Independent Mood

Unless the delegates slept through the speeches, the world summit meeting of Communist parties was a daily grind. Whisked from their hotels and guest villas in black Chaikas and Volgas whose windshields bore special green-and-white passes, the Communist leaders--some 300 from 75 parties--were deposited at the Kremlin before 10 a.m. each morning. After four hours of eloquence, the delegates had a two-hour break. Most of them dined on caviar and cold cuts in the first-floor dining room of the Great Kremlin Palace. In a pointed show of conviviality, Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev, Premier Aleksei Kosygin and other Russian leaders pulled up chairs to various tables and joined the foreign delegates. Then it was back to business in ornate St. George's Hall for the afternoon's hortatory oratory.

The visitors to Moscow devoted most of their evenings to politicking, gathering in the Rossia and other hotels for discussions or huddling in caucus to modify their original position papers. At their hosts' invitation, the delegates assembled one night in the Kremlin's modern Palace of Congresses for a performance of Ukrainian folk music and dancing. Some delegates on other nights went to the Bolshoi ballet. For those with less sophisticated tastes, there were those lovable perennials, the famous trained bears riding their bicycles at the Moscow Circus.

Italian Independence. As the proceedings entered the second week, the Soviet hosts seemed more willing to let everyone have his say. Hoping to avoid any further fissures in the already fragmented Communist world, the Soviets also backed off somewhat from their earlier determination to wrest from the delegates an endorsement of the Russian stand against China and approval of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. Compared with previous Communist conferences, Moscow '69 was relatively open and candid. Pravda ran excerpts from the speeches, including those unfavorable to the Soviet viewpoint. There were daily briefings for correspondents. A Soviet-run press center distributed texts of the speeches, though some of the critical addresses were delayed for many hours for "technical reasons" and then were available only in very small numbers.

Stating his case in a low-toned manner, Italy's Deputy Party Chief Enrico Berlinguer expounded the independent views of the largest Communist party outside the Soviet bloc. Departing from the Soviet line on every major point, Berlinguer stressed Italian opposition to any move toward an "excommunication" of the Chinese, reiterated his party's grave disapproval of the Czechoslovak occupation, and called for the independence of every party. Shrugging off Soviet claims of pre-eminence in the Communist movement, Berlinguer declared: "We reject the thesis that a single model of socialist society suitable for all situations can exist." An independent mood was also reflected in the speeches of party leaders from Australia, Austria, Britain, Rumania, Sweden and the illegal Spanish party.

Soviet Defenders. However, most of the delegates vied with one another in justifying Soviet policies. The most ironic support for Moscow came from Czechoslovakia's Party Boss Gustav Husak, who succeeded the deposed reformer Alexander Dubcek. He said that Soviet military intervention served Czechoslovakia's best interests and dismissed foreign Communist critics of the action as having only superficial knowledge of the situation. East Germany's Walter Ulbricht, Hungary's Janos Kadar and Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov vigorously defended the Soviet positions. Most likely, the Soviets could be confident that when the conference ends, probably this week, the tally of Moscow '69 will be, in numbers at least, largely in their favor.

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