviet literature, briefly put away during the celebration of the 15th anniversary of the founding of the PRC, once again appeared in hotels, airports, stations, and other public places. Chinese foreign trade organizations continued wholesale sales of anti-Soviet literature published in the PRC to foreign bourgeois firms at the Kwangchow (Canton) export goods fair.

The Chinese periodical press never ceased publication of anti-Soviet materials. Some examples follow:

On October 16 Jen Min Jihpao carried an item on the October plenary session of the CC CPSU, and, at the same time, an article calling for “a decisive struggle with modern revisionism,” for “a fight to the death.”

On October 17 Jen Min Jihpao printed a telegram of greetings from Chinese to Soviet leaders, while another Chinese newspaper, Ta Kung Pao (published in Hong Kong), printed a slanderous article repeating Maoist attacks on the Moscow test ban treaty as “a treaty of fraud.”

On October 19 Jen Min Jihpao reported the publication in foreign languages of a new series of so-called replies to the open letter of the CC CPSU of July 14, 1963, as well as of an anti-Soviet collection, Greetings to the Fighting Friendship of China and Albania! On this same day Jen Min Jihpao printed an article by the secretary of the Kweichow Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China that was replete with crude, slanderous attacks against the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries. On October 19 the newspaper Tsan Kao Shou-tse wrote that the Chinese atom bomb explosion “is indicative of the defeat of the attempts of imperialism and revisionism, including those of the Soviet Union, to isolate China.”

On October 20 Jen Min Jihpao, among its reports from Japan, printed that nuclear tests in the PRC “mean a final failure of the conspiracy of the three powers, the United States, England, and the USSR, to dominate the world by their reliance on a monopoly of nuclear weapons,” that these tests in China were conducted “in the name of peace and to protect its sovereignty against the threat posed by the USA and the great power mania of the Soviet Union.”

The anti-Soviet activities of Chinese diplomats abroad continued. PRC representatives in Prague, Luxembourg, and Geneva distributed literature inimical to our country and, as before, anti-Soviet publications were sent from Peking to the Federal Republic of Germany, France, and other countries.

Newspapers and journals published abroad by pro-Peking groups continued to pursue their anti-Soviet propaganda purposes. The journal Renaissance (its first issue was published in November 1964) was published in Greece with Chinese money and carried articles containing malicious anti-Soviet attacks. The pro-Peking newspaper People conducted an active anti-Soviet campaign in Burma. Radio broadcasts from the PRC, beamed to carry anti-Soviet contents in many foreign languages, were especially aimed at the African countries.

PRC representatives at sessions attended by authorities of the World Federation of Trade Unions and the International Democratic Federation of Women, held soon after the CC CPSU October plenary session, transparently masked their slanderous anti-Soviet attacks in decrying “the foreign policy course of one state, whose leadership policies were bankrupt,” “the capitulatory line of one great country,” and the conclusion of the Moscow nuclear test ban treaty as “a great fraud,” with which powers already possessing nuclear weapons want “to ensure their monopoly and bind the hands and feet of all countries and peoples struggling for peace.”

Despite the unseemly maneuvers of Peking, the CC CPSU and the Soviet government invited a party-government delegation from the PRC to the celebration of the 47th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution in order to utilize contacts at high levels to seek ways to normalize Sino-Soviet relations.

The Chinese delegation, headed by Chou En-lai, arrived in Moscow on November 5. That same day Chinese newspapers pictured the explosion of the PRC’s atomic bomb, as if to remind the Soviet Union that PRC leaders intended dealing with them from a position of strength.

The plans of the Chinese arriving in the USSR can be judged as well by the nature of events occurring in China on the 47th anniversary of the October Revolution. On November 6 there appeared only slightly disguised attacks against domestic and foreign policies of the CPSU during celebrations in Peking. Jen Min Jihpao’s editorial on November 7 blatantly encouraged the Soviet people to turn against CPSU leadership, against the Soviet State, and against the revolutionary traditions of the workers in our country.

The editorial contained special views of CCP leaders on problems of contemporary world development, and openly declared that strengthening the solidarity of the socialist camp and the international Communist movement was necessary to effect the so-called general line of the international Communist movement (the “25 points”) set forth in the CC CCP’s letter of June 14, 1963. The authors tried to show that CCP leaders bore no personal responsibility for deterioration in Sino-Soviet relations.

The behavior of the Chinese delegation in Moscow completely betrayed the objectives of its true program: the use of direct and crude pressure to force the CPSU to desert its positions based on principles; the creation of a pool of “facts” to blame the CPSU for “unfriendly” relations with the CCP; the parroting of such slogans as “bankruptcy of modern revisionism” and “victories of the ideas of Mao Tse-tung” to brainwash leaders of other fraternal parties and countries arriving in Moscow; the sowing of discord in the socialist community and in the world Communist movement.

†The Chinese side had the insolence to demand that our party change policies solidly based on historical documents, resolutions, and congresses, to those of Mao Tse-tung, using the “25 points” as a theoretical base. Insisting that a review of CPSU policy was an unalterable condition for normalization of Sino-Soviet relations,^* CCP leaders not only desired to subordinate our party to their influence, they also wanted to establish their supremacy in the socialist community and the world Communist movement.

It was only natural that these efforts came to naught, because the political line of the 20th, 21st, and 22nd congresses and our party program expresses the will of the entire party, and of all Soviet people. The position of the CPSU regarding Sino-Soviet relations always has been clear-cut and coherent; in the interests of the cause, both parties in their relationships should proceed from premises which unite and do not separate them. The crux of the problem is how to normalize a situation when there are disagreements. So far as debatable questions of principle are concerned, conditions must be created for businesslike discussions, and this requires time and practice. Open polemics therefore should cease, and the question of the joint steps to be taken by both parties in strengthening the anti-imperialist front should be discussed. An exchange of views on Sino-Soviet interstate ties should also take place.

CCP leaders, as before, refused to accept the proposal that open polemics cease. They asserted, moreover, that if the CPSU continued following its program, Peking would not stop its political struggle with our party. The CPSU proposal to keep polemics within the scope of comradely discussion was also categorically rejected.

