MAO INVITED TO MOSCOW”

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28795, 16 January 1959, Page 9

MAO INVITED TO MOSCOW”

Reported Attempt To Repair Breach

(A.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 9.30 p.m.) LONDON, January 15. The Soviet Prime Minister (Mr Khrushchev) is believed to have invited the Chinese leader, Mr Mao Tse-tung, to Moscow for urgent talks on the rift between Russia and China, according to the “Daily Mail.”

Mr Mao was expected in Moscow before or during the Soviet Communist Party Congress, which would open there on January 27.

Behind the visit was the sourness in ChineseRussian relations just when Mr Khrushchev needed the backing of an undivided Communist world for negotiations with the West on Germany.

Mr Khrushchev’s intention at the Congress might be to get himself acknowledged as the undisputed leader of the Communist world, the newspaper said. A Chinese Communist delegation would be attending the Congress in any case, but the presence of Mr Mao was essential for Mr Khrushchev’s purpose, though the occasion might be dressed up to look like a show of unity.

The main reason for the deterioration in relations was Mr Mao’s floundering attempts to impose communes—the worst type of Stalinism—on Chinese family life, the “Daily Mail” said Experts now thought that he had launched this unlucky experiment to free China of Soviet industrial domination. Mr Khrushchev had made no secret of his view that Mr Mao was a “reactionary” whose socalled “great leap forward” could be .a catastrophe for latter-day “enlightened” Communism, said the newspaper.