MONGOLIA OBSERVED—II Propagandists Work On Chinese And Russian War Feelings

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32060, 7 August 1969, Page 10

MONGOLIA OBSERVED—II Propagandists Work On Chinese And Russian War Feelings

NEW YORK. : Z An important factor in modem war is that, long before it can be carried out between continental Powers, enormous preliminaries must be undertaken. It is necessary to position troops and missiles and to in-* ; stall underground command posts, jet airports and tank-repair facilities. Even more important is the prepara- :: tion of the populance: the inculcation of a “set” of minds and a rationale for war, and the establishment of a*' feeling that hostilities are inevitable, indeed inescapable, and far preferable to the continuance of the present situation—and that time and disposition favour your side. :

The massing of Russian and Chinese forces has not occurred in isolation. It has been accompanied by the subtle and not-so-subtle shifts in popular mood and psychology that usually prove the accompaniment of war.

To the average American, the most mysterious thing about the steady deterioration in relations between Russia and China is what the quarrel is all about. Why should they fight? What are the issues? What does either side have to gain? Don’t they realise the futility, the insanity, the counter-produc-tiveness of war? , The thrust of these remarks is common sense and logic. The question overlooks the fact that war is seldom logical, and that it rarely appears inevitable, necessary or purposeful to those not directly involved. The main characteristic of war is the abandonment of logic and reason by those who embark upon it. Troubling Factor The single factor that troubles Americans most is that both Russia and China are Communist countries. Somehow, we have come to believe that Communist countries do not quarrel, do not fight, do not use arms against each other. But the Chinese leaders stopped regarding Russia as a Communist country long ago. In Peking’s view, Moscow’s rulers have gone capitalist. They have entered into a conspiracy with Wall Street, directed at the overthrow of the true communism that is found only in China. Incredible? See the “Peking Review.” See the “People’s Daily.” See the Peking propaganda film, “The AntiChinese Crimes of the New Tsars,” made for internal distribution in China and directed at the Chinese masses.

This film gives the rationale of the conflict in terms no six-year-old can miss: the murky pictures of Nikina Khrushchev and President Eisenhower, Nikita Khrushchev and President Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev and President Nixon—the “new Tsars” plotting with the rulers of America to bring capitalism back to Russia. The whole bit I saw this film at its premiere in the leading Chinese Communist movie house in Hong Kong. It was shown to an audience of Chinese Communists.

“Dark Shadow” On the screen before their very eyes the Chinese viewers saw the “dark shadow of capitalism" pass over Russia, casting a gloom so deep that they could barely make out the parading figures as they passed through Red Square. They saw the “new Cossacks,” the Russian mounted police, beating down Chinese demonstrators in Moscow. They watched Soviet helicopters roaring over “Chinese” territory. They saw brave fishermen standing up in their boats, fending off the powerful gunboats and destroyers of the new Tsars on the Amur and Ussuri rivers. They watched simple Chinese peasants uncowed in the presence of the Russian “gendarmes,” splashing them with water when they hurl the Chinese off an island and into the river. They saw the Chinese again, armed only with sticks and poles, beating the sides of the mighty Russian tanks in mid-winter, and they joined in a mighty paean of patriotic fervour as brave Chinese patrols savagely attack Russian troops on the Ussuri. Chinese Empire They learned how the Chinese empire once covered the map of Asia, spreading over the continent from Lake Baikal to the east, embracing the forest and taiga of Eastern Siberia, the maritime provinces, the Amur River territories and the regions where the great Soviet cities o£ Khabarovsk and Vladivostok now stand. In those times Mongolia paid tribute to the Peking Emperor. So did the Khans of Central Asia. By the treaty of Nerchinsk of 1689, Russia recognised China’s sovereignty over these vast domains. But, the Chinese are told, the Roma-