The CC CPSU, in proposing cessation of public polemics, was not doing so because our party had no definitive opinions in dispute with CCP leaders. The errors and fallacies of the Chinese course were all too obvious. The CC CPSU merely believed that conditions created by open polemics, and particularly the forms in which such polemics were carried on by the Chinese, hampered normalization of the situation and caused serious damage to the world Communist movement.

The Soviet position on the convening of a drafting committee to prepare documents for the forthcoming international conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties was detailed by the CC CPSU in meetings with Chinese representatives. †It was emphasized that the planned date for convening the committee was tentative, and that the CC CPSU was ready to discuss with the CCP and other fraternal parties the question of dates for convening the committee, its composition, and the forms and methods of its work. The Soviet Central Committee proposed that the committee do its work in several stages. Initially there would be an exchange of views on the nature of documents to be presented to the conference, on methods that would apply for consultations, and on other questions connected with preparations for the future conference. The representatives of the parties then could depart, counsel with their respective leaderships, and once again assemble and agree on future actions.

But these proposals failed to suit Chinese leaders. The CCP representatives tried to darken the atmosphere of the meeting by any provocation. They supported traditional positions of the CC CCP directed at wrecking the work of the drafting committee, and emphasized Chinese determination not to participate, under any circumstances, in collective activities of fraternal parties to strengthen the unity of the world Communist movement.

The CCP delegation also refused to consider concrete measures for solidifying the anti-imperialist front. They responded only by obscure declarations to the proposal for counsel on ways and methods to fight imperialism and the nature of war, given the current international situation. Also clearly observed was an effort by CCP leaders to prejudice the policy of peaceful coexistence and to aggravate the international situation, particularly in relations between the USSR and the USA.

The Chinese side showed no desire to discuss the problem of Sino-Soviet interstate relations and advanced no positive proposals aimed at normalizing those relations.

†The Soviet side undertook a new initiative, proposing a high-level conference between representatives of the CPSU and the CCP, as soon as Chinese leaders were ready, in order to discuss a number of questions and to restore confidence between our parties and countries and to strengthen their unity. The Soviet side expressed agreement for such a meeting either open or closed at Chinese discretion, in Moscow or Peking. CCP leaders also rejected this proposal.

The Chinese delegation, prior to departure from Moscow, once again demonstrated its lack of interest in normalizing relations with the Soviet Union and its plans to continue the attack against the CPSU and other fraternal parties. On insistence of the Chinese delegation, a paragraph stating that the two sides had agreed to maintain party-to-party contacts in the interests of strengthening solidarity of the Communist movement on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism was deleted from the press release on the meetings. Moreover, the phrase stating that meetings had taken place in “a frank and comradely atmosphere” was omitted from the agreed text when the release was published in the Chinese press.

Upon its return to Peking on November 14, 1964, the Chinese delegation was feted by a magnificent gathering attended by all party and government figures in China, and headed by Mao Tse-tung. This gathering was designed to demonstrate the complete solidarity between the Chinese leadership and Mao Tse-tung with those actions of their delegation which had wrecked constructive talks and had blocked the process of normalization begun upon Soviet initiative.

The remaining faint signs of an unstable “truce” virtually disappeared after the delegation’s return from Moscow. The Chinese leaders reversed their hypocritical “peace-loving” gestures and soon resumed their position of openly hostile relations with the CPSU and with the Soviet Union.

On November 21, 1964 the journal Hung-ch’i published an editorial equal in its anti-Soviet intensity and vitriolic attacks to any of the earlier violent Chinese diatribes on our party and country. The editorial contained an ultimatum: the CPSU was to categorically reject its general line and adopt the ideological platform and political course of Mao Tsetung and his group. This was the only way, in the editorial’s opinion, that Sino-Soviet relations could be normalized. Hung-ch’i took particular aim at the basic tenets of the CPSU program and the foreign and domestic policies of our state.

The editorial abounded in attacks not only against the CPSU and its leaders, but all the Soviet people. CCP leaders made monstrous statements concerning the “degeneration of Soviet society and culture” and the “rampaging of capitalistic forces in the USSR,” and accused our state of “complicity with American imperialism.”

A series of new, open attacks against our party followed the Hungch’i editorial. Jen Min Jihpao, on November 26, 1964, published the CC CCP’s greetings to the 9th Congress of the Communist Party of Japan and interspersed them with slanderous anti-Soviet remarks and statements. In addition, on that same day, anti-Soviet harangues were given at the opening of the All-Chinese review of amateur performances of national minorities; the next day the performance was repeated at a huge rally in Peking celebrating the 20th anniversary of the liberation of Albania. The PRC minister of foreign affairs, speaking in Djakarta on November 27, concocted provocative fabrications about domestic conditions in the USSR, saying that “hundreds of Soviet citizens enter the PRC every day in search of food.”

The Maoists, in efforts to create the impression that Peking’s anti-Soviet course was gaining wide support in other countries, resorted to their favorite method. They inspired anti-Soviet speeches by adherents abroad, and represented these malignancies as the voice of the “world community.”

CCP leaders once again used the tribunal of the highest organ of state authority in the PRC, the session of the National People’s Congress which convened in Peking on December 20, 1964, to unleash anti-Soviet propaganda. Chou En-lai delivered the report on activities of the PRC governor. He repeated the hackneyed, provocative phrases of the Maoists concerning the “sudden and perfidious breaking of hundreds of agreements and contracts by the Soviet side,” distorted the issues of recall of Soviet specialists and curtailment of equipment deliveries from the USSR, slanderously accused our country of “wrecking activities” in Sinkiang, and hinted at the “restoration of capitalism” in the USSR. The speaker rehashed the perfidious thesis that difficulties in relations between the PRC and the USSR were the fault of the Soviet Union. Speeches by other Chinese leaders at the session of the National People’s Congress also contained anti-Soviet attacks.

