The Wishful Haters

The ideological row between Moscow and Peking grew shriller last week than any dispute ever overheard between states claiming to live in Marxist unity and solidarity. The comrades were not arguing about trivialities: the Chinese want Communism fast and by brute force; the Russians, having built up their industrial and armed might, want to proceed a bit cautiously.

Clearly Mao Tse-tung was challenging Nikita Khrushchev as the ideological leader of the Communist world. The downing of the U.S. spy plane and the Paris summit fiasco have filled Chinese newspapers with cocky cries of "I told you so" and open assertions that, whatever happens to the rest of the world, Communist China is big enough, to survive nuclear war. At a recent meeting of the Red-led World Trade Union Federation in Peking, the Chinese Communists described themselves as the champions of repressed peoples against the "satisfied" or the "have" nations, in which category they included Russia. They added: "We should not be speaking of disarmament because to speak of disarmament demoralizes people engaged in the struggle against imperialism."

But last week Pravda not only reasserted the validity of peaceful coexistence but also counterattacked with an assault on the domestic policy of the upstart revolutionaries in Peking.

Infantile Sickness. Identifying them only as "certain leftists in international Communism," Pravda charged that the Chinese leaders suffered from the same "infantile sickness of leftism" that Lenin denounced in some of his party's more hotheaded "sectarians" in the early days of the revolution 40 years ago. Now, as then, said Soviet Communism's official mouthpiece, history cannot be hustled. "Trying to anticipate the results of fully matured Communism" by great leaps forward and by rushing to set up communes, said Pravda witheringly, "is like trying to teach higher mathematics to a four-year-old child."

If this was the Kremlin's way of saying that Khrushchev is still the head of Communism's house, the Chinese paid remarkably little attention. Three days later Peking's official organ, Red Flag, retorted that "only by uninterrupted revolution" can Communism clear the way for "highspeed socialist development" at home or abroad. "In supposing that Communism can go on living side by side with imperialism," said Red Flag, Khrushchev had been guilty of wishful thinking. "Because certain imperialists, Eisenhower for one, have made empty 'nice talks' about peace, some people think he must be very much in favor of peace . . . This is an unrealistic illusion. Imperialism will never change its nature till doom. The people have no alternative but to wage a struggle against it to the end."

Infantile Jeers. Last week, when President Eisenhower flew to Formosa, Peking demonstrated its view of peaceful coexistence by likening Eisenhower to "a rat running across the street; everyone wants to step on him and squash him." As Red artillerymen threw shells of "contempt" on Chinese Nationalist positions at Quemoy, they shouted (according to Radio Peking): "Eisenhower, go back. Fire! U.S. aggressors, get out of Formosa. Fire! Get out of Japan. Fire! Get out of Korea. Fire! Get out of Asia. Fire! We shall liberate Formosa. Fire!"

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