"Get Out of Here"

And so the Chinese went home.

At the airport, when a Western correspondent asked Teng Hsiao-ping, the chief of Peking's departing delegation, how the talks had gone, he replied, "Very good." Obviously, the opposite was true. During their last week in Moscow, while Western negotiators were feted and nattered, a kind of Great Wall surrounded the unwelcome visitors from Peking. From their isolated compound on Moscow's Lenin Hills, the Red Chinese delegates ventured out only in curtained black Chaika limousines for the short drive to Peking's embassy; on alternate days they met with a Soviet delegation, obviously to no effect.

Khrushchev pointedly stayed away from the meetings, although he was otherwise active in the diplomatic and social whirl. The Mocow Film Festival provided an excuse for lots of parties, at which Western envoys and Soviet functionaries mixed amiably with such movie stars as Shelley Winters, Susan Strasberg, Yves Montand and Simone Signoret. At week's end Khrushchev finally turned to his other guests and, in a relatively gracious gesture, tossed the Red Chinese a farewell dinner. Although described as "friendly," the meal could have produced little beyond dyspepsia, for Khrushchev had spoiled the table talk in advance, delivering an oratorical blast at Peking that in effect declared political war on the Chinese.

The Challenge. At a massive rally of party bureaucrats and propagandists in the Kremlin's Palace of the Congresses, Khrushchev spoke with such apoplectic vehemence that at one point he groped for words and rhetorically begged the audience: "Help me out." But he didn't need much help. Angrily defending his destalinization drive against Peking's attacks, he demanded: "What do they want? To frighten our people, to bring back the days when a man went to his job and did not know whether he would see his wife and children again?" Dropping his voice to a dramatic whisper, Khrushchev said that letters to him from all over the country expressed gratitude for ending the Stalinist terror. Then he added: "If Stalin had died ten years earlier, it would have been even better."

The Soviet boss was equally contemptuous on the subject of Peking's warmongering foreign policy. "They say one should start a revolution, a war," he shouted, "and on the corpses and the ruins, a more prosperous society will be created. And who would remain in this prosperous society? Wouldn't the living envy the dead?" Directly accusing the Chinese of trying to unseat him, Khrushchev dared Peking to take its case to the Soviet people: "I declare to those who would like to overthrow us--I challenge you, comrades--let's pick out any plant or collective farm. You present your program and we will present ours. You won't need armor or a pillow for protection. Our people are polite. They'll listen and say: 'Get out of here.' "

Bourgeois Comrades. Almost as vehement was a 19,000-word open letter from the Kremlin that called the Chinese liars, hypocrites and cowards. Moscow dismissed the Red Chinese claim to proletarian purity and accused them of trying to goad Russia into war with the U.S. Printed in Pravda, the Soviet counterattack was addressed to Communist cadres throughout the world and it served notice that Moscow would push its platform before all 81 "fraternal" parties at all costs. As the Soviets themselves angrily pointed out, Peking was actively "organizing and supporting bands of renegade" Reds in seven nations. Throughout the world the Sino-Soviet quarrel has sharply divided local Communist parties, splitting race from race and continent from continent.

In Europe the quarrel is noisiest among the Italian comrades. Nowhere does the Communist Party seem more bourgeois; for just that reason, nowhere in Europe has Peking found more supporters for its credo of all-out revolution. In Padua a group of Communist Party members, expelled for favoring Peking, published a pamphlet denouncing Red bureaucrats who lived the sweet life, complete with "wives and mistresses in jewels and furs." Some 30,000 Italian Reds, many of them sons of prominent Communists, have formed about 20 chapters of the Chinese-Italian Friendship Society. The rebels are backed by funds believed to be channeled through the Albanian legation in Rome; they circulate propaganda material prepared by Red Chinese specialists operating from a fancy villa in Bern, Switzerland. Last week Communist Party Vice Secretary Luigi Longo rushed to Milan to put down a rebellion of Sinophiles, and explained that by appearing moderate, Italian Reds have prospered at the polls. As he emerged from the meeting, Longo discovered the slogans "Viva Stalin," "Viva Mao" painted on nearby walls.

Airmail War. In Africa and Asia the split is increasingly racial. The Soviets are complaining that at the recent Asian-African Solidarity Conference in Tanganyika, a Red Chinese official told the Moscow delegation: "The whites have nothing to do here." Such a blatant racist line, argues Moscow, is pursued in the underdeveloped areas at Russia's expense; it "implants the sneaky idea that the peoples of some regions are more revolutionary than others."

India's Communist movement has been deeply divided, but last week formally lined up with Khrushchev, just as an Indian government purchasing commission arrived in Moscow shopping for arms--to be used in defense against the Red Chinese. In Japan, most of whose Communists favor Red China for ethnic reasons, the struggle has become pretty petty, resulting in an airmail circulation war. Soon after Pravda began to arrive in Tokyo by air, Peking's People's Daily dropped its sea-mail delivery, which used to take a month, and also took to the air--at no increase in postal rates to subscribers.

The Nightmare. Though the leadership of most Latin American Communist parties is firmly pro-Moscow, the rank and file lean toward Peking. Reds in Brazil have split into three rival sects. One of Uruguay's top Reds was recently expelled for his Red Chinese sympathies; however, the party newspaper still accepts paid announcements from Peking propagandists.

As for The Beard, Fidel's revolutionary sympathies lie with Mao, but he knows better than to bite Nikita's hand, and last week he dutifully endorsed the Moscow line. Still, Red China has not given up hope of converting Castro. Cuba is one of the few places in the world where both Chinese and Russian technicians remain at work. This month Peking happily proclaimed that its experts have helped the Cubans to raise 25,000 Peking ducks.

These Sino-Soviet duels around the world, as much as the fruitless talks in Moscow, have shattered any prospect of early reconciliation. Now that the Moscow meeting has collapsed, both sides in effect concede that what began as a charade of unity has become a Communist nightmare.

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