Beginning in the second half of November 1964, PRC representatives renewed attacks against the Soviet Union in international democratic organizations with new bitterness. Chinese delegations made anti-Soviet statements to the Executive Committee and the Eighth Congress of the International Students’ Union in Sofia, to the Conference of Solidarity with the Vietnamese People in Hanoi, to the Presidium of the World Peace Council in Berlin, to the 47th session of the Executive Bureau of the World Federation of Trade Unions, to the meetings of the International Preparatory Committee of the Ninth World Festival of Youth and Students, and to the economic seminar of Asian and African countries. Disregarding concrete tasks of the struggle against imperialism and colonialism, they concentrated the fire of their criticism exclusively on the Soviet Union. Peking leaders labeled our country “Enemy Number One,” attacked Soviet foreign policy, and spread lies to the effect that the USSR was trying to push international organizations into renouncing the struggle with imperialism, and also convert them into an obedient weapon of the “revisionist” course in the international arena.

At the end of 1964 the Soviet side suggested changing the date for convening the drafting commission on preparations for the international conference from December 15, 1964 to March 1, 1965. This would give time to prepare for the meeting of the drafting commission, and to hold additional consultations on this particular question. The Soviet side expressed readiness to continue consultations with the CCP and other fraternal parties, and to seek mutually acceptable solutions to questions concerned with preparations. Naturally, this meant that the CCP in turn would have to contribute constructively to preparations for the international conference. Once again, however, Chinese leaders adamantly refused to participate in the work of the drafting commission, regardless of dates set, and regardless of how it would be convened.

2. CCP leaders frustrate the attempts of the CC CPSU and the Soviet government to normalize state-to-state relations between the USSR and the PRC

The CC CPSU and the Soviet government, after the November meeting in Moscow, and despite hostile statements by Chinese leaders, undertook concete actions to normalize Sino-Soviet relations. The Soviet side attempted to restore confidential exchanges of foreign policy information with the PRC. Materials of this nature were passed to the Chinese leadership repeatedly between November 1964 and January 1965. The Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR in his message of December 28, 1964 supported the PRC’s proposal for a summit conference to discuss the question of banning and completely destroying nuclear weapons advanced in Chou En-lai’s letter of December 17, 1964.

The Soviet side reacted with identical good will to the request of the PRC government for a United Nations discussion of the problem of restoring to China its legal rights in that organization. Representatives of the USSR took an active part in countering the efforts of hostile forces to bring up the so-called Tibetan question at the 19th Session of the General Assembly.

Soviet organizations initiated an effort to resume an active exchange of delegations with the PRC in order to draw up plans for cultural cooperation and for the friendship associations that had been cut down by the Chinese. Delegations of workers in Soviet cultural and educational institutions, writers, and artistic leaders in the Soviet-Chinese Friendship Association went to China after the October Plenary Session of the CC CPSU.

On December 23, 1964 the Embassy of the USSR in Peking informed the Chinese Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries of measures necessary to fulfill completely the plan for cultural cooperation in 1964. At the beginning of February 1965 the Soviet organizations concerned presented their projects for the 1965 cooperation plans to the Chinese Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries and to the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association. The plans envisaged a substantial increase in these exchanges.

On December 18, 1964 it was proposed that the Chinese hold the scheduled 14th session of the Soviet-Chinese Committee on Scientific and Technical Cooperation in December 1964-January 1965. On January 29, 1965 the Soviet State Committee for the Coordination of Scientific Research Work handed the PRC Embassy in Moscow a memorandum containing concrete proposals for materials to be taken up at the 14th Session and for discharging outstanding obligations from the 13th Session. These positive steps by the Soviet side met with no support in China.

Liu Hsiao, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of the PRC, in reply to the Soviet Ambassador’s expression of views concerning USSR participation in the planned 2nd Afro-Asian Conference, stated that the PRC “did not agree to Soviet participation” in the conference. The PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs officially confirmed this view on January 14, 1965. Propaganda against the USSR’s participation in the conference and attempts to discredit the foreign policy course of the Soviet Union were among primary purposes of the trip made by Minister of Foreign Affairs of the PRC, Chen Yi, to Afro-Asian countries in November-December 1964.

Chinese leaders, in mid-January 1965, issued a statement whose purpose was to drive a wedge into Soviet-Japanese relations and in this way to improve relations between the PRC and Japan. Chen Yi, in a meeting with a member of the Japanese Diet on January 17, 1965, emphasized the fact that China had repeatedly recommended to the Soviet Union that the Kurile Islands, including those in the north, be returned to Japan, and that this view still held. As a result of the Chen Yi interview, which had raised the question of the USSR’s territorial integrity and border inviolability, and which contained other statements inimical to the Soviet Union, the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on January 29, 1965, demanded further elucidation. The Chinese declined comment.

Chinese leaders, at the end of November 1964, once again began to “heat up” the border question and to propagandize their territorial claims against the USSR. On November 28, Lu Ting-yi, PRC Vice Premier, in reviewing the autonomy of national minorities, spoke of “the attempts of imperialism” to separate the northeast, Inner Mongolia, Sinkiang, Tibet, and Taiwan from China, emphasizing that these regions “are in the vanguard of the struggle against imperialism, the Chiang Kai-shek band, the reactionaries, and modern revisionism.” On December 6, at the celebration in honor of the tenth anniversary of the KyzylSu Kirghiz autonomous district (province of Sinkiang), the Chairman of the Nationalities Affairs Commission of the National People’s Congress called for “crushing of the diversionary and disruptive tactics of the imperialists, reactionaries, and modern revisionists.” On December 28, as reported in the Chinese press, the Chairman of the People’s Committee of the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region familiarized deputies to the National People’s Congress with the “details of the struggle of all nationalities in Sinkiang against the diversionary and disruptive tactics from abroad,” including “those from the north.” In mid-January 1965 the book Letters from China (written in English) by Anna Louise Strong was placed on sale in the PRC. This book contained, among other things, a statement made by Chen Yi at a meeting with foreign delegations on August 19, 1964, in which he dealt with the possibility of the USSR’s “seizing Sinkiang, the northeast (Manchuria), and occupying Peking.” On January 17, 1965, this same Chen Yi once again said that “the Soviet Union had taken almost 1.5 million square kilometers of territory from China,” demonstrating the return of the CCP leadership to the position of Mao Tse-tung in the famous interview with Japanese socialists on July 10, 1964.

