“Soviet-Chinese Relations, 1945–1970”
The year 1960 was a watershed in the development of Sino-Soviet relations. It marked the beginning of a new period in the course of which nationalist forces in the PRC came to dominate the leadership of the CCP. The implementation of this course led to a basic reorientation of foreign policy of the PRC, to withdrawal of the CCP from a position of proletarian internationalism, to Peking leaders’ severing ties of friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union and with other socialist countries, and to unfolding an open policy of struggle with them.
The break with Leninist principles of a socialist state’s foreign policy made by leaders of the CCP was part and parcel of the internal processes involved in the development of the PRC. It was the direct consequence of the intensification of antisocialist tendencies in China, the implantation within the Communist party of anti-Marxist, anti-Leninist views, the deviation of Peking leaders from the path of socialist construction.
In turn, the internal situation in China during that period was determined by aggravation of the class struggle occasioned by the fact that huge failures in economic construction engendered by the fatal, voluntarist course of the “great leap forward” and the establishment of people’s communes weakened the position of socialism in the country, and opened up to the antisocialist forces the opportunity for counterattack.
1. The internal situation in the PRC at the beginning of the 1960s
The situation which evolved in the PRC at the beginning of the 1960s was characterized by a sharp deterioration in the economic situation. The failure of attempts of CCP leaders to overcome China’s economic backwardness as swiftly as possible by use of voluntarist methods, and, simultaneously, to create internal prerequisites for realization of their nationalist, avant-garde aspirations, was all too evident.
The country’s economy was completely disorganized. The level of industrial and agricultural production had fallen sharply. By 1962 gross industrial production had almost halved as compared with 1959. Steel production had fallen 46 percent, electric power generation 13 percent, pig iron 48 percent, iron ore by a factor of 3, coke by a factor of 3.5, cement by 40 percent, power equipment by a factor of 4, machine tools by a factor of 3.2, and cotton cloth by a factor of 2. Edible vegetable oil production fell by 30 percent, and that of sugar by 12 percent. The grain harvest fell one-third.
Leaders of the CCP were forced to take extraordinary measures to prevent any further drop in production. This led the 9th Plenary Session of the CC CCP, held in January 1961, to reduce the scale of capital construction and to “regulate the rates of development.” This meant the mass closing of plants built primarily in the years of the “great leap forward,” as well as complete liquidation of the backyard blast furnaces and, beginning in mid-1961, the cessation of capital construction in industry and transportation, including those areas in which construction was nearing completion. Industry, in addition to requirements imposed on it for production of consumer goods, now was faced with the task of giving preferential treatment to agriculture, even though this meant ceasing production of primary products by plants which previously had produced for other sectors of the economy.
Reality forced CCP leaders to abandon the idea of “communization ahead of schedule.” The communes that had been set up in cities were discontinued, and those in agricultural areas were reorganized into conventional agricultural production cooperatives called brigades. Free meals, the introduction of which had been unwarranted, were canceled, personal plots were returned to the peasants, and there was a definite restoration of the principle of material incentive.
Such principles as “achieve a high level in production, keep to a low level in life,” “firmly put into practice a rational system of low wages,” were taken as the basis for economic development. Chinese propaganda, in an effort to justify the freeze in the standard of living of the population, advanced the slogan, “Do Not Fear Suffering, Do Not Fear Death.” Villages and plants that had coped with difficulties by relying solely on their own resources, without state aid, were publicized as models to be imitated. Communes, plants, whole cities and provinces were patterned for a natural economy.
Expenditures on social and cultural measures were cut drastically. Beginning in 1959, housing and communal construction, and construction of schools and higher institutions of learning, ceased. The number of students enrolled in higher institutions of learning dropped from 695,000 in 1960 to 250,000 in 1964. The number of students enrolled in the middle schools dropped by 2.7 million, and by 8–10 million in the elementary schools.
Unprecedented difficulties in supplying the populace with food and industrial goods arose as a consequence of the failure of the “great leap forward.” Many goods were rationed, and this was followed by a sharp reduction in grain, fats, and sugar norms. In 1962 and subsequent years, the monthly adult ration was 150–200 grams of meat and 100–150 grams of vegetable oil. The annual ration of cotton cloth was 2 to 3 meters per man.
The extraordinary measures introduced by CCP leaders to overcome consequences of the “great leap forward” did have some results. The economy was stabilized somewhat by the end of 1962. Nevertheless, curtailment of heavy industry, an increase in military expenditures, and the course designed to develop a natural economy were hardly the means for providing any substantial forward progress.
Needless to say, many difficulties of economic development in the PRC resulted from objective causes. One need only recall that the PRC with its vast population accounted for only 4 percent of the world’s industrial production. The people’s power inherited from prerevolutionary China primitive agriculture, backward industry, and poverty and devastation in the country. The difficulties normally unavoidable under such conditions were compounded by mistakes of Mao Tse-tung and his followers, by rejection of brotherly cooperation with the countries of socialism, and by ignoring laws of economic development.
What should be particularly pointed out is that Chinese leaders, while correcting their most grievous failures and mistakes, failed to tell their own people the truth. They continued to assert that the course of the “Three Red Banners” was the only correct, “triumphant” course.
One thing emerging from the “cultural revolution” was that during those years the adventurist policy of the Maoists concerning questions of internal development of the PRC, where the role assigned the Chinese people was that of a “piece of blank paper,” met with censure within party ranks, including leaders of the CCP. But the position of nationalist elements was dominant, so the struggle of opinions among authorities in the CCP took the form of a compromise. There was the assertion, on one hand, that the “Three Red Banners” course was not in error, and, on the other, the line that previous policy would be “regulated,” that is, reviewed.
It was no accident that Mao Tse-tung, who during the “great leap” years brought the country to severe crisis and the people to starvation, left it to Liu Shao-ch’i, Teng Hsiao-p’ing, and other members of the CC CCP to save the situation while he “concentrated on theoretical work.” This was in 1958, when Mao Tse-tung relinquished his chairmanship of the PRC. After the country recovered from the “experiments,” Mao hastened to liquidate witnesses of his failures during the “cultural revolution.”
Failures of domestic policy, and chronic economic difficulties, intensifying the violations of law and of domestic bases of social life, led to increasing discontent in all strata of Chinese society, including party and state apparati.
As early as August 1959, at the 8th Plenary Session of the CC CCP, a group of Central Committee members protested against the “Great Leap Forward” policy, classifying it as a petty bourgeois fantasy, costly to the Chinese people. Among those disagreeing with the line of the Maoists were P’eng Teh-huai, a member of the Politburo of the CC CCP, Chang Wen-tien (Lo Fu), a Candidate Member of the Politburo, and many of the leaders of the provincial committees of the party, ministries, and departments.
The discontent with nationalist policy in the CCP was even more evident at the beginning of the 1960s. Doubts as to the correctness of the “special course” they were following seized a great many government and party activists and the intelligentsia. For example, Wang Hsiao-ch’uan, director of the propaganda section of the Kweichow Provincial Committee of the CCP, openly said the “black days” that China was experiencing were the result “of certain mistaken leadership ideas,” that the “great leap” had failed, that the general line was in error, and that the people’s communes were a “bitter lesson.” Chou Yang, then deputy director of the propaganda department of the CC CCP, in meetings with writers, called the “great leap” policy rash. Teng T’o, then Secretary of the Peking City Committee of the CCP, wrote in the newspaper Paiching Wan Pao on November 26, 1961 of the “braggarts who make a lot of noise, but little sense.” It was his opinion that the braggarts think that “they can do anything they choose. What they do in fact is break their heads on the facts and finally collapse.” The Chinese reader correctly perceived these words as criticism addressed to those leaders of the CCP who had promised the people the achievement of “a thousand years of happiness in three years.”
The famous Chinese economist and Director of the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the PRC, Sun Ye-fang, in 1961 appealed for establishment of cost accounting. Objecting to neglect of the principles of material incentive, he considered it necessary to make widespread use of the goods-money relationship in the interests of building socialism. The former rector of the Higher Party School, member of the CC CCP, Yang Hsian-chen, declared the policy of the “great leap forward” a product of “subjectivism and voluntarism.” Some representatives of the CCP leadership shared these sentiments.
There can be no question of the fact that adherents of the special course knew of these attitudes, but during this period they still had not decided to openly repress opposition elements. It apparently was assumed that “stabilization” of the economy would lead to normalization of the situation and create more favorable conditions for attacking the opposition.
In 1960 Peking leaders, attempting to justify their pretensions as the advance guard of the world Communist movement, started to promote the propaganda of the “ideas of Mao Tse-tung” on an even grander scale as the “pinnacle of theoretical thought of the modern epoch.” A corresponding “justification” was advanced for this thesis. One Chinese article, for example put it this way:
The fact that modern China has become the birthplace of the ideas of Mao Tse-tung is no accident. There are deep historical and social reasons for this. It is the equal of Germany’s having become the birthplace of Marxism in the forties of the nineteenth century, and of Russia becoming the birthplace of Leninism in the twentieth century.1
The propaganda of the “ideas of Mao Tse-tung” began increasingly to ring with the thesis that these ideas were applicable not only to China, but were universal in nature. The Peking “theorists” in essence threw out their earlier definition to the effect that “the ideas of Mao Tse-tung” were “an amalgam of the universal truths of Marxism-Leninism with concrete Chinese reality.”2 If CCP leaders earlier had spoken of the “ideas of Mao Tse-tung” as the “taking of Marxism from its European form and recasting it into a form” of “Chinese Communism,” now this formula was clearly inadequate. The national clothing in which leaders of the CCP had attempted to robe Marxism in the past, at this stage had become too tight for the “ideas of Mao Tse-tung.”
Propaganda of nationalist, great-power ideas was given more emphasis in the political and indoctrinational work being done among the Chinese people. The press in the PRC intensified its “development” of the theme of the exclusiveness of China, of its particularly outstanding role in world history. Chinese newspapers and journals carried numerous articles on the greatness of ancient China, cited the thoughts of the ancient philosophers on how particularly stable were all things Chinese, and how the Chinese unswervingly “converted strangers to their images and likeness.” The thesis was advanced that “the economy and culture of the epoch of feudalism in our state, the backbone of which was the Han nation, from the Chin and Han dynasties to the initial period of the Ching dynasty (that is, from the second century B.C.to the seventeenth century A.D.),always was in the very foremost position in the world,” and that its boundaries extended for a distance that encompassed the territories of many modern states (all the way to the northern part of the Black Sea and Iran).3 Jen Min Jihpao, in chauvinistic self-delusion, wrote that:
When many Western peoples that now are famous as cultured nations still were hunting wild animals in the woods, our people already had created a brilliant, ancient culture.4
Overtones of racism began openly to creep into the Chinese press with attempts to play off one race against another. Kungmin Jihpao, in an article entitled “Criticism of World History Which Does Not Have World Character,” asserted for example that “prior to the fifteenth century the pepoles of Asia, that is the yellow race, occupied the leading place in world history. After the fifteenth century this situation underwent a gradual change-over to the European peoples, that is to the white race.”5 The authors of the article predicted that there would be a revival of the former “leading” position of the yellow race.
2. Deviation of the leadership of the CCP from Leninist principles of a socialist foreign policy
Hopes of nationalist elements to effect their ambitious great-power plans on the basis of internal development of China, by transforming it into the foremost power in the world from results of the “leap” method, were dashed with the failure of the “Three Red Banners” policy. Thus they finally recognized the possibility of achieving the victory of socialism by peaceful economic competition with capitalism.
Whereas during the establishment of the people’s communes the Maoists had asserted that communism could be built within a stipulated number of years (“three years of persistent work, a thousand years of happiness”), now they veered to the other extreme and moved achievement of this goal into the indefinite future.
“The final victory of socialism,” they now asserted in Peking, “cannot be achieved in the lifetimes of one, or even of two, generations. It will be possible to achieve it completely in from 5 to 10 generations, or perhaps after an even longer period of time.”6
But this did not mean that Chinese leaders rejected their nationalist, hegemonistic yearnings. Having lost the battle on the economic front, they began to look for new ways to achieve the old goal. Leaders of the CCP transferred the focus of their efforts to foreign policy, believing that war would “give a push” to the world revolution, and that by drawing the USSR and the United States into a mutually destructive military confrontation they could create on the ruins a “new, shining civilization” in which China, because of its overwhelming population, would assume ultimate dominance.
Peking announced that “it is stupid to talk” about building communism “when imperialism exists and is relatively strong in the main regions of the world.” Chinese leaders attacked the peaceful coexistence policy of socialist countries, and proceeded to aggravate international tensions. At the same time they tried to steer their course so as to keep to a minimum losses China might suffer, and, so far as possible, to remain aloof from the very danger they created.
The discrepancy between slogans of the Peking leaders and concrete practice in their foreign policy became increasingly evident. Paying lip service to the requirement for struggling with imperialism on the principle of “point against point,” these leaders, in fact, strove to regularize relations between the PRC and the capitalist states (including the United States), to the detriment of cooperation between China and the countries of socialism.
Deviation of CCP leaders from Leninist foreign policy principles led to activities of the CCP in the international arena which depended primarily on the use of blackmail and bribery, every conceivable type of provocation, direct interference in internal affairs of others including the socialist countries, ideological differences with fraternal parties, and splitting tactics in the socialist commonwealth and the world Communist movement.
The accelerated international activities of the PRC have been associated to a considerable degree with attempts of nationalists in the CCP to distract attention of the Chinese people from the catastrophic failure of the “Three Red Banners” course, and to establish their control over all facets of life under the slogan of intensification of the struggle with imperialism and with “contemporary revisionism.”
The essence of the foreign policy of the PRC during this period was as follows :
—With respect to the socialist camp, to isolate the Soviet Union, to bind as many socialist countries as possible to their goal, and then use the economic and political might of the socialist commonwealth to achieve great-power, nationalist goals.
—In the field of relations with forces of national liberation movements, to alienate these forces from the Soviet Union, and from other socialist states, from the international working class, to hammer together a bloc of Afro-Asian countries and, in the final analysis, to achieve hegemony in countries once on the colonial periphery of imperialism.
—With respect to the Communist movement, to isolate the CPSU, to undermine its authority among fraternal parties, to strengthen the Chinese ideological and political platform as the general line of the international Communist movement, while, at the same time, converting this movement into the weapon of Peking’s great-power strategy.
China’s foreign policy course was directed at disrupting the policy of peaceful coexistence, of aggravating international tensions, and of accelerating the “decisive military clash with imperialism.”
This particular foreign policy course led directly to a deterioration in Sino-Soviet relations. Ignoring the articles of the Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance of February 14, 1950, the purpose of which was to prevent the rebirth of Japanese militarism, the government of the PRC began to develop its policy of relations with Japan, not only without cooperation of the Soviet Union, but actually to counterbalance it. A joint statement by a Chinese delegation and a delegation from the Socialist Party of Japan, published in January 1962, included the fact that the corresponding articles of the Sino-Soviet Treaty “naturally will lose their force” simultaneously with the signing of a bilateral Sino-Japanese Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Non-Aggression. The leaders of the CCP in making such a declaration, having a direct effect on Sino-Soviet relations, did not deign to engage in necessary consultation with the Soviet government.
The deviation of Peking leaders from the generally agreed line of the socialist countries in the international arena was revealed with particular clarity in the fall of 1962, during the crisis in the Caribbean. At that time, when the serious danger of invasion by American troops was hanging over Cuba, and when the world appeared to be on the verge of thermonuclear war, Chinese leaders openly attempted to provoke a large-scale international conflict.
During the first stage of this crisis, from October 23 to 28, 1962, when the international situation was extremely tense, and it was particularly necessary to maintain a united front against the aggressive actions of American imperialism, the CCP leaders did not deem it necessary to undertake active measures to support Cuba, as was being done by the USSR and other countries. At the time when it was not sufficiently clear how events would develop, the Chinese leaders adopted a wait-and-see attitude; thus no matter which way the affair ended they would be able to have the last word.
After October 28, 1962, when tensions eased and it was evident that a turning point had been reached in resolving the crisis, the PRC suddenly began a noisy campaign “to signal decisive support for the struggle of the Cuban people to defend their independence, sovereignty, and dignity,” and Chinese propaganda unequivocally emphasized that the position of the USSR was detrimental to Cuba. At the same time Chinese leaders, demonstrating their disagreement with settling the crisis by peaceful talks, and nudging the USSR and Cuba to unleash a military conflict, attempted to use events in the Caribbean to prove the “righteousness” of their special views and to discredit the policy of peaceful coexistence. Chinese representatives spread anti-Soviet fabrications with respect to the Caribbean crisis within international democratic organizations and in various international conferences.
The real purpose of the Maoists in connection with the Caribbean crisis was to provoke an armed clash between the USSR and the United States and then to warm their hands at this military fire. The bourgeois press made some interesting statements in this connection. The New York Times, on November 7, 1962, wrote that “Peking has long been ready to fight to the last American and to the last Russian.”
The Chinese leaders made no businesslike, concrete suggestions to protect Cuban interests and avert war during the period of dangerous events in the Caribbean. Moreover, China not only did nothing to settle the Caribbean crisis, but it took the opportunity, during those terrible days, to commence military operations along India’s border, and created yet another source of international tension. These actions show the intentions of the Chinese leaders with obvious clarity. Using the fact that world attention was focused on the acute international conflict, Peking leaders attempted to realize their nationalist plans.
In October 1962 Chinese troops, pleading self-defense, intruded for a distance of 100 kilometers into regions controlled by India. Taking advantage of the evolving situation, Indian reaction launched an attack on democratic rights and the freedom of the workers. Progressive forces were subjected to repressions. The Communist Party of India was in a particularly precarious position. It became the chief target of fierce assaults of reaction. Pogroms of democratic organizations began, and Communists were arrested.
The United States and Great Britain immediately began to send India weapons, and ordered special missions sent to India, all the result of the aggravation of the Sino-Indian conflict, which threatened to spread from a local into an international one. Warnings against this development of events were issued by the Soviet side. Pravda, on October 25 and November 5, 1962 published articles containing appeals for the warring countries to cease military operations unconditionally and to begin bilateral talks. But CCP leaders not only refused to listen to those appeals, they attempted to distort the position of the USSR. The Soviet Union was charged with having deviated from proletarian internationalism in the Sino-Indian dispute.
Meanwhile bourgeois propaganda began to raise the cry of the “aggressiveness of international Communism.” Speaking in Glasgow on November 16, British Minister of Foreign Affairs Alec Douglas-Home said that “if anyone, at any time, had believed that weakness and neutrality could be protection, there can be no doubt that the experience of India should rid him of that delusion.” The imperialists, abetted by Indian reaction, forced India into the embrace of the West, and the leaders of China, through their bellicose and irresponsible adventurist actions, encouraged this in every way possible.
It was only the failure of attempts to negotiate with India from a position of strength, and the prospects of a long, protracted war in which the United States, Great Britain, and their allies in the aggressive bloc would participate, that somewhat deterred Chinese leaders. A cease-fire, and withdrawal of Chinese troops to the line occupied prior to the outbreak of the conflict, was announced on November 21.
The position of the Chinese leaders in the conflict with India resulted in heavy moral and political losses for the PRC and for the entire socialist camp, helping to destroy the faith of young national states of Asia and Africa in socialist policy. Many of these states expressed their sympathies with India in one way or another at the time of the exacerbation of the Sino-Indian border conflict. Over 60 countries around the world condemned China’s actions.
The Chinese leaders, following their adventurist course in the international arena, made national liberation movements their blue chip in the game, to advance further their own ends. The leaders of the CCP assumed it would be easy for them to spread their pseudorevolutionary theory in developing countries, to recruit supporters, and to use the antiimperialist enthusiasm of oppressed peoples for advancing their own great-power ambitions.
One detects a definite plan for use of the national liberation movement in the struggle for realization of their nationalist aspirations in theoretical discourses of the Peking leaders. Chinese leaders use the experience of the revolutionary struggle in China (first seize power in the villages, then surround the cities and seize them) in their global formula for world revolution, which is first to gain victory for the revolution in underdeveloped countries (“the world village”), cut off imperialism from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and then destroy it once and for all. It goes without saying that China, and Mao Tse-tung as its “leader,” thus is arrogating to itself the starring role in the entire world revolutionary process.
