Closer to a Final Split

When Russia and Red China began their war of words, the rest of the world first watched and listened in stunned surprise. The surprise has since given way to an almost hypnotic fascination with the steady rise in the intensity of invective. At the same time, the language of Sino-Soviet polemic has steadily declined, on Red China's part at least, from occasionally elegant barbs to the basest vulgarities--far worse than the most acrimonious exchanges between Communists and capitalists.

For the third straight week, the Soviet embassy in Peking was besieged by Red Guards who cried: "Hit them, kick them, destroy the Soviet swine!" In Moscow, the Russians retaliated with their own demonstrations at the Chinese embassy, carrying anti-Chinese placards on the snowy reaches of Druzhba (Friendship) Street. Insults flew furiously from both sides, and Peking's Foreign Minister Chen Yi summed up the direction the Sino-Soviet dispute is taking: "Diplomatic immunity is a bourgeois institutional leftover, and a country that is revolutionizing does not recognize bourgeois rules."

Both Red powers thus moved ever closer to a final split. Even if that split does not occur immediately on the diplomatic level, last week's exchanges confirmed that it is already a fact. In London, Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin went so far as to urge sympathy for "people who are struggling against the dictatorial regime of Mao Tse-tung." Everyone knew that the Russians felt that way, but it was the first time that a ranking Soviet official had said it--and in a capitalist capital, of all places. Russia and China canceled their longstanding agreement permitting citizens of each nation to visit the other without visas. China actually dared Moscow to break diplomatic relations. Urged Peking Radio: "Do it quickly! The Chinese people have made all preparations, and you will definitely come to a bad end. Graves are awaiting you traitors."

No Dogs or Russians. In Peking, thousands of Chinese ringed the Soviet embassy with a wall of hate. Any Russian, or presumed friend of a Russian, who approached was instantly plastered with spit, stones and invective. At night, bonfires on the embassy grounds cast tortured shadows of Soviet leaders hanged in effigy--Kosygin included. The 170 Russians who remained in the embassy were supplied with vodka and beer, bread and soup sent via air from Moscow and then carried in by East European and even Western diplomats who daily braved the Red Guard gauntlet. The Russians even filled their swimming pool with water in case the Chinese should shut off their supply. In Peking restaurants went up signs: "Out of bounds for Russian revisionist swine and dogs."

By contrast, the Soviet demonstrators outside Peking's embassy in Moscow were reasonably well behaved. Though a delegation arrived with petitions protesting Chinese polemics, they went away after the Chinese ripped their petitions to shreds. Soviet slogans were tidily lettered and said nothing much more inflammatory than "Shame on the clique of Mao Tse-tung." In the battle, Russia showed superior electronic prowess. When the Chinese inside the Moscow embassy began bleating anti-Soviet polemics over their low-decibel bullhorns, the Russians wheeled up two sound trucks and drowned the Chinese out.

The Chinese foreign office sent a stiff protest to the Soviets: "Only Hitler's fascist Germany and U.S. imperialism are capable of perpetrating this outrage committed by the Soviet revisionist clique."

Mutual Contempt. For all the Red Chinese harassment, Premier Kosygin promised last week that Russia would "not be the first" to sever diplomatic relations. "It all depends on the other side," he added. Instead, the Russians impugned China's worth as a true Communist nation by spelling out for the first time China's activities in blocking the flow of Soviet arms to Viet Nam. "Abusing the geographical situation," charged Izvestia, "Mao Tse-tung and his group use every means to try to break transportation lines between the U.S.S.R. and North Viet Nam."

According to leaflets distributed in Peking, Mao Tse-tung alerted frontier troops, warning them that the Soviet Union was reinforcing its military strength along the Chinese border for possible anti-Chinese moves. The contempt with which each side now regards the other was nowhere better illustrated than along the Sino-Soviet border in Sinkiang province. There, according to a Japanese correspondent who recently visited the region, Chinese border troops insulted the "revisionists" by hauling down their trousers and flaunting their backsides at the Soviets across the frontier. The Chinese "provocation" ceased when the Russians held up a portrait of Mao Tse-tung, whose face could only suffer under such an Eastern exposure.

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