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Diplomacy and Revolution: The Dialectics of a Dispute

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Richard Lowenthal
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Extract

The policy declaration and the appeal to the peoples of the world adopted last December by the Moscow conference of eighty-one Communist parties mark the end of one phase in the dispute between the leaderships of the ruling parties of China and the Soviet Union—the phase in which the followers of Mao for the first time openly challenged the standing of the Soviet Communists as the fountain-head of ideological orthodoxy for the world movement. But the “ideological dispute” which began in April was neither a sudden nor a self-contained development: it grew out of acute differences between the two Communist Great Powers over concrete diplomatic issues, and it took its course in constant interaction with the changes in Soviet diplomatic tactics. Hence the total impact of that phase on Soviet foreign policy on one side, and on the ideology, organisation and strategy of international Communism on the other, cannot be evaluated from an interpretation of the Moscow documents alone, but only from a study of the process as a whole, as it developed during the past year on both planes.

Type
Recent Developments
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 5 , March 1961 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1961

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References

1 I have not attempted here to deal with the impact of the dispute on Chinese foreign policy, as distinct from Chinese ideology. Owing to the absence of diplomatic relations with the main enemy, the scope for Chinese diplomacy outside the bloc is somewhat limited. As experts on the subject have suggested in past issues of this review, the chief effect of the dispute in this field seems to have been to make the Chinese leaders try to mend some of their national quarrels with neutral Asian states, notably Burma, Nepal and Indonesia, and to reduce the temperature of their conflict with India: apparently they realised at some point that the multiplication of these quarrels made them needlessly vulnerable to Soviet criticism of their general views on war and peaceful co-existence—views that had, after all, been formulated primarily with an eye to relations with the “imperialist” West, and above all with the United States. On the main issue, the repetition of the proposal for an atom-free zone in the Pacific on August 1 may have been intended to stake out a Chinese negotiating position in case of Soviet-Americasn agreement on a permanent ban on nuclear tests—a price to be exacted for agreement to be kept out of the nuclear club.

2 For a full study of the development of the Chinese arguments during that phase, see Halpern, A. M., “Communist China and Peaceful Coexistence,” The China Quarterly, No. 3, p. 16.Google Scholar

3 Moscow Radio, 10 31, 1959.Google Scholar

4 e.g. Chao-li, Yu, “The Chinese People's Great Victory in the Fight against Imperialism,” Peking Review, 09 22, 1959Google Scholar, from Red Flag, No. 18, 1959Google Scholar; idem, “Excellent Situation for the Struggle for Peace,” Peking Review, 01 5, 1960Google Scholar, from Red Flag, No. 1, 1960Google Scholar; editorial, People's Daily, 01 21, 1960.Google Scholar

5 See the text of both the declaration and K'ang Sheng, 's speech in The China Quarterly, No. 2, pp. 75–89.Google Scholar

6 Chao-li, Yü, “On Imperialism as a Source of War in Modern Times,” and “On the Way for all Peoples to struggle for Peace,”Google ScholarNCNA, 03 30, 1960Google Scholar, from Red Flag, No. 7, 1960Google Scholar; Editorial “Long Live Leninism,” Peking Review, 04 26, 1960Google Scholar, from Red Flag, No. 8, 1960Google Scholar; Editorial, People's Daily, 04 22, 1960Google Scholar; Ting-yi, Lu, “Get United under Lenin's Revolutionary Banner,”Google Scholar speech at Lenin commemoration meeting in Peking, April 22, 1960 (NCNA same date).

7 Speech at Lenin commemoration meeting in Moscow, April 22, 1960: Pravda, 04 23.Google Scholar

8 “The Nature of Khrushchev's Power,” Problems of Communism, 07/08 1960.Google Scholar

9 See Khrushchev's speeches to the Supreme Soviet on May 5 and 7, and at the reception of the Czechoslovak Embassy in Moscow on May 9.

10 NCNA, 06 8, 1960.Google Scholar

11 Articles on the fortieth anniversary of Lenin, 's “Leftwing Communism, an Infantile Disorder,”Google Scholar by Shevlyagin, D. in Sovyetskaya Rossiya, 06 10Google Scholar, and by “N. Matkovsky” in Pravda, 06 12, 1960Google Scholar; Pravda editorial “Full Support” on the Soviet disarmament proposals, June 13, 1960.

12 Foa in Avanti, 06 15Google Scholar; Novella in Unita, 06 19, 1960.Google Scholar

13 NCNA, 04 22, 1960.Google Scholar

14 Matkovsky, N. on 06 12.Google Scholar

15 June 20, 1960

16 Speech at the Bucharest Congress on June 21, 1960, as carried by TASS.

17 Text in NCNA, 06 22, 1960.Google Scholar

18 Konstantinov, F. and Momdzhan, Kh., “Dialectics and the Present,” Kommunist No. 10, 1960Google Scholar; Pravda editorial, 07 20Google Scholar; speech by Suslov, M. A., Pravda, 07 30Google Scholar; Frantsev, Y., Pravda, 08 7Google Scholar; Ponomarev, B., Pravda, 08 12Google Scholar; Togliatti speech to Italian CC, Pravda, July 28; T. Zhivkov in August issue of World Marxist Review.

19 “Socialism and War,” first published in Borba, 08 12–20, 1960.Google Scholar

20 Arzumanyan, A. and Koryonov, V., Pravda, 09 2, 1960.Google Scholar

21 The last Chinese statement on those lines seems to have been the article on the tenth anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War by Gen. Chih-min, Li, People's Daily, 06 25, 1960.Google Scholar

22 People's Daily editorial commenting on Bucharest communiqué, June 29; Liao Ch'eng-chih's speech to Bureau of World Peace Council in Stockhohn, July 10; Ch'en Yi's speech in Peking, NCNA, July 15; Li Fu-ch'un's speech to the Vietnamese party congress, NCNA, September 6.

23 In public, this came out most clearly in the last weeks before the Moscow Conference, notably in comments on the publication of the fourth volume of the works of Mao, e.g. People's Daily, October 6, and above all Red Flag editorial, November 2. But it is clear from Soviet reaction that the point must have been raised internally before.

24 Belyakov, A. and Burlatsky, F. in Kommunist No. 13, 1960.Google Scholar

25 Zhukov, Y. in Pravda, August 26.Google Scholar

26 Titarenko, S. in Sovyetskaya Latviya, Bakunsky Rabochy et al., 08 16, 1960.Google Scholar

27 Fu-ch'un, Li in Red Flag, No. 16, 1960.Google Scholar

28 Cf. the articles quoted in note 22 above; also Marshal Lo Jui-ch'ing's article for the (North) Korean People's Forces Journal on the tenth anniversary of Chinese intervention in Korea, NCNA, 10 25, 1960.Google Scholar

29 See P. J. Honey's analysis of the North Vietnamese Party Congress in The China Quarterly, No. 4, p. 66.Google Scholar

30 People's Daily, November 21; Pravda, November 23.

31 NCNA, November 21.