The policy of the Chinese leaders concerning the national liberation movement assumed a clearly defined anti-Soviet slant. Peking propaganda attempted to belittle the role of the Soviet Union in the international arena, to weaken the solidarity between our country and the nations leading the national liberation struggle against imperialism. Consciously denigrating the importance of the Great October Socialist Revolution in developing the national liberation struggle in colonies and dependent countries, CCP leaders strenuously promoted the paramount importance of the “ideas” of Mao Tse-tung for the fate of national liberation movements. A history textbook published in 1961 by the Hofei Pedagogical Institute said:
The ideas of Mao Tse-tung are a new development of Marxism-Leninism under the conditions of revolution in colonies and semicolonies. The ideas of Mao Tse-tung are the sole truth responsible for the liberation of the Chinese people and are the sole truth with the help of which the peoples of colonial and semicolonial countries can liberate themselves. Hence the ideas of Mao Tse-tung are of exceptional importance not only for China, but are of universal importance for the world Communist movement and for the national liberation movement of the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Historically, Marxist-Leninist parties considered the downfall of the system of colonial servitude under the impact of national liberation movements second in historical importance to the formation of the world system of socialism. Revising this assessment, Chinese leaders began to characterize the national liberation movement as the basic factor in the struggle with imperialism, downgrading the role of world socialist cooperation and the revolutionary movement of the working classes in capitalist countries. The theoretical organ of the CC CCP, Hung-ch’i, flatly stated that “the rise of the national liberation movement, and the death of the colonial system, are the main content of our epoch.”7
Peking propaganda to Asia, Africa, and Latin America began openly to speak of China separately from the socialist camp, as a result of which treatment of the “community of spirit” of the PRC with developing countries acquired essentially an ambiguous, or more precisely, a racial ring: China was arrayed not only against the imperialist powers, but against the socialist commonwealth as well. Openly nationalist movements were increasingly apparent in the propaganda and practical policies of Peking in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In speaking of the East, for example, Chinese leaders began to regard it as purely a geographic concept, not distinguishing the classical difference between the working masses of this region and those of the exploiter clique. As a result Chinese leaders pushed the slogans “People of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, Unite!,” and the “East Wind Will Prevail over the West Wind,” which objectively were in conflict with the slogan of proletarian solidarity, “Workers of the World, Unite!”
The fallacy and ambiguity of these slogans were clearly confirmed by statements of a prominent member of Japan’s Liberal-Democratic Party, Kenzo Matsumura, who visited the PRC in September 1962. His speech at a reception in Peking in the presence of Chou En-lai and other Chinese leaders was published in the China press, and included the following:
I consider this visit to be significant. This visit will help us, step by step, to settle relations between our two countries into the type of relations that should exist between peoples with the same color of skin, and the same system of written language. Premier Chou En-lai and Vice Premier Chen Yi have met with us many times, and we have discussed the fact that the East will always remain the East, and that Asians should change world history. We should join together and we should strengthen the bond between our peoples who have the same color of skin and the same system of written language.
Matsumura, in this speech, revealed what Chinese leaders themselves did not think possible to say openly.
CCP leaders, publicizing in every way possible their “vanguard role” in the struggle against colonialism, in fact did nothing to solve the practical problems of this struggle. It is significant that in 1960–1961 the government of the PRC failed to support actions of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries aimed at liquidation of the colonial system.
The departure of CCP leaders from socialist principles of domestic and foreign policy was accompanied by intensification of their attack on the ideological position of the Marxist-Leninist parties and by more active attempts to impose on the world Communist movement the antiscientific views and conceptions of Maoism.
Under these conditions the CC CPSU took steps to keep leaders of the CCP from eventually engaging in an open ideological struggle with the fraternal parties. True to the principles of proletarian internationalism, the CC CPSU persistently tried to discuss with CCP leaders all questions at issue, and to do so in comradely fashion, and remained unswerving in expressing a firm belief that joint solutions favoring the common effort of the two sides were possible.
On February 6, 1960 the CC CPSU proposed a meeting at a high party level to the CC CCP in order to discuss all questions at issue.
On April 5, 1960 the CC CPSU and the Soviet government extended an official invitation to a party-governmental delegation, headed by Mao Tse-tung, to pay a friendly visit to the Soviet Union in hopes of improving Sino-Soviet relations.
However, the friendly position of the CC CPSU met with anything but a positive response from CCP leaders. Moreover, they initiated actions hostile to the CPSU and to the other Marxist-Leninist parties.
At the end of April 1960 the Chinese press published three articles celebrating the 90th anniversary of the birth of V. I. Lenin (these articles later were combined into a booklet entitled Long Live Leninism). These articles subjected to criticism the most important theoretical propositions approved by the Communist and Workers’ Parties in the Moscow Declaration of 1957 and signed by CCP leaders.
Long Live Leninism gave a distorted view of the modern era and insisted that imperialism is the force exclusively determining world development. The authors attempted to prove that the world socialist system, the revolutionary workers’ and national liberation movement, the anti-imperialist, peace-loving forces are in no position to impose their will on imperialism. The deepening decay of the imperialist system and the downfall of colonial empires were characterized as isolated events so far as the gigantic successes of world socialism were concerned. This position contradicted the conclusion of the 1957 Moscow Declaration that world development in the modern era will be determined by the struggle, course, and results of competition between two opposing social systems, socialism and capitalism; that the growing and increasingly stronger world socialist system has ever more influence on the international situation in the interests of peace, progress, and the freedom of peoples.8
The role of the world socialist system was downgraded by Chinese leaders in order to justify their conclusion on other fundamental questions as well.
One of the central ideas contained in the booklet was the impossibility of preventing a world war until such time as socialism was victorious on a worldwide scale. The booklet was permeated with skepticism about the capabilities of world revolutionary forces. Moreover, for all practical purposes, the booklet expressed the thought that the new world war would end with positive results for the people. It includes the statement that:
The victorious people will, very quickly, create on the ruins of imperialism a civilization a thousand times higher than that known during the capitalist system, and will build its genuinely beautiful future.9
What they actually were proposing was the desirability of a world war.
Long Live Leninism was an open declaration by Chinese leaders to the enemy, imperialism, that there existed disagreements within the international Communist movement on basic questions of strategy and tactics.
In the interests of the preservation of unity the CC CPSU did not raise the question of the content of Long Live Leninism, or of other similar published statements by Chinese leaders, prior to June 1960. It believed the disagreements that had arisen should be discussed during meetings between leaders of both parties. This is why the Soviet press refrained from indulging in polemics.
A second invitation to visit the Soviet Union was extended to Mao Tse-tung early in 1960. Once again there was a chance for constructive meetings and talks between Chinese and Soviet leaders. But again Mao Tse-tung refused to use the opportunity, evinced no interest in contacts, and expressed no desire to personally acquaint himself with the life of our country. Future events were to show that this position was assumed deliberately.
In response to the constructive proposal of the CPSU, CCP leaders took a new, completely unacceptable step from the standpoint of relations between fraternal parties. This step could only be assessed as an open split. At the beginning of June 1960, during the Peking session of the General Council of the World Federation of Trade Unions, Chinese leaders expounded their views on a number of important questions of principle, advancing positions that were in conflict with Marxism-Leninism, before a large group of fraternal party representatives.
These actions not only failed to gain support among Communists attending the session, they were decisively rebuffed. The CCP leaders then took another splitting step, this time criticizing the views of the CPSU and other fraternal parties in meetings of the General Council of the World Federation of Trade Unions, as well as before a number of commissions which included many members of non-Communist parties, as well as nonparty trade unionists. These actions in essence were an open appeal to the World Federation of Trade Unions to take up the struggle against views of the CPSU and other Communist parties on the most important problems of contemporary world development.
At this time CCP leaders took active steps to get the Albanian leaders to join them in their splitting tactics. They initially attempted to create the impression that at all times they strove to prevent the deepening of the disagreement between the Albanian Party of Labor and the CPSU and to assist in normalization of Soviet-Albanian relations. In fact, however, the real position of CCP leaders was diametrically opposite. The Mao Tse-tung group gave unqualified support to Albanian leaders at all stages of the disagreement between the leaders of the Albanian Party of Labor and the other parties. Behind all their efforts was the goal of exacerbating rather than regularizing relations between the Albanian leaders and the CPSU and other parties. At a time when all Marxist-Leninist parties were making their assessment of the anti-Soviet line of Albanian leaders on a point of principle, the CCP leaders took every opportunity to emphasize their approval of that course. Talks were held on June 4, 1960 in Peking between Chinese leaders and members of the Albanian delegation who happened to be in China at the time. During the talks, CCP leaders distorted the position of the CPSU on basic contemporary problems, asserting that it was “deviating” from the 1957 Moscow Declaration. Statements of CCP leaders with respect to the CPSU and the Soviet Union were so hostile that even the Albanian representatives regarded these talks, as “dirty business,” directed at provoking a conflict between Albanian Party of Labor and the CPSU.
At the beginning of June 1960 the CC CPSU suggested use of the convocation of the 3d Congress of the Rumanian Workers’ Party in Bucharest for representatives of fraternal parties to exchange views on then current questions of the contemporary international situation.
On June 21, 1960 the CC CPSU sent the fraternal parties a confidential memorandum in which the bankruptcy of the theoretical positions of the Chinese leaders was convincingly set forth in its entirety, and, in comradely fashion, simultaneously pointed out how obviously mistaken they were and the possible harmful consequences.
The memorandum analyzed what had occurred during the session of the General Council of the World Federation of Trade Unions in Peking, and contained a fundamental criticism of the mistaken positions taken by leaders of the CCP on a number of international questions. This memorandum was in response to the attack by the Chinese leaders, who had openly and unilaterally criticized the CPSU; the Soviet Union expressed its hope that the CCP would consider the interests of the entire socialist camp, and of the international Communist movement, inseparable from the interests of building socialism in the PRC.
Candid discussions were held between the Chinese delegation to the 3d Congress of the Rumanian Workers’ Party, headed by a member of the Politburo of the CC CCP, P’eng Chen, and the CC CPSU on the eve of the Bucharest meeting. The purpose of these discussions was to review the questions at issue, to once again point out to the Chinese leaders their mistaken views and actions, and to effect the appearance of a spirit of unity in Bucharest. The Chinese delegation, following orders from Peking, refused to accept the interpretation of the CC CPSU and continued to defend their views, the same views the leaders of the CCP had advanced at the session of the World Federation of Trade Unions in Peking.
Two events took place in Bucharest between June 24 and 26, 1960 in accordance with prior arrangements with the CCP. One was a meeting of fraternal parties of the socialist countries, the other a meeting of the 51 fraternal parties of the socialist and capitalist countries.
Representatives of fraternal parties of the socialist countries took note of the fact that the entire course of world development, the successes in the socialist camp, the international workers’ and national liberation movements, the growing struggle for peace, the continuing weakening of the forces of imperialism, confirmed completely the correctness of the conclusions of the Declaration and Peace Manifesto adopted at the Moscow meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties in 1957. Participants of the Bucharest meeting were unanimous in their declaration that fundamental positions taken in the Declaration and Peace Manifesto retained their full force.
The participants in the meeting, with the exception of the Albanian representatives, showed that they were men of high principle and used concrete facts to point out that Chinese leaders had deviated from the principles of the declaration and had attempted to substitute left sectarian views for the ideology of scientific socialism.
The unity and solidarity of the fraternal parties further manifested itself in the joint meeting of Communist party representatives of socialist and capitalist countries. The participants were unanimous in acknowledging that the position and actions of the Chinese leaders were detrimental to the struggle of the revolutionary forces; they were sharply critical of the CCP leaders for their factional methods, and condemned both the behavior of Chinese representatives at the session of the General Council of the World Federation of Trade Unions in Peking and also the dissemination abroad by representatives of the PRC of anti-Soviet materials. Deep concern was expressed over attempts by Peking’s leaders to convert representatives of the fraternal countries visiting China to the spirit of their factionist views.
When it became clear to Chinese leaders that their unseemly methods had been unmasked, they assumed an injured pose and began to maintain that the meeting was run by “undemocratic methods.” This maneuver was decisively rebuffed.
The question of adoption of a common communiqué was raised by a number of the parties during the concluding stages of the meeting. After lengthy procrastination, the delegation from the CC CCP signed the communiqué “for the sake of unity,” although it was no secret that the delegation believed it had to do so or be exposed as factionists and splitters.
The communiqué, signed by representatives of Communist parties from all socialist countries, declared that the Communist and Workers’ Parties would, in the future, strengthen the solidarity of the countries of the world socialist system, and would protect, like the apple of their eye, their unity in the struggle for peace and security of all peoples, for the triumph of the great cause of Marxism-Leninism.10
The fraternal parties at the Bucharest conference declared unanimously that CCP leaders should consider the criticism leveled at them and draw from it the necessary conclusion in order to ensure unity on root questions of strategy and tactics of the world Communist movement. It was decided to establish a draft committee to prepare the documents for the international conference planned for the fall of 1960.
The results of the Bucharest conference were discussed at plenary sessions of many central committees of Communist parties which had taken part in it, and also were reviewed at the plenum of the CC CPSU held in July. The results of the conference were approved unanimously. The resolution adopted by the plenum emphasized that the:
. . . successful solutions of the problems facing the Communist and workers’ parties requires the continuation of the struggle against revisionism, dogmatism, and sectarianism, which are contradictory to the creative nature of Marxism-Leninism, and which interfere with the mobilization of all the forces in the socialist camp, of the revolutionary workers’ and liberation movement in the struggle for peace and socialism and against imperialism.11
The Bucharest conference paved the way to overcoming disagreements which had arisen between leaders of the CCP and the world Communist movement. Nevertheless, Chinese leaders did everything possible to block this approach. On June 26, 1960, the last day of the conference, the delegation from the PRC sent a letter to all Communist parties of socialist countries, purposely distorting the nature of the meeting. The letter asserted that the CPSU’s delegation had “violated the principles of consultation” in pushing its suggestion for the adoption of the communiqué. This assertion is at variance with the facts because actually the suggestion for adoption by the conference of an agreed document was advanced by delegations from a great many fraternal parties. These parties were correct in emphasizing the urgent need to adopt this document, one which declared support for the Moscow Declaration of 1957, and the readiness of all parties to observe unswervingly its principles—a document that would demonstrate to the world the solidarity of the fraternal parties. The adoption of the communiqué was desirable for yet another reason—to stop bourgeois propaganda’s clamoring about disagreements between fraternal parties after the PRC publication of Long Live Leninism.
Chinese leaders did not limit themselves to distribution of this letter. They openly attacked the position of participants in the Bucharest conference in lead articles in the newspaper Jen Min Jihpao on June 29 and August 13, 1960. Their criticism was unfounded.
The CC CPSU, in August 1960, gave the CCP a convincing answer apropos of the Bucharest meeting. Still, CCP leaders continued stubbornly to hold their mistaken views. Despite the fact that the Bucharest conference considered Chinese propaganda, including Long Live Leninism, anti-Marxist, CCP leaders continued to disseminate it abroad over the heads of central committees of fraternal parties.
Chinese leaders attempted to foist their anti-Soviet views on the Soviet people as well. To this end they made use, in particular, of the Chinese journal Druzhba (Friendship), published in Russian and distributed in the Soviet Union. The journal treated Soviet readers to the spirit of Maoist ideas, contradicting the line of the CC CPSU and other Marxist-Leninist parties. Leaders of the CCP also used the Chinese embassy in Moscow to circulate propaganda materials in the Soviet Union.
These actions on the part of the Chinese had nothing in common with the spirit of friendship and cooperation between the PRC and the USSR. The Soviet government therefore was forced to take steps to protect its people from the flow of hostile propaganda, and from involving them unnecessarily in discussions of questions under consideration by the Central Committees of the Communist Parties of China and the USSR. After repeated warnings to the Chinese side by Soviet organizations, there was no alternative but to suggest the cessation of publication of Druzhba (in Russian), and, proceeding from the principle of equity, that of the Soviet journal Sovetsko-kitayskaya druzhba (Soviet-Chinese Friendship) (in Chinese), as well. In July 1960 the Chinese were informed that materials published in Druzhba ran contrary to documents of the international Communist movement, and that such measures contradicted not only the fundamental principles on which intergovernmental and interparty relations between both countries were built, but also aims that the Chinese publishers of the journal themselves had set as bases for their activities.
Another step along the path to deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations taken by leaders of the CCP was a letter from its Central Committee to that of the CPSU on September 10, 1960. This letter contained a further attack on the ideological position of the CPSU and that of other Marxist-Leninist parties. It also contained a number of slanderous accusations against the CPSU. Our party was accused of views alien to it, of actions it never had taken, and of other faults.
The CC CCP, demagogically asserting that a temporary majority cannot transform a mistake into a truth, or a temporary minority a truth into a mistake, flatly stated that henceforth they would ignore the opinion of the fraternal parties and of the whole international Communist movement.
The persistent efforts of the CC CPSU finally succeeded in September 1960. The CC CCP accepted a proposal to hold talks; the meeting took place in Moscow between September 17 and 22, 1960.
But again Maoist leaders remained faithful to their previous line. Leading Peking figures did not make the trip to Moscow. The delegation was headed by Teng Hsiao-p’ing, General Secretary of the CC CCP. He was accompanied by ardent propagandists of the particular views of the CCP.
Holding to the framework of the letter of September 10, 1960, and piling one far-fetched pretension atop the other on the CC CPSU, the Chinese delegation strove to avoid discussion of main problems of the international situation, strategy and tactics of the revolutionary struggle, advancing instead a mass of secondary questions, some of which had long since been decided.
Talks continued for five days, but because of Chinese intransigence without positive results. Moreover, the meeting quite obviously demonstrated that the Chinese leaders intended to expand the circle of their disagreements with the CPSU and the other fraternal parties, to exacerbate the situation in the world Communist movement.
Some time later the CCP delegation returned to Moscow, and between October 1 and 20, participated in work of the drafting committee preparing the project for the statement of the Communist and Workers’ Parties conference.
This committee comprised representatives of Communist parties from all main areas of the world, socialist countries, developed capitalist countries, and countries struggling for national independence. Thus it was possible for the committee to discuss all aspects of the questions of principle facing the international Communist movement as well as Communist and Workers’ Parties in individual countries and regions. The CC CPSU prepared a project for the statement of the Communist and Workers’ Parties conference as the basis for the committee’s work, which was unanimously adopted.
The Chinese delegation hailed the fact that the CC CPSU had drafted the project for the document and declared “90 percent agreement with it,” and further expressed confidence that despite “certain dissimilar views” the Marxist-Leninist parties would be able to find common language.
The draft of the statement was expanded and enriched during creative discussions, while retaining all fundamental positions of principle. Still, the Chinese delegation, supported by representatives of the Albanian Party of Labor, pressed its stubborn struggle against inclusion in the draft of a number of most important theses pertaining to the theory and tactics of the contemporary world Communist movement. It inveighed with particular bitterness against banning fractioning and group activities in the ranks of the Communist movement and against criticism of the cult of personality. It objected as well to the proposal, advanced by the fraternal parties, that the international importance of the 20th and 21st Congresses of the CPSU be emphasized in the statement. Only the unanimous condemnation of their obstructionist position caused representatives of the Communist Party of China to cease their importunities.
The conduct of the Chinese delegation at sessions of the drafting committee revealed that CCP leaders intended to convert the Moscow conference into an arena for a sharp struggle with the CPSU and other fraternal parties.
On the eve of the conference, November 5, 1960, the CC CPSU replied to the September 10, 1960 letter of the CC CCP. This reply contained convincing proof of the theoretical inconsistency of the Chinese leaders, unmasked their splitting activities, and revealed the anti-Soviet nature of the CCP policy.
In this letter our party once again demonstrated a sincere effort to overcome disagreements. The CC CPSU said it would be a serious mistake, one fraught with serious consequences for the entire Communist movement, to wait for the “verdict of history” to determine who was right. Our party held firmly to the view that one ought not leave to history the decision of a dispute on such vital questions as theory and policy, strategy and tactics, of the Communist movement. The task of Communists is to help people make history and to direct social development along the path to communism. Their duty to the workers of the world is to reach agreement on the fundamental basis of Marxism-Leninism as quickly and decisively as possible, and to achieve consistent implementation of the general line by all fraternal parties in the interests of the great cause of victory over world imperialism.
The letter from the CC CPSU was sent to the fraternal parties which had received the September 10, 1960 letter from the CC CCP. It played an important role in preparations for the Moscow conference by drafting for it Marxist-Leninist positions on contemporary problems.
The Moscow Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties which convened in November 1960 was an important stage in the struggle of the world Communist movement for unity and solidarity on the fundamental basis of Marxism-Leninism. The mistaken views and divisive methods of the leaders of the CCP became subject to severe criticism.
It was the delegation of the CCP which forced discussion on the conference. As a matter of fact, the Chinese delegate’s first speech, rendering null and void what delegates of sister countries had agreed to in drafting committee, again raised all areas of disagreement between CCP leaders and the world Communist movement. Revising the 1957 Declaration, the delegate of the CCP particularly expressed disagreement with its thesis on the decisive role played by the international working class and the world system of socialism in the world revolutionary process. Throughout speeches of the Chinese delegation ran a theme directed at undermining the very bases of the general line of the international Communist movement and principles of Marxism-Leninism.
The divisive strategy of the Chinese delegation and the anti-Leninist positions of the Peking leaders met with a determined rebuff from an overwhelming majority of Marxist-Leninist parties at the conference. Representatives of many fraternal parties spoke to the issue that the mistaken and adventurist schemes of CCP leadership completely ignored the new historical situation evolving throughout the world as a result of root changes in the balance of power after World War II. The conference condemned the factional activities of the CCP, as well as attempts to justify these activities on “theoretical” grounds. Stressed was the fact that the splitting policy of the Chinese leaders resulted in special damage being done to parties operating under illegal conditions.
