A Do-Nothing Congress

COMMUNISTS A Do-Nothing Congress

To many of the 6,000 comrades who swarmed into Moscow last week for the 23rd Communist Party Congress, getting there was hardly fun. The Rumanian delegation, led by Nicolae Ceausescu (TIME cover, March 18), was forced to land in Kiev; Czech Party Boss Antonin Novotny had to wait 16 hours in Leningrad for the Moscow fog to lift. Once they arrived, the delegates wandered the city like conventioners anywhere, clicking pictures of the Spassky Gate, shopping at GUM, or lining up to peek at Lenin, whose tomb was banked in flowers and bedecked with signs reading "Glory to Communism." Others belted vodka in their freshly painted hotel rooms and watched the proceedings on television, or listened to highlights of the Congress broadcast in 54 languages, including Zulu, Nepalese and Quechua--a language spoken by Indians in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.

True Friends. In any language, they would have found the opening address of Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev heavy going. For 4 1/2 hours he droned on, neither reading the Red Chinese out of the Communist movement nor declaring war on the U.S. His few references to Peking were apparently calculated to avoid polemics and make Moscow look mature and dignified. Relations with Peking, he allowed, "unfortunately remain unsatisfactory," but Russia is still willing to meet "at any moment with the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party." Brezhnev trotted out routine Soviet attacks on "U.S. aggression" in Viet Nam, with "more than 200,000 U.S. troops, aircraft carriers, huge bombers, poison gases and napalm." He promised continued aid to North Viet Nam and the Viet Cong, and was rewarded--doubtless to Peking's chagrin--with warm speeches from Hanoi Party Secretary Le Duan and the Viet Cong's female representative, Nguyen Thi Binh, who praised the Russians as "the true combat friends of the people of South Viet Nam."

Soviet Doubletalk. It had all the earmarks of a do-nothing Congress, but Brezhnev jolted a few staunch anti-Stalinists by proposing that the Soviet Party Presidium be renamed Politburo --a title that won infamy under General Secretary Stalin prior to 1952. But Moscow City Boss Nikolai Egorychev, who proposed a return to the General Secretary label, hastened to point out that both terms were "Leninist" in origin. Egorychev was tapped by his superiors to deliver a lengthy speech explaining the difference between the sins of Stalin and the heroism of the Stalin era, a piece of Soviet doubletalk that left most listeners tranquilized but at least assured them that Stalin was not about to be personally or politically rehabilitated.

Meanwhile, Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communists, who caustically refused to attend the Moscow Congress, were busy with other things. Not only did a Chinese delegation gather huzzas in Pakistan, but Peking last week celebrated the 95th anniversary of the Paris Commune. The ceremony came replete with a 400-item exhibition including a Communard sword, a badge reading "Republique des Communes," and a Red Flag editorial that lambasted Russia for "embarking on the path of restoring capitalism."

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