COMMUNIST ALLIES ESTRANGED

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30763, 29 May 1965, Page 4

COMMUNIST ALLIES ESTRANGED

The Sino-Soviet Rift Analysed and documented by William E. Griffith. Allen and Unwin. 522 PP-

The cold war goes on but the world is no longer divided into two monolithic blocs. Just as there is no absolute unity of outlook or policy on the Western side, where France and the United States of America quite obviously have their differences, so there is a well-defined breach between Russia and China on the Communist side. The Sino-Soviet conflict was first made public at the Twentysecond Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in October. 1961, although the Chinese reception of the Twentieth Congress's findings on Stalin in 1956 presaged a division that would be hard to heal. The importance of the ideological differences between the two main Communist parties of the world, supplemented as they have been by a revival of national rivalries, boundary and other disputes, can scarcely be overestimated. William E. Griffith, of the Centre for Internationl Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has made a detailed study of the exchanges of messages and abuse between the Chinese and Russian Communist Party Central Committees. In this book he presents his own analysis of the controversy and also sets down in translation all the more important documents released in the year 1963. His careful scholarly treatment of his involved tendentious subject may not make the easiest of reading and may have no immediate appeal for the general reader, but anyone anxious to reach an understanding of the estrangement of the former close allies should certainly study this book.

Mr Griffith’s discussion of the background to the break is lucid and convincing: he sees the transformation of China from weakness and disunity into a power giant in Asia as a revolutionary development which threatens

the position of the Soviet I Union in the same continent and even throughout the world: he notes that the! Chinese invasion of India in November. 1962. roused Russian hostility and that the Russian response to Presi- ! dent Kennedy’s challenge during the Cuban crisis of 1962 incurred the criticism of Mao and his associates: the Sino-Soviet border dispute,! disagreement about economic policies and relations, and Kruschchev’s determination | not to give China any assistance with the development of their atomic bomb further worsened the relations between the two countries; Moscow’s' reluctance to aid Peking to develop thermonuclear capacity has been recognised for some time as one of the key issues in the Sino-Soviet dispute, but Mr Griffiths gives chapter and verse for the stages of deterioration in their relations. The degree to which the! ' one or the other is “correct”; in its adherence to a strict Marxist-Leninist line may appear to an outsider to be very much a matter of opinion, but to a good Communist it is vitally important, especially as for him there ! can be no divorce between theory and practice. The Russians have been more frankly “revisionist” of the dogma handed down to them, the Chinese more con- ! sistently “fundamentalist.” iTo reconcile two opposed j views on dogma is virtually | impossible. But, even when all this has been said and explained, there remains the I emotion-stirring question (which Lenin asked. “Who ishall rule whom?” which can Ibp boiled down to the quesjtion. “shall Russia dominate (China or China control Rusi sia?” j Certainly, as Mr Griffith j claims, “Communist ideology 'intensifies the clash of SinoSovtet national interests.” and I China has been staking out ia claim to the ideological , leadership of world communl ism.

In spite of his thorough demonstration of the differences which exist between

Russian and Chinese Communists, Mr Griffith is waryenough “of predicting an inevitable, total and above all a permanent Sino-Soviet break.” He reminds his readers that Moscow and Peking have common and powerful enemies. In addition, the fact that Ho Chi Minh became more pro-Chinese as he became more anti-American may well mean that the new rulers of the Soviet Union will try to avoid too obvious a reconciliation with the Americans.

The documents which make up more than half this book substantiate most of the author’s findings and indicate clearly how- embittered, at least on certain points, the relations of the two Communist leading countries have become. A team of research’ assistants and several outside authorities have collaborated to ensure that the texts of quotations and documents have been checked against the original languages and that “the problem of purposeful mistranslation and deliberate deceptive excerpting, which [Moscow has recently resumed I extensively,” has been taken i into account. The author's ihope that his path “through jthe vast, gloomy forest of cur- | rent Communist controversy” would avoid the trees and emerge on a view of the (woods has been complicated | by the illustrations and extra (detail the documents have i supplied, but it has been partiially realised. Not the least important and i least interesting aspect of [this volume to New Zealand readers is the treatment of I the Communist Party of our own country. Thus, after explaining that both pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese Communist parties can be divided into moderate and extremist groups, Mr Griffiths says “the pro-Chinese extremists are the Albanians. Malayans, Burmese, Thai, and New Zealand parties.” In describing how the New Zealand party proposed a cessation of polemics as a preliminary to an international Communist meeting, he comments “the New Zealand one, a proChinese extremist party, acted primarily under Chinese inspiration.” With reference to a “People’s Voice (Auckland)” call for an all-party meeting he suggests that the New Zealand Party was trying to conciliate a dissident minority of its own. In reporting on Chinese and Albanian pole|mics, especially those aimed | against Nehru, he holds that

the Chinese “used the midApril (1962) National Conference of the pro-Chinese New Zealand Communist’Party and the mid-May visit to Peking of its General Secretary. V, G. Wilcox, to. spread their own views as well as those of ,their New Zealand supporters,” quoting as his authority for this view an article written by Wilcox for the “Peking. Review” and a speech .made by.’ Wilcox to the Chinese High Party School. Mr Wilcox is clearly a man of some importance to the Chinese and therefore in the world Communist movement. At another point a statement by “Peking’s faithful satellite the New Zealand Communist Party” is quoted. It called for bilateral discussions. particularly between the Albanian and Soviet parties. as a preparation for a world meeting. This call, published in the “Peking Review,” was attributed to “M. H. Williams, Chairman of the National Committee of the N.Z.C.P, on behalf of the party's National Secretariat." A question which naturally arises is “Why did China, which shares the same aims as Russia of bringing the whole world under Communist control, split their effort by challenging Russian leadership?” Mr Griffiths is perhaps not very explicit on this point, mainly because it cannot be documented very well. But he alludes to two factors which are very important— nationalism and human personalities. As already hinted, the ideological dispute or the argument over the interpretation of the sacred texts handed down by Marx and Lenin may involve the self-righteousness of those who know they are absolutely correct, but it may also serve as a screen for power politics. Similarly, while economic, military and political factors help to explain differences of outlook, the personalities of the Communist leaders also play a major and often decisive role. On this last point, Mr Griffiths aptly quotes Edward Gibbon’s verdict on the schism between Rome and Constantinople: “Bigotry and national aver-’ sion are powerful magnifiers iof every object of dispute; but the immediate cause of the schism of the Greeks may be traced in the emulation of the leading prelates, who maintained the supremacy of the old metropolis, superior to all, and of the reigning capital, inferior to none, in the Christian world.