The Marxist-Leninist parties decisively condemned the slanderous campaign of the leaders of the CCP aimed at the CPSU, and were unanimous in confirming the high evaluation given the activities of our party. Attempts by the Chinese delegation to oppose, defame, and slander the CPSU to the other parties were a total failure. The delegates of the fraternal parties stated flatly that work of the CPSU was inseparable from the Communist movement, that the party of Lenin was the center of the world Communist movement. The attempt by the Chinese delegates to undermine the authority of the CPSU was construed not only as an insult to it but to the whole of the international Communist movement as well. Finding themselves under criticism, Chinese leaders accused the CPSU and other parties of an organized campaign, and even of an “attack” against the CCP. This was simply one more fiction. In fact, fraternal parties displayed exceptional patience and self-restraint in dealing with the delegation of the CCP throughout the discussions.
At that time the threat of complete isolation forced the Chinese delegation to alter its tactics and to cease temporarily its efforts to force mistaken conceptions on the international Communist movement. Faced with unanimous condemnation of their anti-Leninist views and the disruptive actions of their leaders, CCP representatives were forced to sign a statement actually rejecting the alien views of Chinese leaders, and condemning their factional activities.
The opposing ideological-political lines were clearly detectable at the conference. One was the line of the international Communist movement, supported by the overwhelming majority of the parties. This was the line of creative Marxism-Leninism, the line of unity and solidarity of the international Communist movement, based on principle. The other line was the nationalist line of leaders of the CCP, the line of deviation from the general course of the international Communist movement and of intensification of sectarian tendencies, supported openly only by the delegation of the Albanian Party of Labor.
The mistaken anti-Leninist line of the Chinese and Albanian delegations went down to total defeat. The Chinese propaganda version of the alleged victory of the Chinese line at the 1960 conference is a gross falsification.
The CC CPSU and the Soviet government took steps to improve Sino-Soviet relations immediately after the Moscow conference. The delegation of the CCP, headed by Liu Shao-ch’i, which had taken part in the conference, was invited to tour the USSR. In talks with members of the delegation, Soviet leaders emphasized the immutability of the course of the CC CPSU and the Soviet government for solidarity with the CCP and the PRC, and for the strengthening and development of Sino-Soviet interparty and interstate relations.
Chinese leaders, in statements published at that time, declared their devotion to Sino-Soviet friendship, and hypocritically expressed their delight in the foreign and domestic achievements of the Soviet Union. Mao Tse-tung and other Chinese leaders, in congratulations extended on the occasion of the 43d anniversary of the Great October Revolution, wrote:
The great Soviet people, under the leadership of the glorious Communist Party of the Soviet Union, have achieved tremendous successes in the successful accomplishment of the 7-Year Plan for the development of the building of communism, as well as in the struggle for the peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems, and for the preservation of peace throughout the world. The Chinese people rejoice with all their hearts in these tremendous successes of the fraternal Soviet people. The Chinese people in the future will go forward hand in hand with the Soviet people in the common cause of building socialism and communism, in the struggle against the aggression of imperialism, and in preserving peace throughout the world. . . . The great friendship and solidarity between the peoples of China and the Soviet Union . . . express the highest interests of the peoples of China and of the Soviet Union, the highest interests of people throughout the world.”12
The newspaper Jen Min Jihpao, assessing the overall results of the visit to the Soviet Union by the Chinese party-government delegation, wrote that “this visit by Chairman Liu Shao-ch’i unquestionably has even further strengthened and developed the great friendship and solidarity of the peoples of China and the Soviet Union, and has written a golden page in the history of Sino-Soviet friendship.”13
The 9th Plenary Session of the CC CCP met in January 1961 and reviewed the results of the Moscow Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties. The session heard and discussed a report on this issue presented by Teng Hsiao-p’ing, and adopted the following resolution:
The plenary session warmly hails the tremendous results achieved by the conference of representatives of the Communist and workers’ parties and approves completely of the statement and of the appeal to people throughout the world unanimously adopted at this meeting. The Communist Party of China will resolutely strive for the realization of the common tasks set forth in the documents of the meeting. The plenary session calls upon all members of the party and on people in all countries to hold high the great Marxist-Leninist banner of the Moscow Declaration of 1957 and of the Moscow Statement of 1960, to strengthen solidarity with the Soviet Union in international affairs, to strengthen the solidarity of the entire socialist camp and the solidarity of the international Communist movement, to strengthen the solidarity of the working class all over the world and the solidarity of all peace-loving and freedom-loving peoples, to struggle for new victories in the cause of peace throughout the world and for the progress of mankind.14
These assessments indicate that in that period the nationalist elements still had far from complete control of the situation among CCP leaders. Given a situation that had seen failure of the “great leap forward,” and conspicuous lack of success by the PRC in the international arena, they were forced to reckon with opposition to their anti-Soviet, divisive course within ranks of the party and the country, to mask their course temporarily, and to engage in various maneuvers while awaiting the proper time to take the offensive. Subsequent events reveal that after the nationalist group had strengthened its position it pursued its struggle against socialist cooperation and against the world Communist movement with renewed vigor.
The congresses of the CPSU have importance and influence on the world Communist movement far beyond the confines of our party. They profoundly affect direction and content of ideological and theoretical work of all fraternal parties holding positions of creative Marxism-Leninism. Recognizing this, the CCP leaders’ most important goal became the discrediting of the CPSU 22nd Congress.
Leaders of the CCP tried to represent the 22nd Congress as merely an ordinary event. As distinguished from delegations representing other fraternal parties, the Chinese delegation was headed by the party’s Vice Chairman, Chou En-lai, rather than by its Chairman, Mao Tse-tung. The delegation included Kang Sheng, an alternate member of the Politburo and an active adherent of the line directed at straining Sino-Soviet relations.
Leaders of the CCP deliberately assigned a special role to the so-called Albanian question in their attempts to disorganize the work of the congress. Ignoring elementary traditions of hospitality, the CCP representative in his greeting speech stated that provisions of the Summary Report of the CC CPSU containing criticism of splitting actions of Albanian Party of Labor leaders were “impossible to consider as a serious, Marxist-Leninist approach”; as a matter of fact he arrogantly lectured the congress, calling upon those present to support the CCP viewpoint.15
Thus Chinese leaders took a most unusual step in relations between Marxist-Leninist parties, by using the podium of the congress to inveigh against the report of the Central Committee of the party who invited them, once again revealing to all the world the disagreements between the CCP and the CPSU (at the same time hypocritically complaining that “open, unilateral censure of any fraternal party is not conducive to solidarity, not conducive to a solution of the problem”). Their action served to announce the claim of Chinese leaders to the role “of orthodox followers” of Marxism-Leninism, “the Superior Force” strengthening the unity of the socialist camp and of all fraternal parties. The speech by the head of the delegation representing the CCP at the CPSU 22nd Congress countered both the provisions of the 1960 Moscow Statement concerning inadmissibility of any actions tending to undermine the unity of the international Communist movement, and also the assertions of the Chinese leaders themselves to the effect that the Chinese people would not tolerate “any dealings and opinions unfavorable to solidarity between our parties and countries.”
Despite the unfriendly speech of the head of the delegation from the CCP, and despite the overall contrary position of the Chinese leaders with respect to the 22nd Congress, the CC CPSU exercised a high level of self-restraint and did not permit the congress to be turned into an arena for interparty disputes. Without conceding questions of principle, the CC CPSU firmly and consistently held its course of achieving solidarity between the CCP, our party, and other Marxist-Leninist parties. This was convincingly demonstrated by talks between Soviet leaders and the Chinese delegation, during which the views of our party on current questions were elucidated, and readiness to attempt to overcome disagreements between the sides was emphasized. Disregarding everything, the Chinese leaders continued on their course.
The delegation from the CCP upon return to Peking was rewarded with a pompous reception, attended by Mao Tse-tung, arranged to show that the CCP leadership was in complete agreement with actions of the Chinese delegation at the CPSU 22nd Congress; that it would not lay down its arms but would continue the struggle with our party and with any other fraternal parties who rejected its mistaken views and nationalist pretensions.
While the CPSU 22nd Congress was in session, and immediately afterward, a widespread anti-Soviet campaign took place in the PRC. Chou En-lai, upon return, presented a long report in which he characterized the CPSU 22nd Congress as “revisionist,” and launched a series of flagrant attacks against our party. Secretaries of party organizations made special reports on Sino-Soviet relations during November-December 1961. These reports were made at both closed and open meetings. They attempted to place blame for PRC difficulties between 1958 and 1960 on the Soviet Union. Stories concocted for dissemination stated that Chinese factories had been shut down because of shortages of spare parts and equipment which the Soviet Union “refused” to sell to the PRC, that the USSR “had demanded” of China immediate reimbursement of all loans and credits, for which China had to pay in foodstuffs, that the Soviet Union “did not want” to give assistance in the form of foodstuffs, and that the Soviet people “were not concerned” with their international obligations to the workers of other countries.
Behind the demagogic slogan of “the people will figure out who is right and who is wrong,” CCP leaders threw wide the doors for penetration of bourgeois propaganda into China. Simultaneously, all objective information on Soviet life disappeared from the Chinese press.
In China, bulletins Ts’an K’ao Shou-Ts’e (Reference Handbook) and Ts’an K’ao T’sai-Liao (Reference Materials), considered secret, were used to disseminate the slanderous fabrications of bourgeois propaganda about the USSR. The circulation of the first of these bulletins reached 100,000 copies in Peking alone by the end of 1961. The journal, in the guise of providing readers with an “unbiased” account of “comments from abroad,” reprinted slanderous articles from the bourgeois press about the Soviet people and the CPSU. Articles from Ts’an K’ao Shou-Ts’e were even recommended as “texts” for the party education network.
Early in 1962 our party took a new important step in an effort to halt the exacerbation of Sino-Soviet relations. The CC CPSU, on February 22, wrote a letter to the CC CCP expressing concern over the turn relations between the two parties were taking. The CC CPSU proceeded from the assumption that root interests of the cause of socialism and Communism demanded that our two parties rise above differences and reach agreement on all questions of principle. Given the situation, most important was to devote attention to anything that would assist in normalization of Sino-Soviet relations, while simultaneously avoiding overemphasizing the issues. The CC CPSU called for a display of good will in regulation of future disagreements, curtailment of unnecessary disputes over divergent issues, and cessation of publicized statements that not only failed to smooth out divergences, but in fact widened them. Carrying disagreements into relations between governments of the socialist countries, into their economic, political, military, and cultural cooperation, was particularly unacceptable. The CC CPSU confirmed proposals advanced earlier by the Soviet side directed at development of Soviet-Chinese contacts along all basic lines, and expressed its readiness to resolve disagreements in comradely fashion rather than let them accumulate to the point of aggravation.
The CC CPSU letter provided Chinese leaders with an opportunity to bring disagreements between the CCP and the international Communist movement into the framework of comradely discussions, and to create conditions for normalization and successful development of Sino-Soviet relations.
But the CC CCP in its reply of April 7, 1962 failed to accept the proposals made by the CC CPSU, and in fact again seized upon the notorious “Albanian question” and tried to use it for divisive and anti-Soviet purposes.
Albanian leaders, from the outset of their break with the CPSU and other sister parties, were both mouthpiece and champion for the splitting policy of Mao Tse-tung and his group. Their numerous statements and press reports abounded in harsh attacks against the CPSU and the Soviet government. Statements of Albanian leaders in defense of the “purity of Marxism-Leninism,” and all their “arguments substantiating the independence” of their views on current, basic questions, were carbon copies of Peking.
The creation of the anti-Soviet alliance between Chinese and Albanian leaders and their joining into a single opportunist bloc directed against the CPSU was one of the first results of the divisive course of Peking leaders in the socialist camp and the world Communist movement. There can be no question that the splitters would have hesitated to range themselves so clearly and openly against the CPSU and the entire world Communist movement if they had not received the patronage and complete support of Peking. This support was material, as well as ideological, from the start. Even the first anti-Soviet statement by the splitters on the 1960 meeting of the Communist and Workers’ Parties was paid for generously by Chinese leaders. This pay-off, disguised in false slogans of “international fraternal help,” was subsequently used regularly.
For some time after the 1960 meeting Chinese leaders pretended objectivity, and “appealed to the CPSU and the Albanian Party of Labor to initiate a rapprochement” in the interests of unity. This was sheer hypocrisy. Actually, CCP leaders systematically urged the Albanians to widen the breach. The CC CCP did not appeal to leaders of the Albanian Party of Labor to seek improved relations with the CPSU or with other fraternal parties; quite the contrary. Chinese leaders did everything possible to encourage development of an anti-Soviet campaign in Albania. It is no accident that the bourgeois press wrote that Tirana was “Peking’s mouthpiece,” after the first statements of Albanian Party of Labor leaders attacking the CPSU and the Soviet Union.
The Maoists, at this point, still thought it impossible to openly declare their hostility toward the CPSU. They required, therefore, other organizations to slander our party. The feverish creation, by Peking, within the ranks of the world Communist movement of all sorts of splinter groups was a deliberate move. The more strident and scandalous the anti-CPSU abuse, the more filthy and cynical their anti-Soviet lies, the more support these groups found in Peking.
Leaders of the splinter groups were rewarded with the title of “great,” and were called “solid Marxist-Leninists” in the Chinese press and in official statements. In each instance, Peking sent high-flown salutes, overblown with sanctimonious epithets and puerile flattery. The splitters, in turn, swore “always to be faithful” and “eternally grateful” to Mao Tse-tung for his “concern” and “support.”
The leaders of the Communist Party of China, in a letter to the CC CPSU of April 7, 1962, urged it to take the initiative “to get together” with the Albanians. At the same time Chinese leaders made it clear that they desired to be present at this meeting to arbitrate Soviet-Albanian relations.
On May 31, 1962 the CC CPSU sent a new letter to the CC CCP. This letter contained a suitable rebuff to the unscrupulous maneuvers of the Chinese leadership. The CC CPSU once again emphasized the need to stop the process of backsliding into a new round of sharp debate and mutual recriminations, the need to rise above outstanding disagreements, and the need to strengthen the united front of the struggle against imperialism. The CC CCP had declared its readiness to take a new step along the road to overcoming outstanding disagreements and strengthening the unity of the two parties. Guided by these considerations, the CC CPSU had not taken up all questions raised in the Chinese letter of April 7, 1962, despite the fact that our party held other views on some of them. The CC CPSU did not feel it imperative to respond to all unfounded accusations by Peking, directly or indirectly. But it was emphasized that should the need arise in the future, the CC CPSU was prepared to make a detailed statement of its views on all questions raised by the CC CCP letter.
The CC CPSU did not limit itself to appeals for unity and solidarity. It stated that it was necessary to repulse jointly and publicly the more malicious attacks of hostile propaganda, and to take more effective measures in exchanging foreign policy information and coordinating actions by fraternal parties in international organizations. All of this was dictated by the sincere efforts of our party to end disagreements and misunderstandings, and by a desire to restore unity between the two Communist parties.
The new initiative of the CC CPSU posed a dilemma for Chinese party leaders: either proceed to normalization of relations with the CPSU, or hold to the old positions. And once again those leaders showed neither the courage nor the desire to choose the right road.
The 10th Plenary Session of the CC CCP, held at the end of September 1962, set the task of intensifying the class struggle internally, as well as on an international scale; the latter primarily aimed at intensification of the anti-Soviet campaign.
6. New attacks by the Chinese leadership on the Marxist-Leninist parties
The press in the PRC opened a virulent attack on the ideological positions of the CPSU, and on the whole of the world Communist and workers’ movement, at the end of 1962. Occasions for this purpose were the congresses of the fraternal parties held at the time: the 8th Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party, the 8th Congress of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, the 10th Congress of the Italian Communist Party, and the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
Initially, official Chinese propaganda attempted to minimize the calling of these congresses. The press limited itself to laconic reports of the opening and closing of the congresses, to listing agendas and decisions. Summary reports on the congresses of the fraternal parties were not published, even in condensations.
At first the Chinese press was trying to hide from its own public the fact that the congresses of the fraternal parties subjected to severe criticism the splitting line of the leaders of the CCP. News was slanted to make it appear that these congresses were launching unilateral attacks against the Albanian Party of Labor, and that CCP leaders were its defenders against the danger of splitting. At the congresses of the Bulgarian Communist Party and Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, the head of the Chinese delegation continued to repeat the formula that any critical statements directed at the Albanian Party of Labor “are in no way serious Marxist-Leninist approaches,” and that the CCP, for its part, was devoting all its efforts to the cause of unity in the ranks of the international Communist movement.16
Chinese leaders, when hopes of hushing up the real course of events were unrealized, finally threw off the mask of “protectors” of the Albanian Party of Labor and openly rushed to attack the CPSU and the other Marxist-Leninist parties. This attack was launched by an editorial in Jen Min Jihpao on December 15, 1962, entitled “Workers of All Countries Unite, Oppose Our Common Enemy!”
Jen Min Jihpao, in initiating attacks against the CPSU and other fraternal parties, continued its hackneyed version of “self-defense” advanced by the leaders of the CCP. Under the circumstances, continued the article, “we have no alternative but to make the necessary reply” when “some . . . make public to the whole world their slanders and attacks against China.” The CCP leadership, highlighting the question of “who was the first to begin,” made a conscious effort to conceal the real reasons for their struggle against the CPSU and other fraternal parties.
It deliberately attempted to avoid discussion of the substance of questions raised at congresses of fraternal parties. The Maoists advanced the thesis that “an adverse current, opposed to Marxism-Leninism, opposed to the Communist Party of China,” had appeared in the ranks of the international Communist movement. This thesis helped give the disagreements between the CCP and the international Communist movement the appearance of a split within the international Communist and workers’ movement itself, simultaneously placing all parties who criticized the CCP leadership among the ranks of those composing the “adverse current,” and proclaiming them to be the “common enemy of the workers of the world.” Leaders of the CCP deliberately kept the true disposition of forces within the world Communist movement, and the unanimous condemnation of their splitting activities by practically all parties, from their people.
The December 15, 1962 article in Jen Min Jihpao attempted to “summarize” the congresses of the four fraternal parties. But the “summary” did not cite the importance of the congresses, and, in fact, tended to belittle the activities of the fraternal parties while defending the special course of the Chinese leaders. Almost 70 of the fraternal parties represented at the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia were falsely accused of being part of the “adverse current” in the world Communist movement simply because they had criticized the special course taken by CCP leaders and had unmasked their splitting activities.
The Chinese press, at the end of December 1962 and at the beginning of 1963, published a series of articles amounting to nothing less than gross, slanderous attacks against our party and against the other Marxist-Leninist parties, amounting to a public revision of the fundamental theses of the Declaration and the Statement of the Moscow Congresses of Communist and Workers’ Parties held in 1957 and I960.17
The Chinese press continually advanced arguments to prove its contention that it was possible to restore capitalist relations in the countries of victorious socialism. CCP leaders thus systematically prepared “theoretical” positions from which they could launch critical attacks against the socialist countries, and against those fraternal parties taking exception to their special views. The fact that imperialist propaganda utilized these positions on a massive scale for anti-Communist purposes is sufficient to show the nature of the writings of the Peking “theoreticians.”
Thus the community of tasks of Chinese and imperialist propaganda machines in developing an ideological attack against the position of socialism, fabricating and disseminating anti-Soviet lies, was completely revealed. This community of tasks can be illustrated by the fact that as a result of activation of the disruptive ideological activities of Peking, representatives of the United States Information Agency in the countries of Southeast Asia began to cut back local personnel. Those discharged declared that the Americans treated them like “masters with a dog that was no longer able to bark louder than all the others.” “They fired us,” they said, “because we could not abuse the Soviet Union as loudly and as nastily as the Chinese leaders.”
The obvious nature of the CCP leaders’ splitting policy can be judged from its evaluation in capitalist countries. The US State Department in March 1962 sent NATO members a document on Sino-Soviet disagreements which pointed out:
. . . the Chinese are interpreting the interests of the Communist movement in terms of how best they apply to China. . . . A military alliance with the USSR makes sense to the Chinese only if it will help them to achieve their nationalist goals. . . . The Chinese will be no more inclined to put the interests of unity above their own interests as time goes on than they are at present.
The ideological conditioning of the Chinese population in the spirit of the divisive, anti-Soviet course of the CCP leaders was even further developed. Dignitaries of the CCP spoke to huge meetings at the end of December 1962 and the beginning of 1963. There was a joint meeting of delegates to the Peking trade union conference, the conference of the Peking Branch of the All-China Federation of Women, and the conference of people’s committees of three Peking regions. This meeting, held on December 30, 1962, heard a bitter diatribe against our party.
Party and political training was subordinated to the task of indoctrinating the Chinese population in a spirit of anti-Sovietism. The exercises conducted within the system of party education were based on slanderous materials, depicting the Soviet people as “wholly and completely bourgeois,” “grown fat and flabby,” and as “having committed to oblivion the principles of proletarian internationalism.”
The Peking splitters developed disruptive activities among representatives of fraternal parties working in Chinese organizations (radio, publishing, schools, and the like), among foreign students, and among members of foreign delegations visiting the People’s Republic of China. The pro-rector of Peking University, in a December 30, 1962 speech to foreign specialists at the university, launched slanderous attacks against the policy of the Soviet Union, and attempted to persuade his listeners that the CPSU showed fear in the struggle with imperialism. Anti-Soviet materials purchased in capitalist countries, as well as similar materials printed in Peking, were made available to the foreign teachers at the university.