3. New constructive steps by the Soviet side

In early February 1965 A. N. Kosygin, member of the Politburo of the CC CPSU and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, headed a delegation visiting the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Korean People’s Democratic Republic.^* The CC CPSU decided to utilize the Soviet delegation’s stopover in Peking for a new initiative to normalize Sino-Soviet relations and to maintain its contacts with Chinese leaders.

The Soviet delegation met and talked with the leaders of the CCP and the PRC including Mao Tse-tung, during two stops in Peking’s airport. The first of these meetings established that Chinese leaders had no constructive positions on which to base joint discussions. The situation in Indochina as a result of intensification of American aggression was reviewed. The Soviet side pointed out that US provocations in Southeast Asia posed a serious threat to world peace and emphasized the need to coordinate efforts of socialist countries for the Vietnamese cause.

Chinese leaders, recognizing the important contribution of the Soviet Union in the Vietnamese struggle against American aggression, nevertheless failed to promote any constructive proposals for helping the Vietnamese people. Moreover, statements were issued in China that the Vietnamese could “cope” with the aggressors without help of any sort, and that victims of American bombing raids over cities and villages in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam could be ignored. Jen Min Jihpao, in an editorial published March 22, 1965, cynically wrote that “the more bombs the United States drops, the stronger will be the fighting will of the Vietnamese people.” The Soviet delegation rejected any such position, declaring that socialist countries ought to do everything possible to defend the fraternal Vietnamese people against imperialistic American aggression.

The Chinese leaders rejected the Soviet idea of a joint declaration by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the PRC, the USSR, the Korean People’s Democratic Republic, and other socialist countries, exposing US violation of the Geneva accords of 1964, guaranteeing the independence and safety of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and calling for withdrawal of all foreign troops from Indochina. They attributed their rejection to the existence of disagreements between the CCP and the CPSU both on ideological issues and on the question of the cessation of open polemics.

The Chinese leaders stubbornly emphasized that they planned an uncompromising struggle against the ideological positions of the CPSU and the other Marxist-Leninist parties. They stubbornly declared that they were categorically opposed to the cessation of open polemics.

The Soviet side spelled out our party’s position in detail. The CPSU was unopposed to comradely discussion of debatable questions, but it was opposed to engaging in openly hostile polemics because so doing damaged the world Communist movement and particularly the fraternal parties in capitalist countries. But, ignoring the interests of the international Communist movement, CCP leaders proposed continuation of polemics, defending the form and methods used by the Chinese side.

The Soviet side explained to Chinese leaders that the meeting of fraternal parties planned for March 1965 for the preparation of the international conference would be consultative in nature, opening auspicious possibilities for CCP representatives to participate in it. CCP leaders flatly refused to attend a consultative meeting, whatever its form, and in general opposed the calling of an international conference of Communist and workers’ parties at any time in the near future. They asserted that a conference of this type was infeasible not only for four or five years, as had been stated officially in the letter from the CC CCP to the CC CPSU, but that eight to ten years might elapse before such a conference could be held.

The Chinese once again rejected the CC CPSU proposal to hold a bilateral meeting by high level representatives of our parties to discuss all questions in dispute. They said the time was not yet ripe for such consultations.

The Soviet delegation even went so far as to propose an exchange of views on problems concerned with development of interstate relations between the USSR and the PRC, but the Chinese leaders also evaded this issue.

The CC CPSU continued its efforts to conciliate Sino-Soviet relations after the meeting in Peking in February 1965. It was suggested that friendship delegations be exchanged in 1965 in honor of the celebration of the 15th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance between the USSR and the PRC. Our country attached great importance to celebration of this date. The Soviet side repeatedly took the initiative in maintaining contacts with Chinese leaders. On March 20 the Soviet government extended an invitation to the PRC Minister of Foreign Affairs to stop in the Soviet Union en route to Kabul. At the end of March, in Bucharest, the Soviet delegation attending the funeral of the First Secretary of the Rumanian Workers’ Party, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, suggested to the Chinese delegation, headed by Chou En-lai, that it take advantage of the occasion to exchange views on questions of Sino-Soviet relations.

But all these efforts failed to elicit a positive response from the Chinese leadership.

4. Peking leaders provoke further strain in Sino-Soviet relations

The constructive program of our party, directed at normalizing Sino-Soviet relations, placed those among the Chinese leadership who stubbornly and consciously opposed the program in a difficult position. This group resorted to new anti-Soviet actions in an effort to justify and strengthen its course. These tactics became all too apparent in the anti-Soviet provocation organized by Maoists and carried out by Chinese students in Moscow on March 4, 1965.

Chinese students, on instructions from Peking, used the demonstration by Soviet citizens and representatives of other countries against American aggression in Vietnam at the US Embassy for their provocative acts. Chinese students mingled with demonstrators, screamed anti-Soviet slogans, blaming our party for refusing to help the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and accusing it of “collusion” with imperialism. They engaged in hooliganistic tactics against Soviet police, and incited Soviet people to speak out against the policy of the CPSU and the Soviet government. The demonstrators properly rebuffed the provocateurs. The instigators of these shameful actions then fabricated lies to the effect that Chinese students in Moscow had been “assaulted” and had become objects of “bloody reprisals.”

The Maoists organized a new anti-Soviet campaign around the March 4 events. A massive demonstration by Chinese citizens carrying anti-Soviet slogans was organized in front of the Embassy of the USSR in Peking on March 6, 1965. During these outrages there were cries of “Go home!” and numerous “letters of protest” and other written threats against the Soviet government and the CPSU were tossed onto the Embassy grounds.

Then the Chinese press was unleashed. Between March 5 and 20 it published 25 reports by Hsinhua, the official press agency, of “bloody reprisals against Chinese students in Moscow.”

