The Divided Titans

The two giants of Communism no longer seriously bothered to conceal the extent of their quarrel, but in a curious, ritualistic way, they continued to insult by proxy. Each directed its heaviest invective against the rival's hangers-on and harassed those hapless party figures who symbolized the opposing ideological camps.

While the world's Communist parties continued to take sides between Moscow and Peking (see following story), the Russians stepped up their attacks on Vyacheslav Molotov, who has become the symbol of the implacable Stalinist-Chinese policy that Nikita Khrushchev now fights as treason to Marxism. Not long ago, Western newsmen reported, the Old Bolshevik and his daughter had been reduced to selling off the family furniture from her Moscow apartment, suggesting that he had been stripped of his post and income.* Last week the Supreme Soviet ordered his name expunged from 35 factories, streets and towns, and Molotov himself was in the hospital with influenza, earlier reported as a heart attack. Asked for details, a spokesman in Molotov's former Foreign Ministry said: "He is of no importance to us. We can't keep track of everybody in hospitals. Anything can happen to human beings."

In Peking meanwhile, pictures of Albania's Enver Hoxha, who is the other symbol of the Stalinist-Chinese line, appeared on posters all over the city. Billboards proclaimed "eternal friendship" for "heroic Albania," the country that Khrushchev seeks to put beyond the pale of decent Marxist society. Alluding to Son-in-Law Aleksei Adzhubei's Washington visit, the Red Chinese press implied that members of Khrushchev's own family were consorting with criminals--the "gangsterlike and reactionary" Kennedys.

Farm Failures. As part of this Russian-Chinese cold war within a cold war, two simultaneous meetings were in preparation. In Peking's "Great Hall of the People," more than 1,100 delegates to the National People"s Congress will convene on March 5. Hardly by coincidence, Khrushchev called a Kremlin meeting of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee for the same date, ostensibly to discuss Soviet agriculture. In fact, a main topic, acknowledged or not, will be the Mao-Khrushchev rift and what to do about it. But the agricultural problem on the agenda is more than camouflage. Amid their ideological battles, both the Russian and Chinese regimes are urgently concerned with the price of eggs and hogs, which is ultimately related to the price of political survival.

Khrushchev has staked his reputation on Soviet agricultural policy and has devoted much of his time to it. That policy, says a Western diplomat, "seems to be facing complete collapse."

Where was the "powerful upsurge" that Khrushchev had pledged himself to fulfill in all production sectors, including a 170% increase in agricultural production between 1959 and 1965? As reported in Pravda last week, farm production showed tiny gains on 1960, but fell far short of 1961 targets drawn up earlier (and, to no one's surprise, omitted from last week's Pravda). Despite a 5.4% increase in grain acreage, the yield grew by only 2.4%, and this was mainly due to harshly enforced grain deliveries, leaving the farmers with less for seed, feed, repayments of loans, and reserves. Potato, cotton, flax and sugar production was down badly, and the livestock situation was a mess. At least a million pigs had died, and though other livestock had increased in number, the nationwide stable shortage, a widespread Soviet fertilizer failure and consequent lack of fodder meant that half a million head of beef delivered to state butchers in 1961 weighed only 440 lbs. on the average (U.S. average: 1,000 lbs.), causing a widespread meat shortage. The Southern Urals were reported littered with starved, freezing cattle. In the circumstances, editorialized Pravda, it would not be surprising if a number of Soviet officials would shortly lose their jobs.

Red China's food shortages are far grimmer. Most Chinese living on the mainland had their first taste in a year of meat, fish or poultry when the government issued a special "bonus ration" of one-half pound (mostly pork) per person to celebrate the Chinese New Year (Feb. 5). With rice limited to 32 lbs. per male adult per month (28.5 lbs. for women), just about the only group not feeling gnawing hunger pains, apart from the top party people, were the relatively well-fed soldiers; even they have been eating less meat and more seaweed.

Wait Till Spring. Many of Red China's recent refugees to Macao say that they have all but forgotten the taste of meat, sweets and bread. An unfailing indicator of conditions: Hong Kong's Chinese, who sent 3,700,000 food parcels to their countrymen in Red China in 1960, last year sent 13 million, spending about one-quarter of their wages for this relief. While there have been some improvements (slightly more grain, more pork), the overall situation remains bad, and will get worse in the spring when the fall harvest has been used up.

The Moscow-Peking conflict thus is not only a matter of Communist ideology but of calories. Khrushchev's pledge to increase agricultural production stems from his realization that within the Soviet Union there is growing impatience with austerity; in part, his policy of "peaceful coexistence" with the West aims at normalcy in Russia, a higher living standard, more food and consumer goods. Mao sneers at such longings for bourgeois comfort. He ruthlessly employs China's resources to build up heavy industry, even promises to make China a nuclear power. To divert attention from hunger at home, the regime hammers away at the "inevitable life-and-death struggle with imperialism."

Yet even Mao knows that he must occasionally allow his people some relief. For this week's New Year celebration the government manufactured holiday goods such as lanterns and toys, laid on extra passenger trains and barges so that separated families could meet. Replacing the traditional five gods (earth, sky, fire, water and wood) was a new idol--a carved woodblock of Mao Tse-tung surrounded by well-dressed soldiers and peasants--while a New Year's poster, entitled "Heaven on Earth," showed angels floating over a rainbow-swathed Peking.

*His last job: Soviet delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, from which he has not yet been dismissed publicly.

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