7. Frustration by Peking of CC CPSU proposals to cease open polemics
The CC CPSU, in light of the splitting activities by Peking leaders, attempted to halt public polemics. Our party, even under these conditions, continued its endeavors to turn the CCP to the path of solidarity and unity with the international Communist movement, and to the path of normalization and strengthening Sino-Soviet relations. The Soviet side in a January 3, 1963 meeting between the CC CPSU and the Chinese Ambassador, Pan Zi-li, once again emphasized the fact that the CPSU was trying to restore the once friendly state of Sino-Soviet relations by all possible means.
Pravda, on January 7, 1963, published an appeal from the CC CPSU to strengthen the unity of the Communist movement for the triumph of peace and socialism. Pravda emphasized that disagreements between individual Communist parties on specific questions do not have deep roots in the social system of the socialist countries; they are without objective foundations, but rather are primarily subjective. “Consequently,” wrote Pravda, “all the conditions exist for successfully overcoming these differences. One must proceed from the higher aims and interests of the Communist movement and seek ways of drawing closer together, ways of cooperation and unity.”18
The chief delegate of the CC CPSU at the 6th Congress of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany on January 16, 1963 declared that “the Central Committee of our party is of the opinion that it now would be useful to discontinue polemics between Communist parties and criticism of other parties within our own parties. . . .”19 This proposal, supported by many Marxist-Leninist parties, could have served as a starting point for gradual resumption of normal relations between the CCP, the CPSU, and other fraternal parties.
But the speech of the CCP representative to this same congress on January 18, 1963 demonstrated disinterest in halting public polemics. The head of the delegation of the CCP stuck to its old positions and repeated attacks against the CPSU on questions causing disagreement, including assessment of the Caribbean crisis, the Sino-Indian border conflict, and others. The Chinese representative’s speech confirmed that leaders of the CCP wanted to manipulate events so as to guard themselves against criticism, at the same time continuing their splitting activities and their earlier hit-and-run attacks against the CPSU and other Marxist-Leninist parties.
Chinese leaders reinforced their negative reaction to the proposal for discontinuing public polemics in an editorial appearing in Jen Min Jihpao on January 27, 1963. This editorial was the first direct slanderous attack against the leadership of our party to appear in the official Chinese press, and it rejected the proposal of the CC CPSU supported by fraternal parties.
The CPSU has never questioned the utility of discussions among Communists and like-minded persons. Without comparison of different opinions and points of view there can be no successful development of the revolutionary movement. But there are no disagreements, no resentments of behavior of a particular party which justify methods of struggle detrimental to the interests of the international Communist movement. The more broadly a party understands goals and tasks of the international working class, the more energy should be expended to settle disagreements quietly, no matter how serious, thus avoiding interference with positive work and preventing disorganization of revolutionary activities of the international working class.
At the same time, the CPSU holds firmly to the view that unity of the international Communist movement cannot be achieved by concessions and compromises on questions of principle. Only a consistent and flexible execution of the general line, based on principles of Marxism-Leninism, of proletarian internationalism, can ensure genuine solidarity.
The correctness of theoretical positions of the Communist parties is verifiable through their practical activities. The CPSU is a firm believer in the admonitions of V. I. Lenin, who taught that disagreements between political parties “usually can be resolved not only by controversy over principles, but by the development of political life itself, and it probably is more correct to say not so much by the former as by the latter.”20
The CC CPSU adopted these principles as a point of departure for a letter to CCP leaders of February 21, 1963, again proposing that public polemics be discontinued.
Open, increasingly aggravating polemics are shaking the unity of fraternal parties and are seriously damaging our common interests. Disputes which have arisen within the ranks of the international Communist movement obstruct the successful struggle against imperialism, weaken the effort of the socialist countries in the international arena, and adversely affect the activities of fraternal parties, particularly those in the capitalist countries in which the internal political situations are complex.21
Chinese leaders responded to this letter saying they definitely favored its proposal concerning discontinuance of public polemics. At the same time, they expressed indifference over consequences the development of such polemics could have within the international Communist movement, and, in fact, asserted these consequences were not very important. CCP leaders considered halting polemics a temporary phenomenon, a type of “truce.” While declaring their supposedly positive attitude toward the Soviet proposal, CCP leaders were, in fact, preparing a new round of attacks against the CPSU and other Marxist-Leninist parties.
Five days after the Soviet appeal for cessation of polemics, Jen Min Jihpao printed a filthy anti-Soviet article from the Albanian newspaper Zeri i Popullit. This was followed by a long series of controversial articles, this time written by the Chinese, attacking the general line of the Marxist-Leninist parties.
The CC CCP replied to the Soviet Central Committee letter on March 9, 1963. It spewed forth another segment of anti-Marxist, splitting ideas. Chinese leaders hypocritically declared their desire to discontinue public polemics. But this declaration was designed purely and simply to delude the CPSU and other fraternal parties. This is indicated by the fact that the Chinese leaders stubbornly pressed for publication of secret correspondence between the CCP and the CPSU, an event which could only lead to continuation of public polemics. Nevertheless, because of the CC CCP’s insistence, the February 21 letter of the CC CPSU and the subsequent Chinese response of March 9 were published in China and the USSR on March 14, 1963.22
CCP leaders, in insisting on publication of the letters, counted on a propaganda victory. Actually, the letter from the CC CPSU had not been written for publication, so did not contain detailed explanations of positions held by our party on questions in dispute. But the Chinese letter had been written for publication and its content was such as to pervert the line of the CPSU and to present their own position in glamorized form. However, Communists all over the world were able very readily to distinguish the true from the false.
The press and radio in the PRC continued to attack the Marxist-Leninist parties on an ever-increasing scale, even after March 9, 1963. Slanderous materials produced by the CCP were disseminated abroad in almost all main languages of the world. These materials were advertised as the “highest truth” of Marxism-Leninism.
The promotion of such materials became one of the most important tasks of PRC ambassadors and branches of the Hsinhua Agency abroad. These activities evoked indignation from Communist parties and in progressive society.
Chinese embassies in developing countries actively engaged in spreading propaganda. Bookstores in Ceylon, India, and Indonesia, and in a number of other countries, were flooded with literature containing vicious attacks against the CPSU and the other Marxist-Leninist parties, through the help of Chinese representatives.
In Europe, too, the CCP intensified its divisive propaganda. In Italy, for example, Maoists used the Italy-China Association, which published a magazine of the same title, to spread criticism of the political line of the Italian Communist Party, and propaganda promoting anti-Marxist views of a group of CCP leaders.
A special organization was established within the government of the PRC to publish and distribute Chinese splitting literature in foreign languages. Special display cases were set up in many Chinese cities which foreigners tended to frequent (in hotels, stations, airports). These contained articles in various languages and bore such inscriptions under them as “Help Yourself,” “Free,” and the like. Similar displays were set up at the international fair in Kweichow (Canton) which is designed to attract representatives of capitalist commercial firms.
8. The Sino-Soviet meeting of July 1963
The CC CPSU in its letter of February 21, 1963 took the initiative in arranging a bilateral meeting between high level representatives of the CPSU and the CCP, during which “it would be possible to take up, point by point, all the major questions of interest to both parties.” “Our parties,” emphasized the CC CPSU, “are duty bound to find a way out of the existing situation and courageously and resolutely sweep away that which obstructs our friendship.”
In their response of March 9, Chinese leaders formally agreed to the meeting, but at the same time deliberately attempted to interfere with successful preparation for the meeting through subsequent intensification of anti-Soviet attacks.
In their letter, CCP leaders had already departed from the previous formulation, whereby differences between the CPSU and the CCP “can be depicted, figuratively at least, as the relationship between one finger and the other nine,” that is, that there are differences on particular, individual questions, but both parties are essentially one. They stated: “We ought to face the fact that at present there are serious differences in the international Communist movement on a series of important questions of principle.” The CCP letter particularly emphasized the thesis that “if we cannot finish our discussions in one session, several should be held.”23 All the above indicates that Chinese leaders had no intention of obtaining the maximum in results from the forthcoming meeting, and in fact were preparing in advance the ground for failure.
On March 30, 1963 the CC CPSU sent another letter to the CC CCP. This letter contained a concrete suggestion for a bilateral meeting, proposing it begin on May 15, 1963. It further presented views on the questions that should be discussed. The CC CPSU emphasized that it was proposing this meeting “not in order to aggravate the dispute but in order to reach a mutual understanding on major problems that have arisen in the international Communist movement.”24
It further expressed its resolve to firmly and consistently uphold the platform of the world Communist movement, the general line of which found expression in the declaration and statement of the Moscow conferences of the Marxist-Leninist parties. In complete accordance with these program documents, the CC CPSU set forth its views on major questions of the day and on strategy and tactics of the international Communist movement. It appealed to the CC CCP to overcome existing differences by indulging in a comradely exchange of views, and by seeking ways to strengthen the unity of all fraternal parties and Sino-Soviet friendship and cooperation.
But CCP leaders continued to drag out the date for the organization of the meeting. It was not until May 9, 1963, more than a month after receipt of the CC CPSU letter, that Chou En-Iai advised the Soviet Ambassador that the CC CCP had decided to send a delegation to Moscow for the meeting. Chinese leaders had thus failed to support the initiative of the CC CPSU for a top echelon bilateral meeting. They also suggested that the date for the meeting be set back to between June 11 and 20, clearly attempting to play for time to continue splitting actions.
After a further exchange of views the meeting was set for July 5, 1963. Before the meeting took place, on June 14, 1963, CCP leaders published a document with the pretentious title of “A Proposed General Line for the International Communist Movement” (the so-called 25 points). This document extended even further their previous positions on current questions of principle. Hypocritically referring to the verity of the Declaration of 1957 and the Statement of 1960, these leaders nonetheless made it clear that they were not satisfied with the strategic line derived from international meetings of Communist parties and raised the question of replacing this line with their own mistaken platform. Never in the history of the international Communist movement had there been a case of such unparalleled presumption by one party as the arbitrary formulation of a “general line” for the entire movement, startlingly clear evidence of the hegemonic pretensions of the Maoists.
The question of need to formulate a general line for the Communist movement in and of itself was an indication of digression by CCP leaders from the Declaration of 1957 and the Statement of 1960. The Communist movement already had its general line, one developed by collective efforts of all Communist parties.
During the meeting CCP representatives attempted to prove that they had the right to formulate their special “general line” for the international Communist movement, saying it could do so because the CC CPSU, in its letter of March 30, 1963, allegedly had first set down “its” general line.
However, Chinese nationalists completely exposed themselves by such statements. Anyone who reads the CC CPSU letter of March 30, 1963 with care and without bias will note the fact that the CPSU made no attempt whatsoever to propose anything resembling its own general line; instead it set forth, almost verbatim, the provisions of the 1957 Declaration and the 1960 Statement on root questions of modern world development. Articles written and published by CCP leaders at the end of 1962 and early in 1963 had so confused the major question of principles of world development and had so arbitrarily interpreted documents from international Communist forums that the CC CPSU considered it desirable to remind them of basic provisions of the Declaration and Statement. Therefore the CCP leaders in formulating their special course opposing the series of basic questions contained in the CC CPSU’s letters simply established their platform in opposition to the general line of the international Communist movement itself.
The CC CCP letter of June 14, 1963 left no doubt that the Chinese leaders were holding stubbornly to the course of shaking the unity of the world Communist movement, and of further exacerbating Sino-Soviet interparty and intergovernmental relations. Recognizing the gravity of this, the CC CPSU felt it necessary to call the attention of its June plenary session to the splitting tactics of CCP leaders. On June 21, the CC CPSU plenum adopted a resolution “On the Forthcoming Meeting of Representatives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union with Representatives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China,” unanimously approving the political actions of the Presidium of the CC CPSU in its interrelations with the CC CCP.25
The plenum instructed the Presidium that during its forthcoming meeting with CC CCP representatives it hold firmly to the line adopted by our party at the 20th, 21st, and 22nd CPSU congresses and at the Moscow conferences of the Communist parties, to explain and defend the CPSU position on basic questions of principle concerning the world Communist and workers’ movement, and also on problems of Communist construction in the USSR.
The CC CCP letter of June 14, 1963 clearly was designed to worsen an already unfavorable situation for holding the Sino-Soviet meeting. Recognizing this, the CC CPSU deemed its immediate publication undesirable because “that would lead to a further exacerbation of polemics, would not correspond to understandings already arrived at, but would in fact contradict the views of the fraternal parties with respect to this question.”26
However, Chinese propaganda portrayed the CC CPSU’s concern for unity as the intention to “hide” from Communists and the Soviet people views of Chinese leaders. Mistaking the self-restraint of the CC CPSU for weakness, Mao Tse-tung and his clique, completely disregarding standards of friendly relations between socialist countries, began the unlawful distribution of the CC CCP letter of June 14, 1963, printed for mass circulation in the Russian language, in Moscow and other Soviet cities. Embassy staffers delivered the text to different institutions in Moscow, and in other cities mailed it out and distributed it to private apartments.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, in an effort to avoid a further exacerbation of relations, on June 17, 1963 made verbal representations to the Ambassador of the PRC, insisting that the Chinese Embassy cease actions clearly incompatible with the status and functions of diplomatic representatives. The Chinese did not draw the proper conclusions, however. On June 24, 1963 the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs once again advised the Ambassador of the PRC that such actions on the part of Embassy personnel, and other Chinese citizens residing in the USSR, could only be considered a violation of Soviet sovereignty and a gross disregard for USSR rules and orders established for diplomatic representatives and foreign citizens. Despite all these warnings the distribution of anti-Soviet literature continued and in fact became more widespread. Matters reached the point where Chinese crews aboard the Moscow-Peking train tossed the Russian text of the letter out car windows in railroad stations. The letter was broadcast over the radio when the train stopped. When Soviet people politely pointed out to Chinese citizens the unacceptability of such action, the latter replied that “they would not ask anyone’s permission on that score.”
Such were the circumstances leading to the note sent by the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the PRC Ambassador on June 27, 1963, demanding immediate cessation of the unprecedented practice of illegal distribution of the CCP letter. The note further declared persona non grata three embassy employees and two other Chinese citizens most brazenly engaged in activities contradictory to generally accepted relations between socialist states and countries in general, who had, by their actions, grossly violated Soviet sovereignty.
Instead of drawing the obvious conclusion from these warnings and taking steps favorable to the conduct of a Sino-Soviet meeting, CCP leaders proceeded further to exacerbate relations. Chinese citizens expelled from the USSR for distributing anti-Soviet literature were given a grand welcome in Peking on June 30, 1963. People who had violated Sino-Soviet friendship were greeted in Peking almost as if they were national heroes.
That same day the Hsinhua Agency published a statement by a representative of the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding the June 27 note of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Chinese Embassy in Moscow, deliberately distorting the facts and attempting to defend the illegal actions of Chinese citizens. The representative of the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs falsely asserted that Soviet organizations and personnel in China were supposedly engaging in similar activities.
The Soviet press on July 4, 1963 published a communiqué “At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR,” which convincingly refuted the conjecture of the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC.27
CCP leaders, putting pressure to bear as the date for the bilateral meeting approached, issued a statement on July 1, 1963 in which they attempted again to display falsely the motives impelling the CC CPSU to call undesirable the publication of the CC CCP’s June 14, 1963 letter.
The CC CPSU decisively rejected this calumny in its statement of July 4, 1963.28 Since the Chinese leaders showed no interest in stopping the polemics, and, in fact, continued widespread distribution of their letter of June 14, 1963, the CC CPSU decided in due course to print an answer to this letter in the interest of properly illuminating disputed questions as well as defending Marxism-Leninism.
On July 4 the CC CPSU listed the composition of delegates from our party to the bilateral talks and pointed out that the Soviet delegation would attempt to reach the best mutual understanding on major questions of present world development and to create a favorable atmosphere for preparation and convocation of the International Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties. The meeting began in Moscow on July 5, 1963.
While the meeting was in progress, the Chinese took a series of steps designed to complicate the talks. A mass rally was organized in Peking on July 7, two days after the meeting began. Officials, in speeches to the crowd, supported the provocations of Chinese Embassy staffers in Moscow and Chinese graduate students expelled from the USSR for illegal distribution of anti-Soviet materials. Igniting a hostile attitude toward the USSR, Chinese officials continually attempted to prove their right to violate the sovereignty of our state and the established norms of international relations.
The CC CPSU on July 9 issued a new statement, pointing out the danger of such actions on the part of Chinese leaders to the cause of strengthening Sino-Soviet friendship. The statement also emphasized the fact that:
. . . despite these unfriendly actions, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union will in the future do everything it possibly can not to deepen disagreements that already exist, and in fact will do everything it possibly can to surmount the difficulties arising in the relations between the Communist Party of China and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and with the other Marxist-Leninist parties.
The Chinese leaders continued to put new obstacles in the path of the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations. In a statement made on July 10, 1963, the CC CCP unconditionally approved the behavior of the Chinese citizens who had been expelled from the USSR for the distribution of anti-Soviet literature, and in effect tried to confer upon themselves the right to interfere in the internal affairs of the Soviet Union. Following this, on July 13, Jen Min Jihpao published an editorial that slanderously attacked the CPSU and distorted the true reasons for the exacerbation of Sino-Soviet relations.
The avowedly unfriendly actions on the part of CCP leaders, their persistent attempts to distort the position of our party, prompted the CC CPSU to publish the CC CCP’s letter of June 14, 1963, and to give it the warranted assessment. This was done on July 14, 1963, simultaneously releasing an Open Letter to party organizations and to all Communists in the Soviet Union.29
The open letter provided a true picture of Sino-Soviet relations and pointed out just who was responsible for difficulties within the world Communist movement. At the same time, this document was a sincere attempt to normalize Sino-Soviet relations, and to strengthen the solidarity of all revolutionary forces. The open letter stated:
[The CC CPSU] declares to the party, to all of the Soviet people, with all sincerity that we have done and will continue to do everything within our power to strengthen unity with the Communist Party of China, to unite the world Communist movement under the bannner of Lenin, to unite the countries of the world system of socialism, to actively assist all people struggling against colonialism, to strengthen the cause of peace and the victory of the great ideals of Communism all over the earth.
This letter met with complete and unanimous approval by Marxist-Leninist parties of the world.
Strategic designs of the anti-Soviet elements in the CCP envisaged an escalation of the political struggle against the Soviet Union. Prospects of reaching any sort of understanding between the CCP and the CPSU therefore were feared by the Maoists. Peking leaders continued to provoke disagreements in order to wreck normalization of Sino-Soviet relations. Nevertheless, despite the tense situation under which the Sino-Soviet meeting was conducted, the CC CPSU did everything possible to see that the meeting served to overcome disagreements between the two parties.
However, CCP leaders came to the meeting with different intentions. The Chinese delegation, following instructions from Peking, used the July talks to exacerbate further the disagreements, to expand the circle of disputable problems, to create new obstacles along the road to an improvement in Sino-Soviet relations. CCP representatives subjected domestic and foreign policies of our party, as well as the party program, to rude and unfounded attacks.
The Soviet delegation brought to the talks concrete proposals, the purpose of which was to eliminate differences and to develop cooperation between the USSR and the PRC in all areas. They proposed that the question of expanding trade, scientific and technical cooperation, and other forms of economic ties between the two countries be explored, expressed the opinion that prospects for long-term economic development and cooperation be discussed since conclusion of a long-term agreement would be in the interests of both countries, and suggested that information on questions of trade and foreign exchange policies in world markets be exchanged.
The Chinese delegation failed to respond to any of these proposals.
On July 20, 1963, upon insistence of the CCP, talks were broken off without yielding positive results of any kind. The joint communiqué on the meeting said:
During the meeting both sides set forth their views and positions on a great many important questions of principle concerning contemporary world development, the international Communist movement, and Sino-Soviet relations.
At the suggestion of the delegation of the Communist Party of China it was agreed that the delegations discontinue their efforts at this time; the meeting would be continued at a later date. The place and the time for continuation of a meeting will be by agreement upon further consultations between the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.30
The CC CPSU believed it imperative to avoid any further exacerbation of Sino-Soviet relations during this break in the talks. To this end, the Soviet side once again proposed to halt publication of articles, statements, and materials, as well as translations of communications containing mutual criticism and at the same time to do everything possible to improve the atmosphere for the resumption of the bilateral meeting and preparations for the international conference of representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties.
9. Aggravation of Sino-Soviet interstate relations
As they began their attacks against the ideological position of the CPSU, CCP leaders carried ideological differences with our party into Sino-Soviet intergovernmental relations more and more frequently. They began to curtail cooperation with the USSR in all main directions using the slogan “rely on own efforts” to attempt to deny to the Chinese people the cleansing ideas of the CPSU.
In 1960 Chinese organizations for political reasons failed to inaugurate many plants built and readied with Soviet assistance.
Beginning in the second half of 1960, conditions in the PRC rendered it impossible to make a systematic study of its scientific and technical achievements and of its experience in economic construction. The staff of the Counsellor of the Soviet Embassy for economic questions was refused subscriptions to 20 industrial, agricultural, and scientific and technical journals, as well as to 209 titles of periodical publications on science and engineering, economics and finance. All had been withdrawn from sale. Members of the staffs of Soviet institutes in Peking for all practical purposes were deprived of using Chinese public libraries.
