386. Current Intelligence Weekly Review0
Moscow Shifts Tactics in Struggle With Peiping
Having failed to rally sufficient support among foreign parties for a new international Communist conference to condemn the Chinese, the Soviet leaders now seem to be preparing for a protracted stalemate in the conflict. They have reverted to a position set forth by Khrushchev at the East German party congress last January, when he appealed for “tolerance and patience,” a cessation of polemics, and a pause to give the adversaries a “chance to calm down” before convening a conference.1
Two authoritative Pravda articles on 27 November and 6 December commemorating the anniversaries of the 1957 and 1960 Moscow meetings renewed Khrushchevʼs appeals, avoided direct assaults on the Chinese, and reiterated his dictum that “time will determine which point of view is correct.”
In view of the strong resistance within the Communist movement to any Soviet attempt to force a showdown, which almost certainly would result in a formal and avowed rupture, the Soviet leaders apparently see no alternative to accepting another pause, during which they will pursue less provocative and risky efforts to isolate the Chinese and prove that Peiping is solely responsible for continuation of the conflict.
Moscow is maintaining a virtual suspension of anti-Chinese propaganda. The Pravda article of 6 December piously warned against “overdramatizing” the situation and regarding it as “irreparable.” It recalled Khrushchevʼs appeals in January and October for a cessation of polemics and proposed discussions within the “normal channel of inter-party relations,” which would create “more favorable conditions” for a new world Communist meeting. There are no indications, however, that the Russians expect either a resumption of bilateral talks or an international conference in the near future. The Soviet ambassador in Peiping told the British charge on 2 December that the Chinese had not suggested resumption and that no meeting was planned in Peiping or elsewhere.
Although the Chinese have not directly commented on the new Soviet appeal, they have made it clear that they have no intention of accom [Page 844] modating the Russians. On 10 December, Peiping repeated its charge that “anti-China propaganda” in the Soviet press has exposed the “hypocrisy and ulterior motives behind the CPSU leadersʼ so-called call for a halt to open polemics.” Whereas Moscow ignored the defiant tactics of the Chinese delegation at the recent World Peace Council session in Warsaw, Peiping played up the clashes and denounced the USSR for “stage-managing an anti-China scandal.”
Peiping has also continued its series of long articles attacking the July exposition of Soviet positions. The sixth, published simultaneously in Peopleʼs Daily and Red Flag on 12 December, juxtaposes Khrushchevʼs revisionist views of “peaceful coexistence” with the correct Leninist line followed by the Chinese. There does not appear to be anything new in the Chinese argumentation on this question, but the article maintains the Chinese insistence that Khrushchev is evil incarnate.
- Source: Central Intelligence Agency: Job 79-S01060A. Confidential; No Foreign Dissem. Prepared by CIAʼs Office of Current Intelligence. The source text comprises p. 3 of the issue.↩
- See Document 280. For text of Khrushchevʼs January 16 speech, see Current Digest of the Soviet Press, vol. XV, No. 3, February 13, 1963, pp. 3-7, and No. 4, February 20, 1963, pp. 13-20.↩