Meetings were held in Chinese institutions and organizations for the purpose of reading anti-Soviet tracts and calling for a “relentless struggle” against the CPSU. Mass meetings organized in Peking and other cities in the PRC on March 19 were used for these same purposes.

The consultative meeting of representatives of 19 fraternal parties was selected by anti-Soviet activists in the CCP as an occasion for new attacks against the CPSU and the Soviet Union. In the article entitled “On the March Meeting in Moscow,” published in Jen Min Jihpao on March 23, 1965, CCP leaders insolently demanded that the CPSU publicly repudiate decisions of the 20th, 21st, and 22nd congresses, its program, reject the policy of peaceful coexistence, and further promise “never to make the same mistakes again.” They qualified their disputes with the CPSU and the international Communist movement as “disagreements between two hostile classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie,” declaring that the struggle would continue “for so long as classes and the class struggle continued to exist in the world.”

Chinese leaders opted for continuing polemics. Open polemics, they stated in an article published March 23, “cannot be stopped in a day, or in a month, or in a year, or in a hundred, thousand, or even ten thousand years. We shall not stop in nine thousand years, we shall criticize for the whole ten thousand years.” The Maoists tried doggedly to put words into actions. Central newspapers in the PRC alone published more than 150 anti-Soviet pieces, written to order for Peking leaders, between the CC CPSU October plenary session and the end of March 1965; their henchmen printed over 90 such pieces abroad. The Chinese publishing house Jen Min Ch’u Pan She, in March 1965, published in Chinese and foreign languages a collection of articles entitled Relative to the Polemics on the General Line of the International Communist Movement, containing the most malicious anti-Soviet materials published in the PRC since September 1963.

Peking engaged in provocations at the Sino-Soviet border in order to exacerbate tensions between the USSR and the PRC. Attempts to lawlessly seize individual pieces of Soviet territory became more frequent at the end of March. Chinese civilians and military personnel made no attempt to hide border violations. There were 36 incursions into Soyiet territory by some 150 Chinese citizens, including servicemen, between October 1, 1964 and April 1, 1965. †And there were 12 such violations by over 500 Chinese civilians and military personnel in the first 15 days of April alone. Border violations became increasingly aggressive. †On April 11, 1965, for instance, some 200 Chinese civilians, with military cover, used eight tractors to plough up Soviet territory. Chinese soldiers, encountering a covering detachment of Soviet border guards, were commanded by their officer to break through using tactics and force.

Peking leaders, in order to justify their anti-Soviet policy, tried to create in China, and abroad, the impression that the Soviet side was following an unfriendly policy toward the PRC, and that an “anti-Chinese campaign” was under way in our country. The Maoists, in efforts to corroborate this prevarication, submitted crude and unsubstantiated fabrications. Visits to the USSR by any state figure from capitalist countries were attacked immediately by Peking as indicative of a “deal between the Soviet Union and imperialism to fight China.” Every item on China appearing in the Soviet press, regardless of nature or content, was characterized as “an attack against the great Chinese people.”

Nevertheless, the slanderous fabrications of Peking leaders could not distort the clear-cut, coherent policy of the Soviet Union toward China. This policy was confirmed again at the CC CPSU plenum in September 1965. The First Secretary of the CC CPSU, L. I. Brezhnev, in his speech before the session on September 29, flatly declared that the USSR would “consistently continue to seek ways to adjust the differences and to strengthen friendship and cooperation between the Soviet and Chinese peoples, between our parties and countries.”¹

Peking leaders not only failed to respond positively to this statement, they even went so far as to erect new obstacles along the road to the normalization of relations. Editorials appearing in the journal Hung Ch’i, and in the newspaper Jen Min Jihpao on November 11, 1965, candidly exposed their splitting, anti-Soviet platform.

Prior to the appearance of this article, CCP leaders, when dealing with Sino-Soviet differences, usually emphasized that “what separates us is but one finger out of ten,” that “we have little arguments and great unity.” Now, however, they definitively rejected the possibility of adjusting Sino-Soviet differences and stated categorically that so far as the two parties were concerned “there exists that which separates, nothing that unites, there exists that which opposes, and nothing that could be common.” The editorial proclaimed the task to be “delimiting politically and organizationally” spheres of activity with the CPSU and other Marxist-Leninist parties.

Chinese leaders unleashed their most vicious attacks against actions by the CC CPSU in domestic and foreign policy after its October 1964 Plenary Session. They repeated their malignant fabrications “about bourgeois degeneration” of the Soviet state, about “collusion” between the Soviet Union and “American imperialism in the name of joint dominion over the world,” and publicly announced their ultimatum for our party to reject its general line, to reject decisions of the last congresses and to alter the program of the CPSU.

After the November 11 editorial was published, the Chinese side once again intensified its efforts to interfere in internal affairs of the Soviet Union in order to provoke criticism against the CC CPSU and the Soviet government. PRC leaders moved closer and closer to open and gross violation of Article 5 of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Assistance, which obligated the two states to observe the principles of “mutual respect for state sovereignty . . . and non-interference in the internal affairs of the other side.”

The Maoists tried to distribute the November 11 editorial, as well as other anti-Soviet materials, in the Soviet Union. Eleven thousand copies of anti-Soviet books and pamphlets were sent to Soviet institutions, organizations, and private individuals from China in 1963; about 45,000 were sent in 1965. A variety of ruses designed to thwart control by USSR state authorities were devised, including insertion of anti-Soviet pamphlets between the pages and in dust jackets of other books, and stuffing them into various corners of the cars on the Peking-Moscow train.

As before the Chinese Embassy acted as the center for dissemination of anti-Soviet literature and provocative rumors among the Soviet people. Particularly in 1966, the Embassy bypassed Soviet organs and began illegal distribution of the journal Kitay na stroike (China in Construction) in Russian. The USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs was forced to make necessary representations in the matter to the Chinese Embassy.