In 1960, the Chinese by their provocative actions forced Soviet realization of the need to withdraw Soviet specialists from the PRC. The decision was reached under pressure of circumstances all artificially created by the Maoists.
The first groups of Soviet specialists had been sent to China upon request of the CC CCP in August 1949. The number of Soviet specialists increased as Soviet-Chinese cooperation expanded, and by August 1960 over 1,600 people were working in the PRC. During the period of the “great leap,” which was accompanied by a sharp intensification of conceit and nationalist arrogance, a scornful attitude toward Soviet experience became increasingly apparent in China. Facts indicating that the Chinese did not trust Soviet specialists appeared more and more frequently.
Specific incidents occurred where neither plant directors, ministry and department heads, nor CCP leaders paid attention to well-founded recommendations of Soviet specialists. This position was none other than a calculated attempt to discredit Soviet technical experience, and to cast doubt on Soviet purposes for such assistance.
The question of the Soviet specialists took on strictly political overtones. Soviet specialists, themselves, were looked upon suspiciously; they were shadowed; their personal belongings were searched; correspondence addressed to them was inspected.
Moreover, beginning in the spring of 1960, Chinese organizations attempted ideological brainwashing of Soviet specialists in an effort to turn them against the policies of our party. The Soviet side repeatedly drew attention to these facts and persistently requested that normal working conditions be provided for our specialists. However, Chinese authorities continued their past policies.
Subsequent events confirmed the fact that Chinese leaders, well on the road to anti-Sovietism, needed “arguments” and “pretexts” to incite within the party and among the people hostile feelings to the USSR. The tremendous losses inflicted on the national interests of the Chinese people and on the economy of the PRC through wrecking fraternal cooperation between the USSR and China were the least of their worries.
Provocations of the Maoists made further stay of Soviet specialists in China impossible. On July 16, 1960, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC received a note stating that our specialists sent to work in China were being recalled. In arriving at this decision the Soviet government considered the fact that during the years of people’s authority in the PRC their national cadres had increased with a large number of them trained in higher institutions of learning and plants in the USSR. Actually, Soviet leaders beginning in 1958 and in succeeding years repeatedly raised the question of substantially reducing the number of Soviet specialists, who could be replaced successfully by young Chinese cadres educated in the USSR. As events were to show, the CCP deliberately turned down these proposals.
Chinese leaders formally opposed the recall of Soviet specialists, but in fact did nothing constructive to settle problems. The fact that the reply to the Soviet note recalling the specialists was not received by the Soviet Embassy in the PRC until July 31 is indicative. The response from the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs was written with one purpose, that of misleading public opinion within the country, as well as abroad, thus establishing China as the “injured” party. All norms of international relations notwithstanding, Chinese authorities officially spoke of their “rights,” to carry on further political work among the Soviet people, the content of which was clearly anti-Soviet in nature.
The assertion by Chinese leaders that the recall of Soviet specialists allegedly served the purpose of causing failures in the economy of the PRC and forcing review of the plan for the development of the country’s national economy was totally groundless. It is known that the plan for industry in the PRC for the second quarter of 1960 was fulfilled by less than 90 percent overall. Consequently, the failure to meet plans occurred long before the Soviet specialists were recalled. The failure was the direct consequence of the “three red banners” policy.*
The Soviet Union repeatedly expressed readiness to return Soviet specialists to the PRC provided normal working conditions were created. This was communicated in particular to the Chinese delegation which came to Moscow in November 1960 in connection with the meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties, to the CC CCP delegation at the CPSU 22nd Congress in October 1961, to the CCP delegation at the July 1963 meeting, and in a CC CPSU letter of November 29, 1963 to the CC CCP. Chinese leaders failed to take advantage of any such proposals.
In 1960 the Chinese side for the first time in 11 years failed to meet its obligations under the protocol on mutual deliveries of commodities by a large sum (310 million rubles), and there were many commodities for which no contracts of any description were drawn. Chinese foreign trade organizations filled not a single contractual obligation in 1960. They failed also to meet the minimum schedule for commodity shipments submitted to our trade representative by the PRC Ministry of Foreign Trade. The result was that Sino-Soviet trade turnover decreased 19 percent as compared with 1959; USSR exports fell 14 percent, imports 23 percent. The Chinese side took the initiative in deferring indefinitely the conclusion of a long-term trade agreement between the USSR and the PRC.
Beginning in the third quarter of 1960, representatives of Soviet supply organizations were forbidden entrance to plants equipped with our machinery, causing difficulties in installation of Soviet equipment. In August 1960 Chinese organizations refused to allow Soviet acceptance and inspection personnel to visit plants producing commodities for our country, with the result that there was a sharp deterioration in the quality of such commodities. All such actions disrupted the manner in which trade relations had been carried on for so many years between the USSR and the PRC, a practice originally established at the behest of the Chinese.
The Chinese government, in a statement of October 31, 1960, demanded that there be a sharp curtailment in all previously concluded agreements and protocols on economic, scientific, and technical cooperation between the two sides. The Chinese side refused to meet its 1960 obligations for commodity deliveries to the Soviet Union as part of a review of the plan for the national economy, supposedly caused “by serious natural calamities and recall of Soviet specialists from the People’s Republic of China.”
The Soviet government rejected Chinese accusations as far-fetched and unfounded. The statement made by the Ministry of Foreign Trade of the USSR on December 17, 1960 contained an extensive reply to questions raised, and pointed out the need to build trade and economic relations between the USSR and the PRC on the basis of friendship and fraternal cooperation.
Chinese leaders used the next year, 1961, for a series of further steps to curtail Sino-Soviet economic, scientific and technical, and cultural cooperation. Talks on economic, scientific, and technical cooperation continuing from February to June 1961 concluded with the signing of an agreement on June 19. The Chinese representatives, completely disregarding the interests of their own people, refused further assistance from the Soviet Union in construction of 89 industrial plants and 35 other projects worth 1.1 billion rubles. The only obligations undertaken by the Soviet Union for the period 1961–1967 involved providing the PRC with technical assistance in building 66 projects of importance for development of civilian and particularly military industry. Agreement also was reached on Soviet technical assistance in the building of new projects (a gas pipeline, a semiconductor plant, and others). The result was a fivefold reduction in deliveries of complete sets of equipment from the USSR to the PRC in 1961, as compared with 1960.31
During the talks held between February and June 1961, Chinese representatives decided it was pointless to base curtailment in economic cooperation with the USSR “on recall of Soviet specialists,” apparently aware of the absurdity of this explanation. In arguing their proposals, they pointed out the following reasons:
First, thanks to the help given China by the Soviet Union, there have been built the preliminary bases for a modern industry and technology, so future construction and planning of most projects will rely on our own efforts because we want to ease the strain on the USSR with respect to aid to China. But we still will have to turn to the USSR for help in the furture on those projects we cannot plan, build, and equip by ourselves.
Second, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and the Chinese government, have recognized the need to concentrate our efforts on the construction of the most important projects, cutting back on the total number of capital construction projects, and on projects of no urgency, in order to better accord with the principles of the building of socialism in the People’s Republic of China, “better, more, faster, cheaper.” Scales of construction in the future also will be large and the rates of production high.
Third, as a result of the natural calamities that have been experienced in agriculture over the last two years we have been in definite difficulties with our balance of payments, so we hope that by cutting back on the number of projects being built with the assistance of the Soviet Union we will be able to create conditions that will be more favorable for cooperation between our countries.32
This explanation appeared quite plausible and furthermore did not preclude future development of Sino-Soviet economic ties. The Soviet government could not refute arguments advanced by PRC leaders, who, in fact, were in a difficult position. The communiqué issued pointed out efforts of both sides to continue mutual cooperation. This was done on Soviet initiative. The communiqué stated that:
Both sides presented summaries of the work that has been done over the last several years and are of the opinion that economic and scientific and technical cooperation between the USSR and People’s Republic of China, based on the principles of proletarian internationalism, equality of rights, and fraternal mutual assistance has been fruitful.33
But within two months of the signing of the June agreement, on August 15, the Chinese government announced a new cutback in deliveries of equipment from the USSR, attributed as previously to difficulties encountered by the PRC. The CC CPSU and the Soviet government once again demonstrated their understanding and bowed to Chinese wishes by deferring deliveries of complete sets of equipment to the PRC despite the fact that a good part (worth tens of millions of rubles) of the equipment was already in production or had been ordered in third countries, and was useless to the national economy of the Soviet Union.
Even this was not the end; at the beginning of December 1961 the Chinese announced total refusal to import complete sets of equipment from the USSR in 1962–1963. Thus, in less than six months, the PRC government unilaterally changed three times conditions of agreements and contracts, disregarding losses to Soviet plants filling Chinese orders.
It was quite apparent that the major reason for action on the part of the PRC government was not economic difficulties but political considerations stemming from the general line followed by CCP leaders to exacerbate Sino-Soviet relations. This was the only way to conceal the real reasons for the decision on the part of the Chinese government to lay up for two years all industrial plants under construction with the technical assistance of the Soviet Union, regardless of the state of completion and of how much equipment had been delivered.
Just what was behind the purpose of this anti-Soviet “operation” in the CCP was revealed later. “Tours” of Chinese, and even foreigners, were organized to the uncompleted construction sites in order to prove that the Soviet Union had “betrayed” China, that it had tried by “economic pressure” to influence the ideological position of the CCP. Organizers of these provocations were aware of the fact that it would be difficult for them to be caught in a lie because all questions of Sino-Soviet economic cooperation were handled through secret intergovernmental channels. Using such dirty tactics Peking leaders fabricated the myth that the Soviet Union was responsible for the lamentable state of the economy of the PRC, and for the famine and disaster which befell the Chinese people.
The agreement of June 19, 1961 envisaged the possibility of Soviet engineering and technical workers being sent to China. Despite the tremendous need of many Chinese organizations for technical assistance, and despite repeated statements of Chinese representatives concerning “losses” supposedly suffered by China as a result of the recall of Soviet specialists, the government of the PRC forwarded only two such requests in all of 1961; one for four specialists to assist in the installation of the equipment in the Sanmenhsia hydroelectric plant, and one for seven specialists to instruct in the piloting of aircraft used in agriculture. Both requests were granted.
There was a sharp cutback in Soviet-Chinese scientific and technical cooperation as well in 1960–1961, and this too must be blamed on the Chinese leaders. It is known that scientific and technical cooperation between the USSR and the PRC, which had undergone intensive development in preceding years, actually amounted to cost-free assistance by the Soviet Union. Here is manifested the genuinely internationalistic relationship between the Soviet Union and the PRC, which was just starting along the road to industrial development.
However, in October 1960, the Chinese unexpectedly suggested that earlier effective Sino-Soviet agreements on scientific and technical cooperation be reviewed, and that all obligations under earlier agreements be canceled. The result was, in June 1961, that two agreements replacing the seven already in effect were signed: the intergovernmental agreement of June 19, 1961 and the agreement between the academies of sciences of the two countries of June 21, 1961.
The review precipitated a sharp cutback in obligations undertaken by the parties; this was done upon insistence of Chinese authorities.
The Chinese evinced interest in obtaining from the USSR secret data on different aspects of the latest technologies, primarily defense. At the same time, Chinese organizations evaded exchange of experience with the USSR in those areas of science and technology in which they had advanced. They refused, for example, to engage in joint tests of Soviet models of equipment, apparatus, instruments, and materials under tropical conditions, to acquaint Soviet specialists with their experience in cultivation of chlorella algae under field conditions, or to continue work of the joint paleontological expedition in China.
Foreign trade was not exempt from the same Chinese line. The protocol signed on April 7, 1961 set the volume of exchanges for 1961 at 789 million rubles, that is, a reduction of 47 percent in the turnover that actually had taken place in 1960. This included a reduction of 63 percent in exports and 33 percent in imports. Even this level was not reached. In November 1961 the Ministry of Foreign Trade of the PRC announced that the Chinese side was unable to meet its obligations for deliveries in 1961 of certain commodities included in the protocol. Overall, the PRC failed to meet commodity deliveries to the Soviet Union by 43 million rubles.
The question of debt owed the Soviet Union by the PRC as a result of 1960 trading operations, and attributable to the “great natural calamities that had befallen agriculture in the People’s Republic of China,” also was discussed during Soviet-Chinese trade talks.34 This debt amounted to 288 million rubles. The Soviet Union, proceeding from principles of proletarian internationalism and in the interest of Soviet-Chinese friendship, was quite understanding and agreed to the PRC request for a five-year extension of payments without extra interest charges.
The Chinese side, as noted in the communiqué:
. . . accepted with appreciation the proposal of the Soviet Union concerning the delivery to the People’s Republic of China of 500,000 tons of sugar on credit prior to the end of August of this year, to be repaid during the period 1964–1967 without extra interest charges.
Recognizing the difficult food situation in the PRC, the Soviet side released the Chinese from deliveries of food products in 1961 remaining due from 1960, and also refused purchase in the PRC of virtually all food products that had been traditional items of Chinese export to the USSR prior to 1961. Our country also provided the PRC with aid in the form of 300,000 tons of grain and flour on credit in that country’s difficult spring and summer months. The Soviet Union agreed to buy from the PRC 1,000 tons of silver and to pay for it in convertible currency.
The trend toward curtailment in cultural cooperation with the USSR by the Chinese side became particularly noticeable in the second half of 1960. Chinese purchases of Soviet motion pictures fell. Chinese organizations in 1960 rejected 19 films suggested by the Soviet side, including “Ballad for a Soldier,” “Lullaby,” and others. Characteristic changes occurred as well in the field of book exchanges. Chinese orders for Soviet literature fell by 65 percent in the third quarter of 1960, and orders for political literature virtually ceased. Propaganda and publicity about Soviet books diminished. Even such books as The Biography of V. I. Lenin were withdrawn from sale.
At the beginning of 1961 the Soviet side persisted in its efforts to end this curtailment of cultural ties between the PRC and the USSR. A rather broad plan for Sino-Soviet cultural cooperation was signed February 4, 1961. It envisaged exchanges of tours by artistic groups and soloists, the organization of motion picture film festivals and demonstrations, exchange of radio and television transmissions, Soviet and Chinese music weeks, and creative meetings of writers, musicians, cinematographers, and other cultural leaders. One specific result of this plan was the Exhibit of the Achievements of the Soviet Union in the Study of Space, which opened in China.35 On June 21, 1961, the Academies of Science of the USSR and China signed a new five-year agreement on scientific cooperation to expand joint research in the most important branches of knowledge.
Nevertheless, the scope of cultural cooperation between China and the USSR in 1961 dropped to the lowest level since the inception of the PRC. By Chinese initiative sections on cooperation in the fields of printing and publishing, public health and journalism, and on direct contacts between Soviet and Chinese cultural institutes were excluded from plans for cultural ties. Curtailment of cooperation in such fields as cinema, radio, television, higher education, and education in general was particularly drastic.
Gradually Peking severed cultural ties with our country. One example was the severance of Sino-Soviet cooperation in radio broadcasting and television. Under the agreement of May 25, 1961 because of urgent Chinese requests the number of Soviet half-hour broadcasts carried by Chinese radio dropped from 7 to 3 a week. After October 1961 the Chinese side, violating the agreement, unilaterally removed them from its programs.
The unfriendly position of the Chinese leaders was even more obvious by their attitudes toward such worldwide historical events as man’s first flight in space, accomplished by the USSR on April 12, 1961. Attempting to belittle the importance of this outstanding Soviet achievement, CCP leaders did not even bother to congratulate the CC CPSU or the Soviet government on the flight made by Yu. A. Gagarin.
After 1960, when Chinese leaders openly embarked on their anti-Soviet course, they persistently shied away from high level contacts along party and state lines. In 1961, under pretext of economic difficulties, they postponed the visit to the PRC by the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, despite his having been officially invited by the Chairman of the PRC in December 1960. Yet these same difficulties did not prevent trips to the PRC in 1961 by the King of Nepal, the Queen of Belgium, Britain’s Field Marshal Montgomery, and statesmen from other countries.
The curtailment of economic and cultural cooperation with the USSR reflected the general line of the Maoists in loosening China’s ties with all socialist countries. In 1961, as compared with 1959, there was a sharp drop in trade between the PRC and the European socialist countries with the exception of Albania. Reduction in total volume of the PRC’s foreign trade from 14 billion yuan in 1959 to 8 billion in 1961 was due almost entirely to reduction in trade with socialist countries. Chinese leaders everr began to refuse equipment manufactured in socialist countries on orders placed by the PRC, despite the fact that in many cases deliveries were to have been made on credit. The PRC totally halted exchanges of information on economic questions and the like with socialist states.
The sharp reversal in the policy of economic cooperation between the PRC and socialist countries had negative effects on these countries, particularly China, and definitely damaged the interests of the world socialist system. Chinese leaders failed to consider this, however, and ignored the line of strengthening comprehensive cooperation between socialist countries as established in the 1960 Statement of the meeting of fraternal parties.
Peking leaders, while curtailing economic cooperation with socialist countries, expanded foreign trade ties between the PRC and the capitalist world. Chinese organizations began buying goods and equipment in capitalist Europe that could have been acquired with greater advantage in socialist countries. The PRC purchased aircraft, tractors, vehicles, and other items in England in 1960–1961; trade with Japan, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Italy also increased significantly in those years.
10. CCP leadership aims to create tensions along the border with the Soviet Union
The fact that neighborly relations were not strained by mutual territorial claims and border disputes did much to enhance such relations between the Soviet Union and the PRC. In the Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance, signed four and a half months after the founding of the PRC, the two countries solemnly agreed to build their relations on the basis of “mutual respect for state sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
The Sino-Soviet border was a border of friendship and neighborliness for the first ten years of the PRC’s existence. People in border areas enjoyed extensive communications, carried on lively trade, engaged in cultural exchanges, and by joint efforts resolved economic problems, helped each other, and fought natural calamities together. Soviet authorities allowed the Chinese people to hay, gather firewood, fish, and engage in other domestic activities on many parts of Soviet territory. The border guards of both states developed comradely relationships. Any border questions were resolved in an atmosphere of mutual understanding and fairness.
The leaders of the CCP and the PRC never mentioned territorial questions in dispute between China and the Soviet Union, and never left any doubt as to the legality of the Sino-Soviet border. Quite the contrary. CCP leaders repeatedly emphasized the fact that after the October Revolution the Soviet state built its relations with China on the basis of equality and respect for the sovereign rights of the Chinese people. Mao Tse-tung, at the 7th Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1945, said that “the Soviet Union was the first to reject unequal treaties and to conclude new equal treaties with China.” Mao Tse-tung made identical statements on December 16, 1949 during his visit to Moscow.36
The Sino-Soviet border as it exists today evolved over many generations and follows the natural border that divides the territories of the Soviet Union and China. It came about as a result of a whole series of treaties, which, as we know, are still in force today. In the early 1950s at Chinese request the Soviet Union handed over to the PRC complete sets of topographic maps showing the boundary line. Having familiarized themselves with the maps, the Chinese authorities made no comments with respect to the boundary line shown, and this line was observed in practice.
Not until 1957 were there any statements regarding the existence of unresolved territorial and boundary questions between China and the Soviet Union. These questions were raised in speeches made by bourgeois right-wing elements coming into the open in the struggle against the Communist party. The fact that CCP leaders, while rebuffing excursions of the right-wingers, allowed their pretensions to territorial claims against the USSR to go unanswered should be pointed out. As later events were to show, this was done deliberately.
Once nationalists within the CCP publicized their struggle with the Soviet Union they began to aggravate artificially the situation along the Sino-Soviet border, advancing territorial claims against the USSR, and using this for purposes of inflaming nationalist, anti-Soviet feelings in the PRC.
In the summer of 1960 the PRC provoked a border incident in the vicinity of Buz-Aygyr, where Chinese cattle breeders, deliberately violating the state boundary of the USSR, intruded deep into Soviet territory. Despite demands of Soviet border guards, the Chinese citizens refused to return to China, even after winter had set in. Soviet authorities naturally had to supply Chinese peasants who had crossed the border with needed supplies. The border guards asked them why, now that they had nothing to feed their cattle, they did not return to China. The chairman of the people’s commune, who was among the Chinese peasants, stated that they had crossed the frontier on direct orders from the Chinese administration, and that they were now afraid to return without its permission.37
Violations of the Sino-Soviet border by the PRC became systematic in subsequent years. Several thousand such instances were recorded in 1961–1962. Only restraint on the part of Soviet border guards prevented major incidents.
The Maoists attempted to put a corresponding “theoretical base” under territorial claims against the Soviet Union and other neighboring countries. This took the form of openly nationalistic distortions of world history. It is no accident that nationalism became the banner of social sciences in China at this time. Commonly known historical facts were revised from a nationalist bias; roles of historical figures were reassessed; imperial conquerors were glorified. The following statement was made in October 1961 at a scientific conference on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Chinese bourgeois revolution of 1911: “It is impossible to brand as aggressors those who have merely striven for expansion, and to call those who had fallen into decay and perished the objects of aggression, and express sympathy for them.” Justifying Chinese expansion in the past, one of the speakers asserted that:
At that time expanding nationalities and states experienced a period of regular progress while expansion was going on, while nationalities and states falling into decay and death experienced a period of atrophy. Atrophication is not deserving of respect.
