Goulash, Mr. Mao? Revolution, Mr. K

Admirable indeed was the virtue of Hui. With a single dish of rice, a single gourd of drink, he lived in his mean, narrow lane. Yet he enjoyed his life where others suffered. Admirable indeed was the virtue of Hui.

--Confucius

Admirable indeed was the restraint of Nikita Khrushchev. From the mean, narrow lane of Chinese Communism, Mao Tse-tung has not been content to preach heresy. In the past six months he has aimed a rising torrent of abuse at the anointed heir of Marx and Lenin in Moscow. Invoking every filthy word in the canons of Communism, the Red Confucius labeled Khrushchev a revisionist splitter and quitter who has betrayed the faith by eschewing hard, revolutionary action in Africa, Asia and Latin America, espousing peaceful coexistence, and signing the nuclear test-ban treaty.

All of this the Soviet leader took--or was made to take--in the glimmering hope that a final split with China could yet be avoided. Then, last week, Mao called Khrushchev "the greatest capitulationist in history" and summoned Communists everywhere to "repudiate and liquidate" Russia's leader. With that, world Communism ripped brutally and publicly apart.

From Hungary, in the midst of a ten-day visit, Khrushchev grimly ordered into print the "resolute counterattack" he had threatened last September. Next day seven pages of Pravda were devoted to a scalding speech of excommunication prepared privately seven weeks ago by Soviet Ideologist Mikhail Suslov for this very contingency. Suslov, who can be as foulmouthed a Marxist as Mao, damned the Chinese for "apostasy," "petty-bourgeois nationalism," "neo-Trotskyist deviation" and "hysterical" pronouncements that aligned Peking's leadership "with the most aggressive circles of imperialism."

No doubt, sneered Suslov, Mao's tantrum had not been triggered by ideological differences at all but simply by resentment at the Soviet refusal to help China build an Abomb. Suslov even gave Mao bad Marx for putting violent worldwide revolution ahead of feeding and clothing his own people. "Neither Marx nor Lenin," he declared with biting sarcasm, "anywhere even remotely hinted that the rock-bottom task of so cialist construction may be realized by the methods of leaps and cavalry charges [or by] ignoring the tasks of improving the living standards of the people."

Wind from the East. Suslov, a cadaverous, humorless court theoretician who served Stalin long before Khrushchev came to the fore, drove home his attack by disclosing that Old Stalinists Georgy Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich, Sinophiles all, had been ousted secretly from the Communist Party in 1961. Suslov declared that the "antiparty" trio subscribed to the selfsame heresies as Mao. He singled out Molotov--who had variously been Soviet Premier (in 1930) and first editor of Pravda (1912)--for particular vituperation. Harking back to the murderous Soviet purges of the 1930s, Suslov accused Molotov of attempting to surpass Stalin's brutality--he "tried to be a better Catholic than the Pope." Asked Suslov: "Is it not the restoration of these inhuman customs that the Chinese leaders are seeking?"

At least, went the Kremlin line, Khrushchev's leadership has never been inhuman. Moreover, his renunciation of "inevitable" war with the West and his promotion of "the independence and sovereignty of each Socialist nation" are wholly in accord with enlightened Leninism. This the Chinese resent be cause "they would like to be able to give orders in the Socialist commonwealth as in their own estate," chided Suslov. "In the sight of the practical activities of the Chinese leaders in recent years, the true political meaning of their slogan, 'The wind from the East is beginning to prevail over the wind from the West,' has become all the clearer. That slogan is nothing but an ideological and political expression of the hegemonic aspirations of the Chinese leadership."

A Night at the Opera. In Budapest, Khrushchev put his own imprimatur on Suslov's condemnation. Looking plump and prosperous in a bemedaled blue suit, Nikita rose expressionlessly before a tense audience at the Budapest State Opera House. Speaking slowly, almost mildly, as if he still hoped that some rapprochement could be effected, he accused the Chinese by name of "disruptive tactics" that would ultimately only serve to strengthen Soviet resolve. Ominously, to satellite ears, he hinted at an impending "reorganization" of the Soviet bloc--Marxist for sterner discipline.

In fact, he left a number of things unsaid. An earlier version of Khrushchev's speech was inadvertently--or so they said--released by Hungarian officials to Western newsmen. Khrushchev's prepared text formally excoriated Mao's mortal sins: replacing Marxist-Leninist principles with raw racism; "playing with the lives of millions" by trying to block disarmament; "maliciously separating the national liberation movements from the revolutionary struggle of the working class."

What the Country Needs. Behind the rhetoric, the fundamental conflict over the meaning, aims and methods of Communism becomes even clearer.

Since Khrushchev consolidated his power in 1956, he has more and more come to define Communism's goals in ebulliently material terms that sound less like Karl Marx than onetime U.S. Vice President Thomas Riley Marshall ("What this country needs is a good five cent cigar"). Like the 19th century French and German socialists, peasant-born Nikita believes that a Marxist leader in Russia or in Europe today must satisfy the rising expectations of the Communist consumer before he can set about burying capitalism. Most of his major ventures, from the campaign to grow corn to his stepped-up housing program, are aimed at achieving this.

Last week Khrushchev summarized his aims in characteristically earthy words: "If Lenin in 1917 had said 'forward the revolution' and promised nothing afterwards, the workers and peasants would have scratched their heads. Lenin may be a good guy, they would have said, but we want to know if we're going to have goulash and ballet." Who, suggested Khrushchev, wants to settle for a bowl of rice and a gourd of drink?

Candles for K. Though the rupture with China certainly seems irreparable, Khrushchev has yet to read the Chinese Communists out of the international movement in the fire and brimstone terms used by Stalin to proscribe Tito's Yugoslavia in 1948. In any case, the Chinese have taken out excommunication insurance by forming rump parties, in Belgium, Brazil, Australia, Ceylon, Britain and elsewhere, that would rally to Peking's side in any showdown. Additionally, Soviet bloc nations, notably Rumania, Poland and Czechoslovakia, dread any such polarization of the two Communist worlds, in the belief that Moscow would be forced to tighten its lead rein on the satellites as a result.

Khrushchev's 70th birthday celebration will bring most of the leaders on his team to Moscow next week; there the arguments for and against a showdown summit with the Chinese will out number the candles on the cake. Suslov has already called for a meeting of all Communist Party leaders this fall, but it is doubtful that the Chinese or their allies would show up unless they were certain they would be neither outvoted nor outslanged. Indeed, the final confrontation may never come to pass; Mao's invective last week may well have been the epitaph of Communist unity.

However the historic feud resolves itself, it would be dangerous for the West to rejoice at the spectacle of its foes divided. Khrushchev, who has proved a pragmatic if unpredictable leader, may be forced by China's hard line to prove that Soviet Marxist-Leninism can hew to just as mean and narrow a lane as Peking's road to socialism, whether or not the two great Communist powers prove to be irreparably alienated. It is a classic principle of statecraft never to fight simultaneously on two fronts. It seems likely at least that on Russia's 4,000-mile frontier with China -- the world's longest border --East wind and West wind will contend for many a stormy year.

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