Meeting in Moscow

In the Kremlin last week, the peasant who had become master of 450 million Chinese met with the peasant who was master of 200 million Russians.

Red China's pudgy Mao Tse-tung had made the long trip from Peking to Moscow to pay fealty to Joseph Stalin. A Soviet diplomatic mission met Mao at the Manchurian border, put him on the Trans-Siberian railway, escorted him all the way to Moscow (ten days, some 3,500 miles). So far as is known, it was Mao's first trip outside his native land.

Mao was accompanied by his more-traveled crony, Chu Teh, commander in chief of the Chinese Communist armies, who had once studied at Moscow's Eastern Toilers' Institute. At Moscow's Yaroslav station, the two Chinese visitors got one of the most distinguished receptions ever rendered to any foreign heads of state. The Moscow garrison sent a picked column of troops. Three Politburo bigwigs were present--Deputy Premiers Vyacheslav M. Molotov and Georgy M. Malenkov, Marshal Nikolai A. Bulganin--along with Foreign Minister Andrei Y. Vishinsky and his deputy Andrei A. Gromyko.

Mao responded gracefully to his welcomers. "For many years," he said, "the Soviet people and the Soviet government have repeatedly given aid to the cause of the liberation of the Chinese people. These acts of friendship . . . will never be forgotten . . The most important tasks are the strengthening of the [Communist] front of peace throughout the world . . . the strengthening of good neighborly relations between . . . China and the Soviet Union . . ."

In the Kremlin, Mao presumably congratulated Stalin on his birthday. Nationalist Chinese sources reported that he had brought along 15 carloads of gifts, including rare art and historical treasures from Peking's palaces and museums. But the two leaders undoubtedly had more important business to transact; it seemed likely that they would forge treaties of friendship, alliance and trade, and prepare fresh blows at the soft underbelly of the non-Communist world in East Asia.

Western observers, who had been closely watching the evolution of the Moscow-Peking Axis (TIME, Dec. 19)--and who had spent a lot of time wondering whether or not Mao might turn Tito and break with Moscow--could only speculate about the consequences of the Moscow meeting. All the West knew with certainty last week was that the two most successful living Communists, masters of almost a quarter of the earth's land and more than a quarter of its people, had met, and that both were sworn enemies of the West. That was quite enough to know for the time being.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.