Mingshui Tuan-ch’i, a Peking journal, carried an article entitled “The Historical Ties of Sinkiang with China” in its February 1962 issue. This article had the temerity to state that the “Western Region” of China went well beyond the limits of what was the territory of Sinkiang, and that:
. . . according to reliable materials now available, the Western Region at the time was broken up first into 36, and later on into some 50 principalities encompassing what is now Sinkiang, Kashmir, the northern border region of Afghanistan, Kokand, the Kazakh Republic, Northwestern Khorezm, the northern shores of the Black Sea (belonging to the Soviet Union), and what is now Iran.”38
Chinese historians, from their chauvinistic positions, unanimously extolled the activities of Genghis Khan, ascribing to him a progressive role in the history of China39 as well as in the histories of “40 other states.” The predatory expeditions of Genghis Khan and his successors were depicted almost as a boon to those peoples enslaved by his troops. The journal Li Shih Yen-chiu, in an article celebrating the 800th anniversary of the birth of Genghis Khan, asserted that because of his campaigns conquered peoples had “opened to them a large world in which they could live and act. The people saw higher culture that could be learned.”40
These assessments are in basic contradiction to the conclusions of Marxist-Leninist science. B. Shirendyb, president of the Academy of Sciences of the Mongolian People’s Republic, writes that:
Marxist scholars consider the wars of Genghis Khan and his successors against other countries and peoples to be predatory, plunderous, reactionary wars. Any attempt to revise the Marxist assessment of the campaigns of conquest carried on by the different invaders and conquerors —by the khans and noyons [feudal lords—authors]—means complete retreat from the fundamental bases of historical materialism, and simply adds grist to the mill of the aggressors, imperialists, revanchists, and chauvinists, of all these invaders of others’ territories. 41
CCP leaders attempted to use events associated with the 1962 mass movement of inhabitants of Sinkiang into the USSR to exacerbate Sino-Soviet relations. This exodus was no accident. It was the result of serious mistakes by CCP leaders in domestic policy, of the grave material situation of the population, and of bends in nationality policy.42 Yet leaders of the CCP tried to attribute the consequences of their actions to the USSR. Chinese officials gave contradictory explanations for causes of the incident. The PRC Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs initially called it an “accident,” but subsequent notes issued declared that the incident was caused by “disruptive activities of Soviet authorities.”
The indigenous population of Sinkiang was not the only victim of the antisocialist, nationalistic policy of PRC leaders. Others included numerous groups from Russia and the USSR (the Kazakhs, Uighurs, Russians, and others). By decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of November 10, 1945 and January 20, 1946, some 120,000 such persons received Soviet citizenship and foreign residential permits, At the same time a great many of these people, for a variety of reasons, did not receive similar papers, although under Soviet law they remained citizens of the USSR.
Relations between the Chinese authorities and Soviet citizens in Sinkiang on the whole were friendly in the first years after the formation of the PRC. But a drastic change occurred with development of anti-Soviet attitudes in Chinese policies. Soviet citizens who were permanent residents of Sinkiang found their rights infringed upon in matters of property, law, and other questions; they were dismissed en masse from state institutions and plants, and were increasingly persecuted. Employees of Chinese institutions subjected Soviet citizens to openly rude and arbitrary treatment, refusing to comply with even their simple requests. At the beginning of 1962 local authorities in Sinkiang almost stopped issuance of exit visas for the USSR to Soviet citizens wishing to return.
All this encouraged a mass exodus of desperate inhabitants from Sinkiang. In the period from April 22 to the beginning of June 1962 some 67,000 people illegally crossed into the Soviet Union.
The Chinese side tried to blame Soviet authorities, claiming that “they had accepted border violators.” The Soviet government sent the PRC government a memorandum on the subject on April 29, 1962, rejecting the unfounded accusations and pointing out the fact that the border crossing had been effected from the Chinese side, under the eyes of those Chinese authorities who should have taken timely and appropriate measures to prevent it.
Despite the facts, Chinese leaders continued leveling preposterous accusations against the Soviet Union. A memorandum written by the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs on August 30, 1962 stated definitively that the Soviet side supposedly “had prepared and organized the mass crossing,” and that Sinkiang supposedly was under threat “of serious subversive activities on the part of the Soviet Union.”
The Soviet government, on September 19, 1962, sent a note to the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs setting forth its position concerning the mass crossing of Sinkiang inhabitants, and replying to the slanderous accusations of the Chinese against our state. The PRC government did not reply to the Soviet note for some time, until the July 18, 1963 bilateral Sino-Soviet meeting. Then it responded with a statement asserting that workers in Soviet institutions in Sinkiang supposedly had engaged in “subversive activities against the People’s Republic of China.” The statement attempted to place responsibility for the crossing on the Soviet Union, as well as responsibility for the bloody events in the city of Kuldja (Ining) during spring 1962, in which Chinese authorities had organized the lethal battle with those inhabitants not of Han nationality. The Chinese repeated the demand that all refugees be forcibly returned, and confirmed the PRC refusal to send representatives to do explanatory work among the refugees.
The provocative fabrications by the Chinese were glaringly exposed in the Soviet government’s note of October 31, 1963. The Soviet government once again emphasized its readiness to resolve all questions in a spirit of friendship and mutual cooperation, including the question of the Sinkiang exodus.
As a result, Chinese authorities were forced to reckon with attempts of Soviet citizens and those of Russian birth to return to the Soviet Union, In September 1962 the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs requested that the Soviet government permit those persons seeking to leave for the USSR to do so under a simplified procedure. This request was honored and Soviet authorities temporarily permitted Soviet citizens and members of their families to enter the USSR from China without visas. Over 46,000 persons entered the USSR from Sinkiang between October 15, 1962 and May 1, 1963. Again the artificiality of the Chinese version of Soviet complicity in “getting the inhabitants of Sinkiang to cross over to the USSR” was confirmed.
Nevertheless, the Chinese side engaged in a series of provocative actions against those working in Soviet consulates in Sinkiang, including forcible detention and searching of diplomats. Local societies of Soviet citizens were disbanded and their leaders arrested on false accusations of “antigovernmental activities” and violation of Chinese laws.
The government of the USSR, faced with these conditions, decided to close the Soviet consulate general in Urumchi and the consulate in Kuldja. This was followed by the closing of the USSR’s trade representative office in Urumchi, upon urgent request of the Chinese, and the recall of Soviet foreign trade workers from border points of Khorgos and Turugart.
Provocations similar to those in Sinkiang were repeated elsewhere in the PRC. Chinese authorities in Harbin, in September 1962, sealed all premises and objects belonging to the local Soviet citizens’ society, and members of its board and employees in the city and in outlying districts were arrested. They were subjected to abusive interrogations, including physical force resulting in the death of two men. Absurd accusations of “illegal activities” were leveled at Soviet citizens. The USSR consulate general in Harbin was blockaded by police.
As expected, attempts of the Chinese authorities to create in Harbin the situation needed to “prove” the thesis of subversive activities on the part of Soviet citizens came to naught. Promises of Chinese authorities to present “facts” confirming accusations against Soviet citizens and institutions remained unfulfilled as these “facts” actually were nonexistent.
Faced with the evolving situation, in September 1962 the Soviet government decided to close the consulates general of the USSR in Harbin and Shanghai, and then the offices of the trade representatives of the USSR in Dal’nyy, Shanghai, and Kwangchow (Canton), and the “Sovfrakht”* agencies in Chinese railroad stations in Manchouli (Lupin) and Tsinan.
Development of the anti-Soviet course by CCP leaders resulted in even further deterioration of conditions under which the Soviet Embassy in the PRC was forced to operate. Chinese leaders refused meetings with Soviet representatives, even when important missions of the CC CPSU and the government of the USSR were involved. The level at which staff of the Embassy of the USSR was received in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC fell; direct communications between the Embassy and Chinese social organizations were restricted, and trips by Soviet diplomats around the country were reduced to a minimum (60 such trips were made in 1960, 23 in 1961, and 15 in 1962). Occasionally the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs refused to permit Embassy personnel to accompany Soviet delegations on trips in China. Chinese authorities took unfriendly approaches when called upon to resolve questions of providing services for the Embassy. The work of Soviet correspondents in the PRC was strictly regulated and placed under careful control.
Nevertheless, attitudes toward the PRC’s Embassy in Moscow remained friendly as always. At no time was the Ambassador of the PRC shunned by the head of the Soviet government or some other leader upon requesting a meeting. The Chinese Embassy in Moscow had broad opportunities for contact with Soviet workers, for making trips around the country, and for visiting plants, collective farms, state farms, and schools.
11. The anti-Soviet campaign in the PRC in connection with the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
Chinese leaders opened a new anti-Soviet campaign immediately after the breaking off of the Sino-Soviet meeting in July 1963. This time the pretext for attacks on the CPSU and other Marxist-Leninist parties was the treaty banning nuclear tests in three media,* signed in Moscow on August 5, 1963 by the governments of the USSR, the USA, and the United Kingdom. The Chinese side published official statements on the Moscow treaty three times (July 31, August 15, and September 1, 1963); their attitude toward the treaty was negative. They refused to be a party to it, and pounced on it with unprecedented attacks against the Soviet Union and the CPSU.
Chinese leaders, in governmental declarations, monstrously asserted that they blamed the Soviet Union for supposedly conducting a policy of “uniting with the forces of war for the struggle against the forces of peace,” “with imperialism for the struggle against socialism,” “with the United States for the struggle against China,” and “with reaction in different countries for the struggle against people all over the world.” All such unbridled slander was snatched up voraciously by the Chinese press. Jen Min Jihpao alone published over 500 anti-Soviet pieces in the summer of 1963.
Many important questions of the time, dealing with war and peace, peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems, and others, were broached in Peking’s statements regarding the Moscow treaty. However, neither the official documents published by the government of the PRC, nor the widespread propaganda campaign in the Chinese press based on these documents, resembled a statesmanlike discussion of these problems. They were statements by people whose purpose was to discredit the CPSU and the Soviet Union, to deepen the split in the world Communist movement, and to impair the unity of the anti-imperialist forces. The Maoists, understanding the vulnerability of their ideological positions, deliberately tried to reduce discussion of contemporary questions of principle to the level of noisy squabbles and unsubstantiated accusations.
Peking leaders in their attacks on the Moscow treaty deliberately ignored the fact that the conclusion of this treaty was the first, albeit limited, real success in the long struggle of the people, of Communists throughout the world, against the danger of nuclear war. This success did not blunt the vigilance of workers to the intrigues of imperialism, as Chinese propaganda asserted; quite the contrary, it gave new impetus to the struggle for peace, and strengthened faith in the possibility of forcing the imperialists to compromise. Peoples of the world saw the practical significance of the treaty as ending the threat of polluting the air with radioactive substances (strontium 90, cesium 137, and others), thus diminishing the danger to health for present and future generations.
Attempts by the Chinese to represent the conclusion of the Moscow treaty as a weakening of the defensive capability of the socialist commonwealth were completely unfounded. The treaty imposes identical obligations on all parties, so no signatory receives unilateral military advantage.
The negative attitude of the Maoists to the treaty is explained primarily by their efforts, at whatever costs, to possess nuclear weapons for realization of great-power goals. A statement by Peking leaders on September 1, 1963 frankly proclaimed that despite economic difficulties, China was ready to build its own nuclear weapons even if it took 100 years.
Evident in statements by the government of the PRC concerning the Moscow treaty was that the Chinese government, ignoring its duty as an ally and abusing the confidential nature of relations between socialist countries, had embarked on the road to divulging secret documents and information affecting defensive capabilities of socialist commonwealth countries. In this connection the Soviet government was forced to state that:
. . . after actions such as these on the part of the government of the People’s Republic of China, there is scarcely anyone who will believe in the sincerity of its assertions or who will trust it with information of defensive value. It is clear that the Soviet government is drawing its own conclusions on that score.43
Statements by Chinese leaders also revealed their striving to use the Moscow treaty to distort and discredit the policy of the Soviet Union, to wreck the Leninist policy of peaceful coexistence conducted by our country and by the other socialist states.
In attacking the Moscow treaty, the Chinese had come out against not only the Soviet Union and the CPSU, but also against the position of the overwhelming majority of socialist countries, and against the entire world community. The collective opinion of socialist countries on banning nuclear tests was expressed in the decision of the August 1963 conference of first secretaries of the central committees of the Communist and Workers’ Parties and heads of governments of states party to the Warsaw Pact:
The achievement of agreement on the question of banning nuclear testing is the result of the consistent, peace-loving foreign policy course of the Soviet Union and of all socialist countries, of the success of the Lenin policy of peaceful coexistence of states with different social structures. The Conference believes that this treaty will lend itself to the relaxation of international tensions, and will be a positive factor in the struggle of peoples for peace and against the threat of a new world war.44
The fraternal Marxist-Leninist parties on all continents of the world approved the agreement. They regarded it as the serious result of the consistent conduct of the course of the international Communist movement to strengthen the forces of peace and progress. Concurrent with this statement, Communist and Workers’ Parties condemned decisively the position of Peking leaders with respect to the Moscow treaty.
The slanderous anti-Soviet attacks by the Chinese leadership demanded a decisive rebuff. In August and September 1963 the Soviet government published statements in which it exposed the anti-Soviet trend in the position of CCP leaders with respect to the Moscow treaty, and pointed out that this position damaged the cause of peace and socialism.45
The CC CPSU and the Soviet government, scoring the hit-and-run anti-Soviet attacks by the Chinese leadership, at the same time demonstrated self-restraint and good will toward the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations. The Soviet government’s statements of September 21–22, 1963 once again expressed readiness to take any avenue to overcome disagreements, and appealed to PRC leaders to halt their polemics.
The Soviet government emphasized that it was inadmissible to shift ideological disagreements between parties to relations between socialist states, and to use such disagreements to foster chauvinism, thus sowing distrust and discord between peoples:
There is no justification, nor can there be any, for the fact that the leaders of the People’s Republic of China, rather than engaging in comradely discussions of disagreements that arise in the course of such discussions as is proper among Communists and like-minded persons, have embarked on the road of hostile attacks and slanderous assaults against our party46
Still anti-Soviet members of the CCP continued to move down this slippery road. Their attempts to undermine the moral and political unity of the Soviet people, to sow distrust in their party and in its leadership among workers in the Soviet Union, became even more brazen and open. They used Chinese propaganda about the Moscow treaty for these purposes. The Maoists resorted to direct provocations in order to distribute such propaganda in the USSR. Proof of this behavior is the events at the Soviet border station of Naushki on September 7, 1963 when Chinese citizens, on the train from Peking, had confiscated by Soviet customs officials anti-Soviet literature forbidden in the USSR. Chinese passengers responded by engaging in hooliganistic tactics; they prevented the train from leaving on time, committed excesses in the station, insulted Soviet official representatives, and even attempted violence.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR the same day reported this unprecedented event to the Embassy of the PRC in Moscow, lodging a protest in connection with the provocative conduct of the Chinese citizens. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs simultaneously pointed out that it expected the Chinese side to take immediate steps to prevent such lawlessness as was demonstrated by Chinese citizens at Naushki.
Despite demands of Soviet authorities, the Chinese train brigade as well as passengers who were citizens of the PRC continued obstructing departure of the train; they set red signals and used a stop crane. As a result, over 100 passengers, citizens of the Soviet Union as well as other countries, were sent to Moscow on an extra train after a delay of four and one-half hours.
The Chinese citizens refused to proceed to Moscow and instead continued their outrages in Naushki station, engaging in hooligan activities and provocative acts against Soviet personnel on duty. They interfered with activities of the railroad administration, the traffic control point, and the customs, blocked entrances to service areas, delayed officers of the border service, as well as other duty personnel, and grossly violated social order.
Actions such as those in Naushki are criminal offenses under Soviet law. However, guided by the desire to avoid straining relations between our countries, the Soviet government limited itself to expelling persons involved from the territory of the Soviet Union.47
One would assume that Peking would take steps to avoid repetition of such incidents, which could only lead to the exacerbation of Sino-Soviet relations. The Maoists, however, dramatized the incident at Naushki station to intensify further the usual anti-Soviet hysteria in China. Upon their return to the PRC, those responsible for the outrages in Naushki station were greeted by noisy meetings organized in their honor, at which these rowdies were characterized as martyrs, victims in the struggle for the “purity of Marxism-Leninism!”
The leadership of the CCP embarked on a new attack against the CPSU and the Soviet Union, beginning in September 1963. Jen Min Jihpao and Hung-ch’i published a series of scurrilous anti-Soviet articles advertised as “replies” to the Open Letter of the CC CPSU of July 14, 1963.
These articles, for the first time since the inception of disagreements with the CPSU, contained the Chinese leaders’ actual thoughts on all subjects earlier referred to allegorically; they openly wrote of the entire foreign and domestic policy of the CPSU and the Soviet state with shameless, crude, and slanderous evaluations. Adopting for their arsenal the line and methods of the Trotskyites, the Maoists attempted to set the Soviet people and Soviet Communists against the leadership of our party and country. The Peking press and radio appealed to the Soviet people to struggle against the CC CPSU and the Soviet Government. Chinese propaganda, in the licentiousness of its attacks, became one with the anti-Soviet, anti-Communist fabrications of reactionary imperialist circles.
Chinese leaders, having rejected the declaration and statement written collectively by the Communist and Workers’ Parties and signed by their own delegations, set an opposition “platform” thus to negate decisive actions of the world socialist system on the course of social development, to look with scorn on the struggle of the working class in capitalist countries, to counterpose the national liberation movement to the world system of socialism and the international workers’ movement, to embark upon a program of adventurism in foreign policy, to keep the “Cold War” going, to retain the cult of personality condemned by the Communist movement, and to justify the splitting struggle going on in the Communist movement.
Peking leaders tried to strengthen their anti-Soviet course at the Fourth Session of the National People’s Congress, which took place between November 17 and December 3, 1963. The session was held behind closed doors. But even the scanty reports published in the Chinese press confirmed that from beginning to end the session had an openly anti-Soviet direction. Chinese leaders used the tribunal of the supreme organ of authority in the PRC for unbridled slandering of the Soviet Union. They attempted to shift the blame for the economic difficulties which had been created in the PRC to the “Soviet authorities,” thus “substantiating” and “justifying” their so-called “rely on own efforts” course, the line of rejection of cooperation with the Soviet Union of intensification of splitting, disruptive activities in the socialist camp.
The course of the Chinese leadership, aimed at severing cooperation with the Soviet Union, was officially sanctioned by the supreme legislative body of the PRC in the main political result of the session.
13. Attempts of the CC CPSU to halt further exacerbation of Sino-Soviet relations
The anti-Soviet course of CCP leaders took on an increasingly dangerous aspect, eventually encompassing all spheres of relations between the two countries, with serious negative consequences to the world Communist movement and the socialist community. Decisive measures were immediately needed at least to slow further development of this course. Our party, without hesitation, took such measures.
The Soviet side, on October 25, 1963, once again proposed that open polemics be discontinued. This was followed by a unilateral decision on the part of the Soviet press to cease publication of materials written to expose the chauvinist course of the CCP.
Chinese leaders completely ignored our party’s discontinuance of open polemics, cynically labeling it a “trick” and a “snare.” The Chinese press not only kept proposals of the CC CPSU from readers but continued publishing anti-Soviet materials. Jen Min Jihpao alone carried over 200 such articles in November and December 1963.
Despite the unprecedented scope and persistence of the anti-Soviet campaign in the PRC, the CC CPSU on November 29, 1963 sent a letter to the CC CPSU once again proposing that open polemics be discontinued, and that the two sides develop and carry out together measures to eliminate disagreements and to normalize relations. Of particular concern to the CC CPSU was that ideological disagreements had been carried over into interstate relations and had appeared in the sphere of concrete policy, impairing friendship and solidarity among peoples of the socialist commonwealth, weakening the anti-imperialist front, and distracting the strength and attention of fraternal parties from solutions to urgent tasks of socialist construction.
The CC CPSU was of the opinion that it was necessary to focus the main goal of Sino-Soviet relations, that of developing cooperation in the interests of friendship between the Soviet Union and China, between all the socialist countries and fraternal Marxist-Leninist parties, and agreeing on actions in different types of international organizations directed at common goals of defending peace and struggling against imperialism. To those ends, the CC CPSU proposed early development of plans for trade exchanges between the PRC and the Soviet Union, an increase in exports to China of Soviet goods of interest, and of imports from China by the USSR. Also proposed was agreement on expanding Soviet technical assistance to the PRC in construction of industrial plants under terms favorable to both countries.
In connection with the drafting of the scheduled Five-Year Plan for 1966–1970 in the Soviet Union, and of the Third Five-Year Plan in China, the CC CPSU proposed that the possibility of developing trade and other ties between the USSR and the PRC be discussed, and that corresponding measures be considered in plans for the national economies of both countries. The letter expressed a desire to expand Sino-Soviet scientific and technical cooperation and cultural ties as well.