nov regime did not keep its word. In the 1850 s and 1860 s it imposed its will on the weak empire and seized the ancient Chinese lands. Russia’s action was denounced, the Chinese learn, by Karl Marx in 1858 (in the “New York Tribune”) and the theft of valuable Chinese territory east of Lake Baikal, and later by Lenin. Indeed, Lenin in 1920 cancelled the “unequal treaties,” but China was powerless to regain what was rightfully hers. “New Tsars” Now, say the Peking propagandists; the “new Tsars” are following the course of the old Tsars: they have aligned themselves with the United States, they are seizing more and more Chinese territory, they are preparing for war and the overthrow of the true communism of Mao Tse-tung.

One look at the faces of the Chinese as they watched the propaganda film, one exposure to their violent shouts of anger, makes it evident that the lesson has been driven home. They poured out of the Hong Kong Astor ready and eager to fight to the death against the “new Tsars.” The film evoked the same scene, the same passion, the same anger against Russia thoughout China.

The ideological and propaganda preparations for war on the Russian side are as intensive as those in the side of China. Moscow has its own propaganda films of the SinoSoviet fighting. Leading Soviet writers, including the famous novelist and war correspondent, Konstantin Simonov, have been sent to the Siberian frontier to write patriotic versions of treacherous Chinese attacks and valiant Soviet defenders.

Every propaganda account warns that the trouble is by no means over and new and more crushing blows may be needed. Lesson Time There is no mistaking the popular Russian reaction. It is powerful, patriotic, chauvinistic, frequently racist “It’s time to teach those yellow bastards a lesson,” says a beefy Soviet colonel. Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the liberal Soviet poet writes fire-eating lines that would do credit to Kipling. Vladimir Vysotzky, a popular ballad singer often criticised for his unorthodox verses, sings of the “gloomy weather” in Peking and the lovers of "dangerous adventures.” He mentions Russia’s thermo-nuclear might and recalls that Mao once said (in 1957, at the Moscow conference of Communist parties) that China might suffer 300 million casulties in an atomic war—but would emerge the victor.

“We understand that you’re not such a small country if 300 million persons could be slaughtered—but we are sure that you, comrade Mao, God help you, very, very much want to live . . .” sings Vysotzky. Nuclear Arms It is not only the poets and the street singers who speak of war. A great Russian physicist, talking with American colleagues, warns that the Soviet people are fed up with China. “When we go to war,” he announced, “we will not fight with our little finger like you Americans. We will be fighting to the death.” He meant that Russia would not hold back her nuclear arms if and when war with China came.

The threat of nuclear war is no idle one. Soviet nuclear missile units are in place along the frontiers east of Lake Baikal and deep in Mongolia. The Chinese say the Russians openly warn that their guided-missile units in Transbaikalia and along the Chinese-Mongolia border are ready to deliver a crushing nuclear rebuff to China. The location of the principal Soviet forces in Mongolia, stationed in the extreme eastern tip and in the south within missile range of the Chinese nuclear production facilities at Paotow and Lanchow, suggests that the Russians are prepared to make good the threat if the order for battle is given. Chinese Response To this the Chinese respond: “Neither a small war, nor a big war, nor a nuclear war can ever intimidate the Chinese people.” Or, as Peking said in another context, the struggle against Russia will not be halted, “not for a day, not for a month, not for a year, not for 100 years, not for 1000 years, not for 10,000 years.” A torrent of books, monographs, pamphlets and white papers pours from Russian presses, elaborating the Soviet case against China. There are historical monographs. about the earliest Russian explorations in eastern Siberia, the diplomatic contacts in the 1600 s and the equity and validity of the nineteenthcentury treaties. Moscow rejects the notion that these were “unequal treaties” and ridicules Chinese claims based on the sovereignty of the Chinese emperors. If this Is

the basis for China’s territorial demands, Moscow says, then South America should go back to Spain, the United States to the British, and Greece, basing itself on the conquests of Alexander the Great, should get back Turkey, Syria, Iran, India, Pakistan and the United Arab Republic.