†The CC CPSU forwarded a letter to the CC CCP on November 29, 1965, containing a firm denunciation of the pernicious effects the Chinese splitting course was having on Sino-Soviet relations, on socialist cooperation, on the struggle against imperialism, on the liberation of exploited peoples, and on the building of a communist society. That same day, the premier of the PRC State Council, Chou En-lai, made crude anti-Soviet statements at a reception in the Albanian Embassy in Peking.

On January 7, 1965 the CC CCP responded officially to the November 29, 1965 letter from the CC CPSU. The Chinese letter reiterated its slanderous and irresponsible accusations against the CPSU and the Soviet Union, attacked the CPSU program and the foreign and domestic policies of our party and country, repeated continually unsubstantiated phrases concerning “Soviet-American cooperation in the name of world domination,” and in every way possible distorted the position of the Soviet Union on the Vietnam question.

The special position of the Chinese leadership on the Vietnam question was an increasing indicator of its hostility toward the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. Peking, while seeking to prolong the war in Vietnam indefinitely, at the same time tried to steer away from involvement in it.

While publicly proclaiming their determination to defend the Vietnamese people against American aggression, Chinese leaders, in fact, repeatedly gave Washington to understand that these warlike declarations were issued only for propaganda effect.

The American journalist Edgar Snow relates that Mao Tse-tung, in an interview with him early in 1965, said he did not believe that the US intended to spread the war into North Vietnam, and that China therefore had no need to enter the war on the side of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. “And why should the Chinese do so?” asked Mao Tse-tung. “The Vietnamese are quite capable of handling their own problems.”

The position of the Chinese leadership on the Vietnamese question did not go unnoticed in the imperialist camp. “The gradual expansion by the United States of the war in Vietnam,” wrote the Washington Post at the beginning of 1965, “has had a number of favorable political consequences. It has intensified the Sino-Soviet conflict.” The British newspaper, The Observer, characterized Peking’s policy as follows:

After many months of gradual escalation of the struggle in Vietnam by both sides, the Americans recently indicated serious intentions of attacking North Vietnam. What did Peking do? It gave the Americans a clear hint that if they did attack, China would not come into the war. Mao Tse-tung, in an interview with American journalist Edgar Snow, categorically stated that China would enter the war only in the event America attacked Chinese territory. This means that China would not enter the war if America attacked North Vietnam. When the Americans began bombing North Vietnam, Peking kept its word and did not undertake military countermeasures. At the same time, the Chinese encouraged North Vietnam and the rebels in South Vietnam to oppose negotiations.

In October 1964 the US carried aggression directly to the territory of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as it began systematic bombing of cities and villages. This act made urgent an increase of aid to the struggling Vietnamese people by socialist countries. Peking leaders, however, remained obstinate in obstructing the solution to this problem.

In February 1965 the CC CPSU and the Soviet government requested that the CC CCP and the PRC take urgent steps to facilitate delivery of Soviet military assistance to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. This request unexpectedly encountered Peking’s opposition.

Beginning in February 1965, the Soviet Union, in the interests of assisting the Vietnamese, repeatedly suggested to the Chinese leadership that there be joint discussions of measures taken to protect the security of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. fThe Soviet side many times took the initiative in proposing a summit meeting of representatives of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the PRC, and the USSR, emphasizing the fact that any convenient place for a meeting of all parties was acceptable. Peking stubbornly resisted Soviet proposals, publicly demonstrating its splitting course and lack of desire to cooperate in this most urgent of problems.

Peking leaders took a similar stance with respect to proposals by other socialist countries on coordination of efforts in the Vietnamese cause.

The Chinese position on the Vietnamese question made it all too apparent that the Maoists, for the sake of their divisive, anti-Soviet goals, were ready to sacrifice the interests of the national liberation struggle of the Vietnamese people and to jeopardize the cause of socialism in Vietnam.

5. The outstanding contribution of the CPSU 23rd Congress in the struggle for unity of revolutionary forces

Our party has not only looked at restoring Sino-Soviet friendship and cooperation from the standpoint of relations between the USSR and the PRC and between the CPSU and the CCP, but also as part of the overall problem of strengthening the unity of revolutionary ranks in the struggle with imperialism for peace and socialism. This problem was given special attention by the CPSU 23rd Congress convened in March-April 1966.

The conclusion that the balance of forces in the world arena continues to change in favor of socialism, in favor of the workers’ and national liberation movement, was stressed by the 23rd Congress. At the same time, the Congress stated that the contemporary international situation was characterized by an escalation of imperialist aggression and encouragement of reaction. The deepening of the overall crisis faced by capitalism and the aggravation of its contradictions tended to intensify the danger to the cause of peace and social progress of imperialistic adventurism. Imperialism, in seeking an end to impasse, was resorting more frequently to military provocations, and interventions to various conspiracies, and to efforts to exacerbate differences in the world Communist movement.

The 23rd Congress was an international forum for unity of revolutionary forces, It demonstrated the tremendous growth in the trend toward consolidation of revolutionary forces; it further showed itself the greatest factor in strengthening the unity and solidarity of those forces. A significant indicator was broad representation of all detachments of the contemporary revolutionary movement at the Congress.

Eighty-six foreign delegations, including 73 from Communist parties (11 from socialist countries and 62 from capitalist), and 13 from national democratic and left socialist parties, took part in work of the Congress. The central theme of all speeches at the Congress was strengthening the unity and solidarity of modern revolutionary forces. The fraternal parties warmly supported the CPSU conclusion that under prevailing conditions it was necessary to concentrate on unifying and closing revolutionary ranks. They emphasized that it is disloyal and harmful to exacerbate differences, thus creating obstacles to accomplishment of joint actions in the struggle against imperialism.

In conjunction with the 23rd Congress the CPSU undertook a new initiative designed to normalize Sino-Soviet relations.

During a stopover in Peking, shortly before the Congress, a delegation headed by A. N. Shelepin, a member of the Politburo of the CC CPSU, which had visited the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, expressed a desire to meet with CCP leaders. The most prominent leaders declined to meet them. The Soviet delegation nevertheless once again tried to impress upon the Chinese leadership, through the medium of CC CCP representatives with whom they did meet, the steadfast position of our party on elimination of differences, as well as to express the desirability of developing Sino-Soviet interstate relations, particularly in trade and economic cooperation. The Chinese leadership failed to support any of these suggestions.