Of special importance was the CC CPSU proposal to hold friendly consultations toward delineation of boundary lines along certain sections, thus to eliminate causes of concern along the Sino-Soviet border.
The letter pointed out the need to create conditions favorable to improvement in relations with respect to the party line as well, to avoid anything that could aggravate difficulties that had arisen in the world Communist movement. Our party was aware that overcoming disagreements was a complicated business, one requiring serious efforts and much time. But it was important to go forward in this direction, step by step, to show Leninist concern for strengthening unity of the world Communist movement on a principled Marxist base, permitting no actions to undermine unity, rebuffing splitters and factionists.
The leadership of the CCP did not respond to the CC CPSU letter for three months (the reply was not made until February 29, 1964), but all its actions indicated no intentions of entertaining proposals concerning normalization of Sino-Soviet relations. The Chinese press continued daily filling its pages with materials openly anti-Soviet in content.
The leaders of the CCP, by intensifying their splitting activities, made calling an international meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties an increasingly imperative task of the world Communist movement.
A number of fraternal parties (Indonesia, New Zealand, Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Sweden, Great Britain) had proposed calling an international meeting at the end of 1961 and beginning of 1962. The CCP, in its letter to the CPSU of April 7, 1962, had supported calling a meeting, but at that time made abundantly clear its desire to introduce into discussion “the problem of Soviet-Albanian relations.” Clearly, Chinese leaders had planned on using this question to prevent the international forum of Communists from becoming a factor in strengthening the unity of socialist collaboration and the world Communist movement, and to convert it into an arena for exacerbation of disagreements.
The CC CPSU, in its reply of May 31,1962, expressed disagreement that the main topic of discussions ought to be the problem of Soviet-Albanian relations. It emphasized that preparations for the meeting, as experience had shown, first required a detailed analysis of new conditions of international life, and agreement in a spirit of collective decisions, on fundamental aspects of current tactics of the new Communist movement.
As to the creation of an atmosphere favorable to holding the meeting, the CC CPSU stated that first for discussion obviously should be discontinuance of direct and indirect attacks against fraternal parties, and observance of principles of proletarian internationalism in relations between parties, for these were in the interests of solidarity and unity.
The CC CPSU, in a new letter to the CC CCP dated February 21, 1963,48 once again stated that the CPSU as well as many other fraternal parties were calling for the meeting because there were sufficiently serious grounds for doing so. The meeting, it was felt, ought to review general problems of the struggle against imperialism and against imperialist aggression, future development of people’s liberation movements, solidarity and all-round development of the world socialist commonwealth, and means to strengthen unity of the Communist movement. The CC CPSU also suggested a bilateral meeting of representatives of the CPSU and the CCP.
The CC CCP response dated March 9, 196349 noted that it favored calling a meeting of fraternal parties, and repeated its proposals set forth in the letter of April 7, 1962. It further stated agreement with the proposal of the CPSU for a meeting of representatives of the two parties.
Many fraternal parties associated the question of an international meeting with a favorable outcome of the Sino-Soviet meeting. But the already referred to meeting held in Moscow between July 5 and 20, 1963 failed to develop positive results through the fault of CCP leaders. Because CCP leaders had so rudely rejected Soviet proposals, and were intensifying splitting activities and the campaign of anti-Sovietism, the CC CPSU was faced with the need to resume publication of materials explaining those party positions so maliciously distorted by Chinese leaders.
The CC CPSU, attaching exceptional importance to this issue, decided to detail the situation created as a result of the splitting activities of the Maoist leadership, since these activities tremendously damaged the unity of fraternal parties and the revolutionary and national liberation struggle of the people. The plenum CC CPSU convened in February 1964 heard and discussed a report by M. A. Suslov “On the Struggle of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for the Solidarity of the International Communist Movement,” and adopted a resolution on this question.50
This plenum stated that the CCP leaders had not discontinued open polemics, and had in fact intensified the campaign against the general line of the Communist movement. The Maoists, hypocritically mouthing loyalty to Marxism-Leninism, and talking profusely about the struggle with alleged revisionism, actually attacked fundamental theoretical and political lines currently guiding the world Communist movement.
The resolution of the CC CPSU plenum noted that Chinese leaders, deviating from the strategy and tactics of the Leninist line of the world Communist movement, had proclaimed their separate course, one that merged petty bourgeois adventurism and great-power chauvinism. What occurred, essentially, was that CCP leaders had adapted Trotskyite methods of waging the struggle against Marxist-Leninist parties, by encouraging factionalism.
Materials from the February plenary session were not published immediately. Evincing concern for the solidarity of the Communist movement, the CC CPSU advised fraternal parties that publication of materials would not take place until a reply to the appeal for an immediate discontinuance of open polemics was received from the CC CCP.
As expected, Peking rejected the appeal to discontinue open polemics and embarked on an even more flagrant campaign of anti-Soviet propaganda, activating its splitting activities worldwide.
A new proposal was advanced at the end of March. This dealt with addressing an appeal to a number of parties, including the CCP, to immediately cease open polemics. The CC CPSU, in the interest of unity, agreed to this proposal. But Peking once again took a negative position. On March 31 the CC CCP released its next splitting article.
Our party refrained from criticizing the CCP leadership for some time after the plenum. And it was only after all proposals for discontinuance of open polemics were rejected, only after a new wave of malicious attacks by Peking leaders against the CPSU and the world Communist movement, that the Central Committee of our party, having exhausted all means for diverting discussion into interparty channels, published materials from the February plenum session of the CC CPSU on April 3, 1964.
The CC CCP replied to CC CPSU’s letter of November 29, 1963 on February 29, 1964. The Chinese leadership remained silent on the program of constructive measures designed to normalize and develop Sino-Soviet relations, as advanced by the CC CPSU.
In striving to postpone calling the international meeting of fraternal parties, the Chinese leaders formulated a whole series of conditions in their letter. In particular, they proposed the organization of innumerable bilateral and multilateral meetings of representatives of the CCP, the CPSU, and other parties in order “to reach through consultations a general agreement” on the cessation of open polemics, to do “a great deal of preparatory work,” and to overcome other “difficulties and obstacles.” It was proposed that the bilateral Sino-Soviet meeting be held between October 10 and 25, 1964.
The CC CPSU replied to the letter of February 29, 1964 on March 7, 1964. In order to prevent further delay in calling the international meeting of fraternal parties, it proposed that talks between representatives of the CPSU and the CCP be held in Peking in May rather than October 1964, that the preparatory meeting be held in June-July of 1964, and that the international meeting of the Marxist-Leninist parties be held in the fall.
The CC CPSU also noted lack of grounds for the CC CCP proposal that the preparatory meeting consist of representatives of 17 parties only. In the opinion of the Soviet Central Committee it was desirable to have representatives from all those parties that had representatives on the drafting committee of the 1960 Moscow meeting: Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Vietnam, the German Democratic Republic, China, Korea, Cuba, Mongolia, Poland, Rumania, the USSR, Czechoslovakia, France, Italy, the Federal Republic of Germany, Great Britain, Finland, Argentina, Brazil, Syria, India, Indonesia, the United States of America, Japan, and Australia. The CC CPSU letter stated that this would provide representation from the main regions of the revolutionary movement, and reminded that at the time this representation had the approval of all fraternal parties, thus resulting in the successful conduct of the 1960 conference, and in production of its documents.
But, predictably, the CC CCP opposed these constructive proposals relative to convening the international conference of fraternal parties. The Chinese leaders in the May 7, 1964 letter dealt with the question of the preparatory meeting by saying that it would “depend on the results of the talks between the representatives of the Chinese and Soviet parties.” In turn, the talks themselves, they said:
. . . would be impossible in May, and in fact October of this year is too soon. We feel it would be more desirable to hold the talks between the representatives of the Chinese and Soviet parties in the first half of next year, say in May. If, by that time, either of the parties, the Chinese or the Soviet, considers that the time still is not ripe, they can be postponed even further.51
In their letter, the CCP leaders once again confirmed their line of continuing polemics, and, as well, their shameless, slanderous campaign against our party and other Marxist-Leninist parties. They stated plans to give unilateral publicity to the secret correspondence between the CCP and the CPSU; this they did on May 8, 1964. It was an act of grossest violation by the Maoists of generally accepted norms of relations among Communist parties.
The CC CPSU, on June 15, 1964, replied to the May 7, 1964 letter, once again asserting that the meeting should not be postponed, and that concrete dates for the meeting, as well as agenda and composition, should be agreed to in the course of further consultations with fraternal parties.
The CC CPSU reiterated its readiness to resume Soviet-Chinese conversations.
On July 28, 1964, CCP leaders rejected the CC CPSU proposals. They categorically demanded that representatives of pro-Peking splitter groups be invited to the meeting of fraternal parties.52
The CC CPSU, on July 30, 1964, addressed a letter to all fraternal parties taking into consideration the clearly expressed will of the absolute majority, and expressing the view that the time for preparatory work on calling the international meeting had come; it proposed that a drafting committee consisting of 26 Communist parties meet in Moscow in December 1964. The CC CPSU emphasized the fact that the goal of the meeting should be to strengthen unity of the world Communist movement; that it meet not simply to condemn or excommunicate anyone from the Communist movement and the socialist camp, nor to paste abusive labels or level irresponsible charges against each other.
The CC CPSU proposals met with widespread support among ranks of the world Communist movement. Peking leaders, however, paid no attention. The CC CCP, on August 30, 1964, rejected all proposals for calling an international meeting, and categorically refused to participate in the work of the drafting committee, as uncompromisingly as in their letter of July 28, 1964.
15. The leadership of the CCP stirs up further anti-Sovietism in the PRC
The Maoists, rejecting the constructive program of normalization of Sino-Soviet relations advanced by our party, continued to expand and deepen their anti-Soviet activities. The so-called replies to the CC CPSU’s open letter of July 14, 1963, containing malicious, slanderous lies about our party and country, were initiated in September 1963, on the basis of mass political indoctrination work in the country. These materials were even studied in the middle schools. A letter sent to the Soviet Embassy by Chinese students contained the following:
Whereas our political lecturers in the past said that the Soviet Union was our older brother, that we should follow the example of the USSR in all things, that we should learn from its experience, and so on, now those lessons have taken a directly opposite direction. The former friend and teacher now is abused in the vilest of terms. What once had been called help is now called exploitation.
The anti-Soviet campaign intensified even further with the May 1964 publication in the Chinese press of correspondence between the central committees of the CCP and the CPSU. Reports claiming that the USSR intended to sever diplomatic relations with the PRC—and even declare war—were read to workers and employees.
French tourists visiting the PRC in the summer of 1964 related the following:
The villages we visited had radio facilities and the villagers heard reports directed against the USSR from morning to night. One sometimes saw newspapers containing nothing except materials directed against the Soviet Union. Generally speaking, the Chinese publish a great deal of literature against the Soviet Union and provide it to all tourists. Anti-Soviet literature even is placed in the lavatories.
The Maoists, through deception, intimidation, and direct repression were able to include all new state, party, and social organizations in the anti-Soviet campaign. Grossly slanderous attacks against our party and country were heard in February 1964 at the regional party conference of the Ninghsia Hui Autonomous Region, and in March at a session of the National People’s Congress of the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
The 9th All-Chinese Congress of the Communist Youth Union met in Peking in June 1964, and it too attacked the CPSU and the Soviet Union.
Anti-Soviet propaganda had the greatest coverage in the Chinese press. The newspaper Jen Min Jihpao itself printed some 500 different anti-Soviet pieces in the period between February 16 and July 24, 1964.53
The CCP leaders never abandoned hopes of organizing anti-Soviet propaganda in Soviet territory and, with this goal in mind, systematically engaged in activities that purely and simply interfered in the internal affairs of our country. Despite repeated verbal and official protests of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, the PRC Embassy in Moscow continued efforts to distribute the information bulletin published by the Embassy in Russian, propagandizing views hostile to our country, to Soviet institutions, social organizations, and individuals.
Anti-Soviet literature continued to enter our country illegally from the PRC. Over 11,000 copies of such materials were sent to private addresses in the USSR from China during a few months in 1964, and some of the addressees were even school children.
Peking radio was active in spreading propaganda containing an anti-Soviet slant. Its daily broadcasts to the USSR were filled with libelous attacks against the CPSU and against the Soviet government. Peking propagandists, in efforts to disseminate malicious lies about the Soviet Union as widely as possible, grossly violated international agreements and rules for the use of radio frequencies for special purposes assigned to aviation, the merchant marine, and radiotelephone and radiotelegraph communications. Peking went so far as to use distress frequencies for anti-Soviet broadcasts, resulting in serious damage to conditions under which the Soviet aviation and merchant marine, as well as those of other countries, had to operate.
On February 22, 1964 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR handed the PRC Embassy in Moscow a note protesting illegal actions of the Chinese side. This protest was ignored. Subversive activities of Chinese radio stations against the Soviet Union broadened in scale.
Not the least of reasons for the Maoists’ intensifying anti-Soviet propaganda was to divert the attention of the Chinese people from domestic burdens, to intimidate them, and to make it impossible to discover real reasons for the difficulties China experienced as a result of Peking’s fallacious domestic and foreign policies.
The PRC economic situation remained precarious in 1964. Budgetary allocations for development of the national economy were about at the 1957 level. Production in the most important branches of industry was at 45 to 75 percent of 1959–1960 indices. The Mao Tse-tung group proclaimed a course supposedly advantageous to agricultural development, but even in this field achievements were negligible. Production of grain, cotton, and animal products, curtailed during the “great leap forward,” did not compare even to earlier levels.
The Chinese population was in very serious straits. A comparison between consumption by the urban population of basic food products and of cotton cloth in 1957 and the norm of supplies of these goods per capita in 1963 will provide the overall idea. Bear in mind, however, that 1957 data are for the country’s urban population in general whereas figures for 1963 are available for Peking only, a city where the food situation was better than in other areas:
Economic difficulties resulted in deep dissatisfaction with the policies of the Chinese leaders. This was strikingly confirmed in letters from Chinese citizens occasionally slipping through Chinese censorship and finding their way into the Soviet Union.
Leading representatives of Chinese society were well aware that the anti-Soviet policy was an inseparable component of the overall antipeople’s course of leadership of the CCP. Student unrest occurred in Peking University in April 1964, caused by distribution of slanderous anti-Soviet pamphlets in Chinese. The students wrote “Honorable Chinese cannot believe this!” on the covers of these diatribes. Student dormitories were searched; all “suspect” students were followed; many of them were arrested.
16. PRC provocations along the Sino-Soviet boundary
Violations of the Sino-Soviet border by the PRC became increasingly frequent in 1963–1964. There were over 4,000 such violations in 1963 alone, and the number of Chinese civilians and military personnel involved was in excess of 100,000.
Chinese provocateurs usually refused the legal demands of Soviet border guards that they leave Soviet territory. Authorities of the PRC not only failed to prevent incidents, they encouraged local inhabitants to violate the border, to seize individual sections of Soviet territory, and to refuse meeting with Soviet border representatives to discuss conflicts.
Border violations by Chinese citizens were carried out with the approbation of PRC authorities. The following will make this eminently clear. This directive, issued by the People’s Committee of Heilungkiang province and found on one violator detained in 1963, said in part:
Soviet border guards often make claims to our fishermen fishing on the islands in dispute in the Amur and Ussuri rivers to force them to leave these islands. We propose to continue fishing on the islands in dispute and advise that Soviet border guards be told that the islands belong to China, that they and not we, are in border violation. . . . In no case are our fishermen to leave these islands. We are assuming that the Soviet side, recognizing the friendly relations between our states, will take no forcible measures to dislodge our fishermen from the islands.54
Chinese military and civilian personnel became clearly hostile to Soviet border guards. On May 3, 1964, for example, 40 Chinese violators drove two tractors across the state boundary at the village of Bakhta and began to plough up sections of Soviet territory. When our border guards demanded that they leave, the violators responded with hooliganistic tactics. They pushed the border guards, and drove their tractors at them. On June 13, a group of 60 Chinese, in 26 boats and cutters, entered USSR waters along the Amur river. When a Soviet cutter with a border detachment appeared, violators began to brandish poles and oars, threatening the crew of the cutter and the border detachment, and tried to push the border guards into the water.
Chinese authorities artificially inflamed the situation by concentrating military units and numerous detachments of the so-called labor army (numbering more than 100,000 men) in border regions, and by initiating construction of large militarized state farms, essentially military settlements, in these areas. “Regular detachments” of the people’s volunteer militia were organized in border regions at the beginning of 1964, and assigned to guard the frontier. They also were.used in maintaining “extraordinary conditions” in populated points adjacent to the border.
Local inhabitants of border regions were split into groups led by community security workers. A strip of territory 200 kilometers wide adjacent to the border was declared a “forbidden zone.” All persons suspected of being Soviet sympathizers, or who had relatives in the Soviet Union, were moved out of this zone deep into China.
Flagrant anti-Soviet agitation was unleashed among the population of border regions; slander about Soviet war preparations against the PRC and our “illegal seizures” of Chinese territory was disseminated. The theme was persistently stressed that the border with the USSR was China’s “advanced line of defense.”
The Soviet government firmly held that there were no territorial problems between the USSR and China, that the Sino-Soviet border had a solid basis in treaties, and that any review was totally inadmissible. In addition, the government of the USSR repeatedly attempted to consult on questions of delineating the Sino-Soviet border along individual sections in order to preclude any grounds for misunderstanding. The first such proposals were made in 1960. The Chinese side stubbornly refused to consider such proposals.
PRC leaders agreed to the Soviet proposal for a meeting on the border question in November 1963. However, the response itself clearly indicated that the Chinese side intended to go beyond the purposes for which the meeting was intended and to use it for aggravating border questions, rather than regularizing them. The PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ note of November 19, 1963 emphasized that there were “many questions requiring discussion” involving the whole extent of the Sino-Soviet border. The Chinese side refused to agree to newspaper publication of a joint communiqué concerning the forthcoming meeting, falling back on “difficulties in agreement as to its text.”
Also worthy of attention is that on the eve of the meeting Chinese leaders launched a furious attack against the Soviet message of December 31, 1963 to the heads of governments (states) all over the world dealing with the peaceful settlement of territorial and border disputes, a message that met with widespread international acclaim and support. This statement continued as a target of attack by Chinese propaganda, even after Sino-Soviet consultations on the border questions had begun.
The Sino-Soviet meeting convened in Peking on February 25, 1964. The Soviet delegation was headed by a plenipotentiary with rank of deputy minister, P. I. Zyryanov. The Chinese delegation was headed by the vice minister of foreign affairs of the PRC, Chen Yuong-chuan.55
The Soviet delegation introduced constructive proposals that would have enabled the sides to clarify promptly the line of the Sino-Soviet border along certain sections in dispute. Successful settlement of this question would have made an important contribution to maintaining friendly relations between our peoples and states.
However, Chinese leaders continued to press their territorial claims. Jen Min Jihpao, on March 8, 1963, published an article which cited as “unequal” the concluded treaties between China and Russia, establishing the present line of the Sino-Soviet border. Mao Tse-tung, in a meeting with a Japanese delegation on July 10, 1964, said:
Approximately 100 years ago the territory to the east of Baykal became Russian territory, and since that time Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Kamchatka, and other places have been Soviet territory. We still have not balanced that account.
The official Chinese representative threatened “to think about other ways to settle the territorial question,” and declared their intention to “restore historical rights.”
The Sino-Soviet border talks were broken off on August 22, 1964. It was agreed in principle that they be continued in Moscow on October 15, 1964, but despite repeated reminders by the Soviet side, the PRC government for many years has refused to resume the talks.
17. Sino-Soviet economic, scientific and technical, and cultural cooperation in 1962—1964
The result of CCP policies was to reduce to a minimum Sino-Soviet business connections of all kinds by the end of 1962. The scope of economic cooperation between our countries in 1962 was approximately 5 percent of what it had been in 1959. Deliveries to China of Soviet machinery, materials, technical equipment, and documentation decreased to 41–42 million rubles, as against 428 million rubles in 1960; that is, by a factor of more than ten. Deliveries of sets of machinery totaled 7.8 to 8 million rubles as against 336.5 million rubles in 1959, a reduction by a factor of approximately 40.
At the beginning of 1964 the Soviet Union proposed to the PRC to discuss clarification of the volume and kind of machinery the Chinese side wanted from the USSR in addition to that anticipated by the agreement of May 13, 1962. The Chinese side refused to consult, claiming “difficulties in drafting the plan for the national economy of the PRC.” These difficulties did not, however, prevent it from expanding economic ties with capitalist countries, who provided China with machinery, including that for oil refineries and chemical plants, which China had, for two years, put off importing from the USSR. In 1963 the PRC concluded contracts for delivery of machinery for chemical plants with firms in England, Denmark, Italy, Holland, and France.
Intentionally loosening economic ties with the Soviet Union, the CCP leadership continued its slanderous campaign against our country, doing everything it could to downgrade the importance of Soviet aid. In a letter to the CC CPSU of February 29, 1964, they attempted to reduce Soviet-Chinese economic collaboration to trade alone, supposedly carried on under conditions unfavorable to the PRC.