The Russians have begun to open the long-locked chapters about Comintern activity in China during the 19205, the mission of Michael Borodin and Marshal Blucher to Canton and the origins of the Chinese Communist movement. Attack On Mao They are trying to demonstrate that Mao was never a genuine Communist, but a personal adventurer bent on aggrandising himself at any cost. A one-time secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Wang Ming, long resident in Moscow as the party’s liaison with the Comintern, has emerged from the dim shadows of the past and is writing exposes, charging Mao with personal intrigue and executions of his political enemies as early as 1932. The Russians have even bought into their polemics the name of one of the most mysterious individuals in the secret history of plot and counterplot between Stalin and Mao—a long-dead Chinese Communist leader named Kao Kang. Kao was the Communist Party chief in Manchuria in the early days of the Chinese party’s regime. He was the virtual dictator of Manchuria, journeying to Moscow and signing treaties with the Russians even before Mao proclaimed his regime on October 1, 1949. Kao held this post until Stalin’s death, then committed suicide and was denounced by Peking as a traitor who had plotted to set himself up as an independent “lord” of Manchuria. I His name was expunged from {party records. A Substitution The Moscow editors of the great Soviet encyclopaedia sent instructions to subscribers to slit out page 213 of volume 10, which contained his biography and portrait, and to paste in a substitute page with an article and photograph of the Tibetan city of Gyangtse. The name of Kao was anathema in Moscow and Peking alike.

Now Kao blandly reappears in the Soviet history of relations with China, with no suggestion that he was not the most honourable of men. It is an insult comparable to calling the notorious Soviet police chief, Lavrenti Beria, an honourable colleague of the party secretary, Mr Brezhnev. The newest Soviet “white paper,” a mauve-bond volume inocuously titled, "The Leninist Policy of the U.S.S.R. in Relation to China,” describes Mao as having secretly broken with Russia as early as 1956. It dates the open split to 1958 when, it alleges, the Chinese deliberately provoked the Quemoy and Matsu crisis with the United States, violating direct obligations under the Sind-Soviet alliance of 1950 for prior consultation with the Rus-, sions. Polemics To Plots The Chinese violated the treaty again in 1959 in their attack on the Indian frontier, Moscow charges. From that time forward the quarrel proceeded inexorably, deepening year by year, progressing from polemics to plots, to intrigues, to deliberate efforts to subvert other Communist! countries and movements, to; the present armed clashes on' the frontiers and open pre-; paration for war. Mr Tsedenbal, Prime Minister of Mongolia, whose country is in the front line of the Sino-Soviet dispute, spoke openly with me of Chinese attempts to overthrow his regime and of actual Chinese aggression along his frontier. He believes that Mao is determined to bring Mongolia once more under Chinese sway, and he thinks that there is no longer hope of resolving the quarrel by diplomatic means. Mao is not to be reasoned with. So long as he remains in power, the danger to Mongolia, to Russia, to all of China's neighbours, will continue. Similar Threat Mr Tsedenbal—himself a veteran of the war against Japan—recalls the similar threat that the Japanese posed to Mongolia and the Soviet Union in the heyday of Japan’s Kwantung Army. And he notes how that threat was met by the savage defeat inflicted on Japan’s Sixth Army by Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov in the summer of 1939, and then eliminated by the lightning thrust of Soviet and Mongol forces in a twoweek campaign in August, 1945.