Because it attached great importance to the CPSU 23rd Congress in strengthening the solidarity of socialist cooperation and the world Communist movement, our Central Committee extended an invitation to the CCP. The podium of the Congress was used to emphasize the readiness of the CC CPSU to consider with CCP leaders, at any time and at the highest levels, outstanding differences and means to resolve them along Marxist-Leninist principles. The Central Committee’s line was approved unanimously by the Congress. A resolution contained in the Summary Report of the CC CPSU on the 23rd Congress stated:

The Congress approves the efforts of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the concrete measures aimed at adjusting the differences with the Communist Party of China on the principled basis of Marxism-Leninism. The Congress expresses confidence that in the end our parties and the peoples of our countries will eventually overcome the difficulties and will present a united front in the struggle for the great common revolutionary cause.²

Despite all these efforts, Chinese leaders assumed an openly hostile posture with respect to the 23rd Congress and took the road of further aggravating the struggle with our party and country.

On March 22, 1966, in a letter to the CC CPSU, leaders of the CCP rudely rejected the invitation to send a delegation to the 23rd Congress.³ Chinese leaders launched malicious, scurrilous attacks against the highest forum of our party, instead of heeding CPSU appeals supported by representatives of the overwhelming majority of Marxist-Leninist parties present. In this disgraceful campaign the opening gun was fired by Chou En-lai on April 30, 1966, at a meeting in Peking attended by a crowd of 100, 000.

The refusal of CCP leaders to participate in the work of the 23rd Congress completed the severance of all party line contacts with the CPSU. The CC CCP again failed to respond to an invitation extended in February 1966, for a group of public and state workers to vacation in the USSR. †Greetings sent by the CC CPSU on the 45th anniversary of the founding of the CCP were not published in the Chinese press.

The Maoists simultaneously severed all ties between the young Communist (Komsomol) organizations in the two countries. The Central Committee of the Young Communist League of China published its reply to the March 1966 invitation of the Central Committee of the All-Union Lenin Young Communist League on May 13, 1966, categorically rejecting it and attacking the CPSU and the Lenin Komsomol.

The position of CCP leaders with respect to the 23rd Congress reflected the general line of the Maoists to isolate the CCP from other Marxist-Leninist parties. Leading figures of fraternal parties, in speeches at the 23rd Congress, sharply criticized the anti-Sovietism of Peking leaders and exposed the tremendous damage to the common revolutionary cause wreaked by their irresponsible attacks on the CPSU and the Soviet Union. But it was evident that the hostile reaction of the Peking leaders to the 23rd Congress had deep roots: it was an expression of the same general anti-Soviet line that Maoists tried to reinforce and later expand during the so-called cultural revolution. As events during the second half of 1966 showed, anti-Sovietism became one of the main slogans of the Maoists in attacks against positions of socialism during this counterrevolutionary campaign.

6. Sino-Soviet economic and cultural ties, 1965—1966

The PRC government undertook basic changes in economic relations between the USSR and China in 1965, proposing that they be built in the future on a departmental, rather than an intergovernmental basis; in this way it deliberately downgraded their political importance, and at the same time reduced to a minimum the scope of those relations.

On April 21, 1965, the government of the PRC declared that it was canceling completely all project work established under terms of the June 1961 agreement. This agreement had envisaged technical cooperation with the Soviet Union in the building of 66 large industrial plants. Thus the Chinese side refused to restore economic cooperation between our countries, blocking the main road to its own development. Soviet deliveries to China of complete sets of equipment in 1965 were only one-hundredth of those of 1959.

PRC representatives attending trade talks in the spring of 1965 rejected many proposals advanced by the Soviet side for increasing trade between the two countries. Foreign trade of the PRC was deliberately reorganized to take advantage of capitalist markets. For instance, Chinese exports of tin to capitalist countries increased to between 6,000 and 7,000 tons, and dropped to 500 tons to the USSR. The end result was a reduction in volume of Sino-Soviet trade in 1965 by 7 percent, as compared with 1964.

Since 1966 trade has become the only form of economic tie between the USSR and the PRC, but even it has decreased sharply. Significantly, its volume in 1966 was one-half of that of Sino-Japanese trade.

This situation resulted from the anti-Soviet course adopted by Peking leaders, as well as from their overall policy of severing economic cooperation between China and the socialist community. The share of socialist countries in the PRC’s foreign trade dropped to 25 percent in 1966, as compared with 68 percent in 1959. At the same time, the share of capitalist countries in the PRC’s foreign trade jumped to 75 percent. It is interesting to note that the PRC trade with the Federal Republic of Germany in 1965 was three times larger than that with the German Democratic Republic.

The Soviet side throughout 1966 took steps to eliminate the grounds for further exacerbation of interstate relations, and sought, at least, resolution of individual problems. The Soviet Union was favorably disposed to requests by Chinese authorities to permit citizens of the PRC to venture onto contiguous islands and into Soviet water areas along border rivers for economic activities, and to permit Chinese peasants to drive their cattle across territory of the USSR, †In March 1966, upon Soviet initiative, the mixed-Sino-Soviet commission on navigation along boundary rivers held its scheduled meeting in Khabarovsk, and in February of the same year representatives of the USSR and the PRC met in accordance with the agreement on joint protection against forest fires.

A new agreement on air traffic between the USSR and the PRC, replacing the December 1954 agreement, was signed in April 1966. This too came about as a result of Soviet initiative. Still, Chinese authorities did everything they could to obstruct cooperation in this area. They unilaterally raised air fares on the Peking-Moscow line, and organized provocations with respect to Aeroflot representatives in the PRC disrupting their normal work. Effective April 1, 1967, upon recommendation of Chinese Aeroflot, the number of flights on the Moscow-Peking run was reduced by one-third.