The Maoists did not hesitate to use outright fraud in efforts to discredit Sino-Soviet economic cooperation. In April 1964, for example, they showed representatives of the diplomatic corps a Soviet lathe dismantled in a Yunnan plant, claiming that the machine had been delivered in unsatisfactory condition and could not be used for its intended job. When a representative of the Soviet foreign economic organization in Peking expressed a desire to visit the plant and make an on-site investigation, Chinese authorities, knowing they would be exposed, refused permission. In May 1964 the PRC Minister of Foreign Affairs, in an interview with Norwegian, Dutch, and West German correspondents for bourgeois newspapers, slanderously stated that our country “had robbed” China, “selling machinery and equipment at twice the world prices.”
The Chinese side continued to curtail scientific and technical cooperation with the Soviet Union. In 1963 the Soviet side proposed inclusion in the project of a protocol for the next session of the Sino-Soviet commission on scientific and technical cooperation covering 172 items on which technical documentation would be transferred to the PRC. Chinese representatives rejected most of them; only 51 items remained in the protocol. In January 1964 the Chinese side, once again without motivation, removed from consideration 80 percent of its applications, despite the fact that half of them already had been approved by Soviet organizations.
The severing of scientific and technical ties with the Soviet Union resulted in serious setbacks to development of science and technology in the PRC. But Peking leaders appeared unmoved by this consideration, consciously sacrificing the interests of scientific and technical progress in China to their anti-Soviet aims.
Sino-Soviet trade in 1962 was 18 percent below that recorded for 1961. The PRC reduced its purchases of Soviet petroleum products by more than one million tons, those of machinery and equipment by 73 million rubles, and reduced its deliveries to the USSR of tin by 2,500 tons, tungsten concentrate by 5,300 tons, cotton by 3,100 tons, and reduced its deliveries of many other commodities as well. The volume of trade between the USSR and PRC in 1963 fell by 20 percent as compared with 1962.
Talks on Sino-Soviet trade for 1964 took place in Peking in the spring of that year. The situation was a difficult one, created artificially by the Chinese side. PRC representatives refused to sell the Soviet Union goods which had for years been traditional Chinese exports to the USSR. At the same time, the Chinese tried to foist off on the Soviet delegation goods in which the Soviet Union had no interest, and which could not be sold in other countries.
As noted previously, our country, recognizing the difficult economic situation in the PRC, refrained from food purchases since 1961. However, the Chinese representatives at the 1964 trade talks were adamant in trying to obtain agreement from the Soviet Union to take food exports. Nor did they hesitate to exert obvious pressure and blackmail, asserting that the refusal of the USSR to make such purchases meant the Soviets would bear responsibility for trade reduction between our countries. They even threatened to wreck the talks. The provocative nature of such actions soon became open. Peking propaganda spread the fabrication, at home and abroad, that the PRC supposedly would export “hundreds of thousands of tons of meat products” to the USSR, whereas in fact, a little over 40,000 tons of meat products, including canned goods, were exported from the PRC to the Soviet Union in 1964.
In 1964 the Chinese, in addition, curtailed purchases in the USSR of many commodities traditionally exported to China. Obviously, this resulted in a further reduction in trade between the USSR and the PRC. The volume of Sino-Soviet trade in 1964 was 25 percent below the 1963 volume. This resulted in further reduction of the USSR’s share in the foreign trade of the PRC to about 15 percent, as compared with 23 percent in 1963.
From 1962 to 1964 the Soviet Union repeatedly expressed its readiness to revive coordination in actions of our two countries in capitalist markets, but Peking showed no enthusiasm. Nor did the government of the PRC show any interest in the Soviet initiative concerning regularization of exchange of experience in economic construction. The government, in particular, rejected a proposal that an exhibit of Soviet economic achievements be opened in the PRC on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the October Revolution, and that a similar Chinese exhibit be opened in the Soviet Union on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the founding of the PRC.
Cultural cooperation between the USSR and the PRC shaped up similarly. Its 1962 scope was approximately 30 percent below the 1961 level. The Chinese side consistently belittled the political significance of Soviet measures. During the 1962 talks, for example, the Chinese side refused to accept the Soviet proposal that a display of political placards honoring V. I. Lenin be organized in the PRC and stubbornly insisted on replacing it with a toy display.
Ties among social organizations were severed on Peking’s initiative. The enemies of Sino-Soviet friendship strove with particular tenacity to interfere with intercourse between youth of the two countries. Eighteen Chinese youth delegations visited the USSR in 1958–1959, and 15 Soviet youth delegations visited China in return, but in 1962 there was but one Chinese delegation to the USSR and not a single Soviet delegation was invited to China.
CCP leaders began to draw widely on prominent PRC cultural figures in carrying out their nationalist anti-Soviet course. They demanded that writers and artists, painters, and musicians “intensify the struggle against Soviet revisionism.” Workers in China’s literature and art were given the task of “taking an active part in the class struggle inside and outside the country,”56 at the second, expanded session of the All-China Committee of the Federation of Literary and Art Workers. Realization of these plans led to further curtailment in cultural relations between the PRC and the USSR.
The Soviet side, during the February 1963 talks in Peking, suggested a project for a new annual plan to double, approximately, cultural cooperation envisaged under the Chinese project. Our suggestion was not adopted. The plan for cultural cooperation in 1963 included 14 projects, as opposed to 50 in the 1962 plan. The exchange of cultural representatives was reduced by three-fourths.
By 1963 Chinese organizations unilaterally severed ties between Soviet and Chinese cultural institutions, libraries, and schools. All measures planned in this field such as those in education, for example, were reduced to an exchange of children’s literature (and then only stories).
Beginning in the fall of 1963, Chinese students and graduates in the Soviet Union, on instructions from Peking, organized political discussions during lectures on social disciplines. When they were rebuffed for this practice, Peking instructed them not to attend lectures and to refuse to take examinations in Marxism-Leninism and other social sciences.
On May 13, 1964, the PRC Embassy in Moscow made an official statement to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR slandering educational programs of the Soviet higher institutions of learning, as well as Soviet teachers, and raising the optional nature of the requirement that Chinese students attend classes and take examinations in social and political disciplines. The Chinese side grossly violated the Sino-Soviet agreement of August 9, 1952, in accordance with which “all rules established for students and graduate students in the corresponding institutions of learning in the USSR” applied to Chinese students.
Chinese organizations refused to participate in scientific conferences, symposiums, and meetings held in the Soviet Union. The Academy of Sciences of the USSR, in 1963, sent Chinese scientists 23 invitations to conferences and meetings, only eight of which were accepted. The remainder were refused with pleas of “press of current work.” The Chinese side, meanwhile, stubbornly refused to invite Soviet scientists to similar undertakings in the PRC.
Even at that time Chinese leaders brazenly attempted the use of cultural relations to undermine the moral and political unity of the Soviet people, and to thrust upon visiting leaders in culture and arts from our country anti-Marxist views, and malicious, slanderous lies about the foreign and domestic politics of the CPSU. In 1962, for example, during a visit to Yunnan by a delegation from the Ukrainian branch of the Soviet-Chinese Friendship Association, leaders of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association tried to force members of the Soviet delegation to condemn our country’s foreign policy. Needless to say, in all such cases the Maoist provocateurs received deserved rebuffs from all Soviet representatives. Nevertheless, such actions could not help having detrimental effects on development of Sino-Soviet cultural cooperation.
Visits to the PRC by Soviet groups and cultural figures took place in the face of an unbridled anti-Soviet campaign. Provocations occurring in November-December 1963 at the Peking exhibit of the Soviet photographic display “The Seven-Year Plan in Action” were baldly aggressive. Malicious anti-Soviet persons wrote grossly slanderous things in the guest book, including comparing our country to Hitler’s Germany.
The Chinese press, printing unpardonably libelous attacks against the Soviet Union, perverted completely the nature of cultural relations between our countries, spread false documents alleging that statements made by Chinese artistic groups, and visits of Chinese cultural workers to the USSR, supposedly resulted in a demonstration of the “warm love of the Soviet people for Chairman Mao Tse-tung.”
As a matter of fact, tours by Chinese artists in the USSR often were used by Maoists for anti-Soviet propaganda and provocations. Take, for example, the 1963 stay of the People’s Liberation Army Ensemble: The numerous “supervisors” of the ensemble who accompanied it on trips in the USSR, representatives of the Chinese Embassy, and correspondents of the Hsinhua Agency all tried to organize anti-Soviet meetings during intermissions and scattered slanderous literature defaming our party and country in theatres and hotels wherever they appeared.
At the same time Chinese authorities took steps to hamper real contact between Soviet representatives and the population of the PRC. The following incident is typical. In 1964 the Red Army Song and Dance Ensemble was placed under surveillance; walkie-talkies even were used to send orders like “Group of seven Russians gathered in the corridor outside Room No. 5. Find out what they are saying.” “A group of dancers has finished rehearsal ahead of time and has left. Follow it!” “Station One, attention! The Russians are leaving. Get the spectators out of the entrance!”
Members of the ensemble were deprived of mixing with spectators during their stay in the PRC, even in the concert halls. Chinese representatives accompanying the ensemble, resorting to physical force, rudely and unceremoniously pushed Soviet artists into the wings when they desired to hold friendly meeting with their audiences.
18. Peking leaders intensify anti-Soviet activities in the international arena
The struggle against our party and country in the international arena was the most important component of the anti-Soviet course established by the CCP.
Dissident groups formed by Peking in various countries actively engaged in spreading anti-Soviet propaganda abroad. The Maoists, in forming these groups, did not hesitate to use slander, bribery, and blackmail where unstable elements were concerned. They willingly added to the ranks “of the fighters against modern revisionism” any political adventurers so long as they reviled the CPSU and other Marxist-Leninist parties. This is why pro-Chinese groups included Trotskyites, anarchists, political adventurers, and morally decadent persons who collaborated with the police and imperialist intelligence. The Maoists even made contact with White Guard Russian émigrés in their efforts to find allies in the struggle against the USSR. In fact, the Chinese representatives established close ties with Ukrainian nationalists in Canada and purchased a large stock of anti-Soviet literature from them. The White Guard rabble, sensing spiritual brotherhood with Maoists in their anti-Soviet feelings, extended their filthy hands to them. For instance, the émigré paper Vil’ne slovo, published in Canada, made an appeal “to side actively with Maoist China against Communist Moscow,” and called upon Ukrainian nationalists to unite with the Maoists for “the joint struggle against the common enemy.”
The same complete coincidence of ideological positions was noted between Maoists and Trotskyites of the “Fourth International,” who even wrote an open letter to the CC CCP, stating flatly:
The Fourth International, which from the day of its founding has carried on . . . a struggle with the ideas which you now oppose, is on your side. . . . The International Secretariat of the International welcomes this discussion you have started throughout the Communist movement. It calls upon you to develop it.57
The PRC’s foreign policy course, so detrimental to the Soviet Union, became very apparent in the splitting tactics of the Maoists in developing countries, and in particular in 1964 efforts by Peking to prevent the USSR from participating in the Second Afro-Asian Conference.
The Maoist leadership of the CCP had long before established a course, the purpose of which was to wreck relations between the Soviet Union and the “Third World” countries. In December 1961, at the executive committee session of the Organization for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia and Africa, the Chinese representative declared that “only the anti-imperialist people’s oganizations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and not organizations from other regions” could take the initiative in calling a conference on solidarity and make preparations for it. He demanded that no Soviet delegates attend the conference.
The Chinese delegation to the preparatory meeting of the Conference of Asian and African Journalists in Djakarta in 1962 came out against full and equal participation in the conference by the Soviet Union’s Central Asiatic Republics’ representatives. The Maoists took a similar position at other international conferences, in particular at the Ninth World Conference on the Prohibition of Nuclear and Hydrogen Weapons (Hiroshima, August 1963), and at the executive committee session of the Organization of Afro-Asian Solidarity (Nicosia, September 1963). PRC representatives voted against the acceptance of Uzbekistan at the fourth Session of the Organization of Economic Cooperation of the Countries of Asia and Africa (Karachi, December 1963). The head of the Chinese delegation to the Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference in Moshi (1963), in a meeting with Soviet representatives, openly stated that:
“We regret that you came here at all, and to think you were needed here is an insult to the solidarity movement of the Afro-Asian countries. . . . Do as you please, but we will be against you.”
Chinese delegates indoctrinated representatives of Afro-Asian nations with the notion that since Russians, Czechs, and Poles were white, “they could not be relied upon,” that they “will always make arrangements with the Americans, who are white,” and that peoples of Asia and Africa have special interests and should form their own separate unions.58
CCP leaders, striving to attract to their side representatives of developing countries in international democratic organizations, conducted unprincipled deals on a vast scale. A participant in the Sixth Session of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Council (Algiers, March 1964) said that the Chinese delegation had offered him a large sum of money if he would vote with them. When he inquired as to the question on which he was to “share” the Chinese viewpoint, he was given the reply: “You don’t have to know that, just vote along with us.”59
The representatives of 22 Afro-Asian states discussed preparations for a second conference of Afro-Asian heads of states and governments in Djakarta in April 1964. The Indian and Ceylonese delegates proposed that the USSR, invariably of tremendous help to the Afro-Asian peoples, definitely participate in the conference. This initiative was categorically rejected by the Chinese delegation. It threatened to leave Djakarta if India and Ceylon did not withdraw their proposal.
In its efforts to “excommunicate” the Soviet Union from “Third World” states, the Chinese leadership resorted to the absurd assertion that the USSR is not an Asian country. The Soviet government, in its statement of May 5, 1964, reminded Peking leaders that the Soviet Union accounts for about 40 percent of Asia’s territory, and that the Asian part of the Soviet Union is almost twice as big as the territory of all China; moreover, the Asian part of the USSR could absorb such large countries of Asia—all together—as China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Burma, and Japan within its boundaries.60
But it was not that Chinese nationalists were weak in geography; the Maoists denied the obvious simply to estrange the Soviet Union and the Afro-Asian countries. CCP nationalists, following their line of separating states and peoples serving the cause of peace and national independence, now advanced their racist criterion continually, imparting to it a decisive role in determining the community of political interests and the possibilities of joint action in the international arena. The Maoists, under the pretext of racial harmony, promoted the concept that people of different colors could not understand each other and act together, even if they held common goals and enemies. They moreover gradually indoctrinated suspicion of many socialist peoples merely be-because they were white.
Peking leaders also tried to undermine economic relations between the USSR and the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and to distort and discredit the nature of Soviet assistance to these countries, saying that it “was detrimental to their economic and political interests.”61
All facts pointed to the conclusion that the position of the Chinese leaders on the participation of the USSR in the second Afro-Asian conference simply was an expression of their general anti-Soviet course in the international arena.
At the same time it was Chinese leaders who, by their actions with respect to the countries of the Third World, showed themselves un-principled politicians ready to bargain with extremely reactionary forces simply to achieve their great-power, chauvinistic goals. For example, Peking, while advancing slogans of liberation for enslaved peoples, steadfastly maintained trade relations with the Republic of South Africa, that most repulsive example of a colonial and racist regime. Trade between the two increased by a factor of ten in the period 1961 through 1963.62
19. Condemnation of the CCP’s splitting course by the Communist and Workers’ Parties
The turn taken by CCP leaders in the period 1960–1964 from a policy of Sino-Soviet friendship to open struggle against the CPSU and the Soviet Union was accompanied by a basic reorientation in the entire foreign policy of the PRC. Each day of this reorientation deepened the split between the PRC and the revolutionary forces, drawing it closer to pro-imperialist forces in the international arena.
The splitting course of Peking leaders caused increasing indignation in the countries of the socialist commonwealth, in the ranks of the international Communist movement, among fighters for national liberation, and in all corners of progressive society throughout the world.
This course, hostile to the cause of peace and socialism, was unconditionally condemned in decisions and in documents of Communist parties in socialist countries. The Central Committee of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, in a statement made on July 21, 1963, asserted that actions of CCP leaders concerning the world socialist system cannot be termed anything other than splitting and adventuristic.
The plenary session of the Central Committee of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, in a decree adopted on December 22, 1963, stated that in recent years CCP leaders had openly attacked the general line of the world Communist movement developed jointly by the Marxist-Leninist parties and set forth in the 1957 Declaration and 1960 Statement. They dispatched a letter to the CC CCP on June 12, 1964 emphasizing that the splitting, wrecking tactics of Chinese leaders posed a tremendous threat to the unity of socialist collaboration and to the world Communist movement, drawing attention and strength of Communists and the working class, away from the struggle against imperialism.
The Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, in a statement of April 23, 1964, noted that agitation of the Chinese population in a slanderous, anti-Soviet spirit was the grossest contradiction of proletarian internationalism.
The plenary session of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party on March 21, 1964 pointed out that Mao Tse-tung and his group had carried ideological differences into interstate relations with socialist countries.
Severe, relentless criticism was leveled against CCP policies by the June 1964 Fourth Congress of the Polish United Workers’ Party. Other Communist parties also vigorously condemned the withdrawal of CCP leaders from positions of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. The Political Bureau of the French Communist Party, reviewing the situation in July 1963, concluded that theoretical views of CCP leaders together with their practical activities completely contradicted the general line of the world Communist movement. But CCP leaders paid no attention to the voice of those who, guided by the interests of peace and socialism, protested against their splitting, wrecking course. The Maoists, further subordinating party and country to their authority, continued their previous course.
NOTES
1. Shantung Ta Hsüeh Hsüeh Pao, No. 1, 1960.
2. Sinkiang Hung-chi, No. 6, 1960.
3. Mingshui Tuan-ch’i, No. 2, 1962.
4. Jen Min Jihpao, August 8, 1961.
5. Kungmin Jihpao, February 4, 1961.
6. Jen Min Jihpao, July 14, 1964.
7. Hung-chi, No. 1, 1962.
8. Program Documents, p. 5–6.
9. Hung-chi, No. 8, 1960.
10. Pravda, June 28, 1960.
11. Pravda, July 17, 1960.
12. Pravda, November 7,1960.
13. Jen Min Jihpao, December 10, 1960.
14. Pravda, January 22, 1961.
15. Pravda, October 20, 1961.
16. Jen Min Jihpao, November 10 and 23, 1962.
17. Jen Min Jihpao, December 31, 1962, January 27, February 27, March 8 and 9, 1963 and other issues.
18. Pravda, January 7, 1963.
19. Pravda, January 17, 1963.
20. Lenin, Vol. 11, p. 133.
21. Pravda, March 14, 1963.
22. Pravda, March 14, 1963.
23. Pravda, March 14, 1963.
24. Pravda, April 3, 1963.
25. Pravda, June 22, 1963.
26. Pravda, June 19, 1963.
27. Izvestiya, July 4, 1963.
28. Pravda, July 4, 1963.
29. Pravda, July 14, 1963.
30. Pravda, July 22, 1963.
31. The Leninist Policy, p. 197.
32. Za splochennost’ mezhdunarodnogo kommunisticheskogo dvizheniya. Dokumenty i materialy (For Solidarity in the International Communist Movement, Documents and Materials, hereinafter referred to as For Solidarity), pp. 208–209.
33. Pravda, June 23, 1961.
34. Pravda, April 9, 1961.
35. Pravda, February 5, 1961.
36. Pravda, March 30, 1969.
37. The Leninist Policy, p. 186.
38. Mingshui Tuan-ch’i, No. 2, 1962.
39. Jen Min Jihpao, August 10, 1961.
40. Li Shih Yen-chiu (Historical Research), No. 4, 1964.
41. Maoizm glazami kommunistov (Maoism through the Eyes of Communists, hereinafter referred to as Maoism) (Moscow, 1969), p. 90.
42. T. Rakhimov, Natsionalizm i shovinizm—osnova politiki gruppy Mao Tszeduna (Nationalism and Chauvinism—the Basis of the Mao Tse-tung Group, hereinafter referred to as Nationalism and Chauvinism) (Moscow, 1968).
43. Pravda, August 21, 1963.
44. Pravda, August 4, 1963.
45. Pravda, August 4 and 21, September 21–22, 1963.
46. Pravda, September 22, 1963.
47. Pravda, September 1, 1963.
48. Pravda, March 14, 1963.
49. Ibid.
50. Pravda, April 3, 1964.
51. Jen Min Jihpao, May 8, 1964.
52. Jen Min Jihpao, July 29, 1964.
53. Pravda, July 29, 1964.
54. Pravda, September 22, 1963.
55. Pravda, March 30, 1969.
56. Wen Hui Pao, No. 6, 1963.
57. Pravda, July 14, 1963.
58. For Solidarity, pp. 198–199.
59. M. S. Kapitsa. Leveye zdravogo smysla (O neshney politike gruppy Mao) (To the Left of Common Sense [The Foreign Policy of the Mao Group], hereinafter referred to as To the Left) (Moscow, 1968), p. 99.
60. Pravda, May 5, 1964.
61. Jen Min Jihpao, October 22, 1963.
62. Maoism, p. 160.
__________________
* Translator’s note: the People’s Communes, the General Line, and the Great Leap Forward.
* Translator’s note: “Sovfrakht” is the All-Union Association for the Chartering of Foreign Tonnage.
* Translator’s note: the reference is to the Test Ban Treaty of August 5, 1963, prohibiting nuclear weapon tests or other explosions in the atmosphere, in outer space, or under water.
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