Mr Tsedenbal’s thinking is echoed in Moscow, where books, military studies and memoirs pour out about the Zhukov campaign at Khal-

kin Gol River in eastern Mongolia, and about the Soviet blitzkrieg against Japan by Marshals Vasilevsky and Malinovsky at the end of World War 11. It is no coincidence that Russia’s tank forces today are deployed in the same positions they occupied in August, 1939, and August, 1945. Will there be a new Khalkhin Gol? That is the question debated behind the scenes in Moscow. The party leaders are more and more gloomy over the chance for a peaceful or diplomatic solution with China. They share Mr Tsedenbal’s view that there is no hope as long as Mao lives. Whether the situation might improve with Mao’s death is a question for argument. Some of the older leaders, men no longer in power, like Anastas I. Mikoyan and Nikita Khrushchev, are said to believe there is a chance that, once Mao is out of the way, China will moderate her policy and some kind Of modus vivendi might be worked out. Hope Lost But younger leaders, possibly a majority of the Politburo, seem to have lost hope for a peaceful solution. Soviet military men speak with confidence of their ability to deal with China quickly: a swift strike, as was carried out in 1939 and 1945, a pre-emptive nuclear blow at the Chinese nuclear facilities, the seizure of Peking within 10 days or less, and the replacement of the “mad” Mao regime with one of genuine Communists, friendly to Moscow. It is a tempting scenario for statesmen weary of polemics and worried about the population and growing nuclear threat of China, not to mention the unresovable ideological struggle. It is the kind of temptation that Japan's military men dangled before their Government in the days before Japanese involvement in the Chinese morass.

No-one knows for sure whether there are those in Moscow who recall the Japanese adventure the brave Japanese hopes and the disaster that followed—or who realistically relate a Soviet blitzkrieg to China’s population of 800 or 900 million, to the highly-politicised Chinese masses, to the militarised leadership of the Mao regime, to the chauvinism that war with Russia would stimulate, to the existence of Chinese plans to fight a 100year war, if ncessary, against a nuclear power, to the ability of China to absorb and contain the elite Soviet missile and armoured forces, to the potential that China possesses for nuclear retaliation, and to the ease which which a "short, swift war” on the

Mongolian frontier might.* escalate to embrace all of-*’ Asia and the world. The Russian people, with' • their deep instincts and pro- ; found abhorrence for and fear of war, have shown that they ' - do not trust the Kremlin’s ability to abstain from military adventure. When reports of-> the Ussuri fighting Moscow last spring, there was v a brief but poignant panic. Ordinary Russians suddenly became possessed of the fear that war with China might be at hand. Some-rushed to—_ the stores and bought canned goods and sausage—war has always meant a food shortage in Russia. Others rather pathetically sought out Americans and asked whether the United States would, stand with Russia in the': event of war with China. It is a question that may ” demand an answer sooner . than many Americans think. Washington has explored the dilemma only in superficial terms, although Russian. diplomats have for, at least three years, urged that the . United States and Russia settle their differences so they can present a united front to the “China danger.” The United States occupies a key position in the ChineseSoviet conflict Both Russia and China have indicated (the Russians bluntly, and the Chinese in very subtle fashion) that, if it comes to war, they would like the United States to be on their side—or at least neutral. Fall-out Danger Continental war between Russia and China, employing nuclear weapons, would place the United States in grave peril of fatal nuclear fall-out. The United States would face direct involvement in the conflict if, as would seem likely, it spread to other Asian states, notably India, Pakistan and Japan. An increasing number of Washington specialists have begun to urge that the United States employ its diplomatic and military weight, not to give favour either to Russia or China, but to try to avert the conflict and halt the prospect of a world catastrophe. To do so would require radical changes in United States policy vis-a-vis China. At present, the United States has virtually no contact with the Chinese Communists, and, if American influence is to be used effectively, it will have to be felt both in Moscow and Peking. No-one underestimates the difficulties this presents. But the results could make the difference between continental Armageddon and global security. Great dangers, great stakes, great opportunity—a chance, some say, for President Nixon to achieve historic stature.

The second of two articles by Harrison Salisbury, •- “ I ® ,, ®Bing editor of the “New York Times.” In this -t article he discusses the psychological preparations for * war between Russia and China he observed during a * recent trip to Mongolia. The report was made available through the N.Z.P.A.