The scope of Sino-Soviet scientific and technical cooperation in 1965 shrunk precipitously. The 15th session of the Sino-Soviet Commission on Scientific and Technical Cooperation, held in November 1966, clearly showed lack of desire on the Chinese side to expand scientific and technical ties with the USSR. The result was a reduction by more than one-half in the number of obligations undertaken by both sides as compared with those of the preceding session.

Scientific cooperation between the respective academies of sciences also decreased in 1966. The Soviet side (through no fault of its own) sent only one scientist to the PRC to work on a single problem, instead of the 11 scientists for seven problems as stipulated in the plan. The Chinese sent 11 scientists to the USSR to work on three problems, instead of 20 scientists for six problems as planned. †In April 1966 the Academy of Sciences of the PRC made the unfriendly gesture of announcing the “refusal” of two Chinese scientists to accept membership in the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Needless to say, this “refusal” was the result of raw political pressure. One simply needs to recall that during this period, even scientific correspondence with Soviet colleagues was labeled a “black political offense” by Chinese authorities. This qualification had very definite practical consequences. During the years of the “cultural revolution” thousands of Chinese scientists fell victim to harsh repressions simply because they had studied in the Soviet Union or because they continued subscribing to Soviet scientific publications.

Chinese organizations demonstrated hostility to the Soviet Union in the spring of 1966 by refusing to accept medical supplies and vitamins sent by the Soviet Red Cross to earthquake-stricken regions in the PRC.

Soviet plans for cultural cooperation with the PRC in 1965 called for an expansion in cultural ties of approximately 25 percent as compared with the previous year. This plan was never fully adopted because of Chinese opposition. Still, the number of measures in the plan for cultural cooperation increased somewhat in 1965. Tourist exchanges were restored and agreement reached on student exchanges.

The 1966 cultural cooperation plan between the two countries was signed in Moscow in June under adverse conditions, with numerous procrastinations and difficulties created by the Chinese. This was the smallest of all plans drafted in the history of relations with the PRC in scope of measures included. In sports, a component of the cultural cooperation plan, the 1966 plan called for women’s volleyball and basketball teams to go to the PRC, and for men’s basketball and table tennis teams to go to the Soviet Union.

But that was only the plan. What actually happened in 1966 was simply an exchange of public health workers, and a tour of the Peking Song and Dance Ensemble, whose program was obviously staged to demonstrate the “great ideas of Mao.” The Soviet side repeatedly expressed its readiness to send amateur theatrical groups, as well as groups of specialists, to the PRC, but the Chinese proposed that these events be postponed until 1967 without setting a date. Chinese authorities, pleading lack of space, proposed that “The USSR Today” photographic display, planned for September 1966, also be carried over to 1967.

The Soviet side, on April 22, 1966, proposed the conclusion of a new agreement on cooperation in media communications to replace the old one which had expired (actually, the Chinese had failed to comply with the terms of the earlier agreement, having ceased broadcasting the three half-hour “This Is Moscow Speaking” programs per week forwarded to China for broadcast since 1963). The draft agreement was forwarded to the Chinese side, but the reply from the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs (contained in a note December 6, 1966) was replete with slanderous accusations against the Soviet Union. The Soviet proposal concerning cooperation in the field of radio and television was frustrated.

It is easy to understand why Maoists persisted in wrecking cooperation between information services of the PRC and the Soviet Union. They feared the truth about Soviet activities, truth about the successes of Communist construction in our country, and truth about their own perfidious course which inflicted incredible suffering on the Chinese people, destroying their socialist victories one after the other. It was this fear of truth, the attempts to keep their black deed from the bright glare of publicity, that prompted Peking authorities to muzzle foreign correspondents. They were not only forbidden to leave Peking, but their movements were restricted within the city; they could not read newspapers, announcements, or engage in conversation with Chinese. They were subjected to constant insults by officials and often were victims of physical violence by mobs of Red Guards, instigated by Maoists. Representatives of press, radio, and information agencies of socialist countries were particularly hated by the Maoists. They were placed in the most difficult of situations, deprived of information sources, and deliberately terrorized by provocative accusations of “illegal activities.”

As part of this practice, the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on December 16, 1966, gave three Soviet correspondents ten days in which to leave China. Their only “crime” was that they had reported the facts about activities in the PRC.

As previously, Maoists tried to use cultural cooperation for anti-Soviet purposes. There were numerous cases of Chinese tourists, delegations, and students who attempted to collect secret data in the USSR. In July 1966 the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs was forced to make an official protest to the Chinese Embassy in Moscow in connection with those PRC military personnel, studying in a military academy, who photographed top secret material; in military installations and forwarded them to their embassy.

Our country, on the other hand, looked at development of cultural ties with the PRC as spiritual intercourse which deepened mutual understanding and strengthened the friendship between Soviet and Chinese people. The Soviet Union, in 1966, solemnly celebrated the 16th anniversary of the Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance between the USSR and the PRC. Many other important dates in the life of China, such as the 17th anniversary of the founding of the PRC, and the jubilees of prominent Chinese revolutionaries and cultural leaders were recognized.

The PRC, in 1966, sharply reduced cultural cooperation with other socialist countries as well. No cultural cooperation plans were signed with Bulgaria, Poland, the German Democratic Republic, Mongolia, or Czechoslovakia in 1967. The plan with Hungary was not signed until December 1967.

The Chinese authorities continued their course of refusing to engage in collective forms of cooperation with the socialist countries. The PRC made the unilateral decision to withdraw from the Dubna Joint Institute of Nuclear Research in the summer of 1965. When, on April 17, 1965, it was invited to join with the socialist countries in mastering space, it failed to respond.

NOTES

1. Pravda, September 30, 1965.

2. Material XXIII s’yezda KPSS (Documents from the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) (Moscow, 1966), p. 185.

3. Jen Min Jihpao, March 24, 1966.

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* Translator’s note: these steps included the removal of N. S. Khrushchev from the party and government leadership.

* Translator’s note: the Chinese, no doubt, misread the removal of Khrushchev ten days earlier as an “admission” by the Soviet leadership of the erroneousness of their policy.

* Translator’s note: Kosygin’s visit to Hanoi coincided with the first bombing of that city by the US Air Force.