THE PROPLES' DAILY EDITORIAL “WHENCE THE DIFYURENCES",
1471 After holding their -fire for a few weeks, the Chinese have now replied to the criticiams by the Eurepean and Russian CP s, The reply is far too long to reproduce in full and we have to limit ourselves to e summary indicating the main aspects, The Chinese address their attack via Thorez, the French CP leader. The Russians are néver referred to specifically, tut are alluded to as "certain comrades" after the style of Castro, It begins by listing a large mimber of articles and editorials by the French CP lesadership in recent weaks, many of which, together with like articles from other eritical countries have been reprinted in the Chinase press this last week Or 50. For the fist time the Chinese appeal to the reason of the rank and file of the CP s, sidestepping and criticisingthe leadership, "They (the Thorez leadership) always turn about unconditionally following the baton (i.e. they are K's marianettes and obey his commands like automata) ani make a complete turn of 180 degrees in response to the baton." This is representative ",.of foudal, patriarchal relationships between fraterhal parties, ‘Some comrades apparently believe that the interests of the proletariat and of the people of the world may be completely disregarded and that it is good enough just to follow others. Here there is all too mich ability to parrot and all too little of Marxist-Leninist principle." Thorez is challengoi to print the Chinese reply as the Chinese have done with the Western criticisms. Will they : "let all the toambers of the Franch CP and the French working class decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong 7"
The Chinese again make their suggestion that the difficulties can. be solved at a conference of the Communist countries and world workers parties, But they make this difficult to achieve by tholr demand that the other parties should acknowledge publiely.gho orrc®sa of their ways and recant. They say that the dispute first became public when "a socialist country" issued a statement on the Sino—Indo dispute at the time of the Camp David talks in 1959. “ure you or are you not ready to admit this mistake and to apologise to the fraternal parties you have attacked ?" The Chinese offar to organise the conference themuslves. The request for a conference is their real reply to their critics as there is little discussion of the actual issues involved and tha bulk of the article is an onslenght against Thorez, Tho desire for this conference does not seem to fully fit in with the demand for apologies which will certainly make it more difficult for the "fraternal countries" and"certain comrades" to come to terms, The net result is likely to be an exacerbation = of the dispute.
One of the main features of the reply is the harshness of the lang ~uage used to describe Yugoslavia, and those who support/tolerate this country. “There are some peopleg who on the one hand want to oust the fraternal Albanian Party of Labour from the international Communist Movomant tut on ths other hand want to pull in the renegade Tito cliques" And again later: "the trait— oreus Tito clique" is referred to, In particular it must be pointed out that the question how to deal with . the Tito clique is a major question of principle wecseeseees Of What attitude to take to traitors of the Communist cause."
Finally whilst the Chinese are certainly justified in answering thair critics, and their call for an international conference would represent a major breakthrough for left policies in the Commnist political world, it cannot be said that the Chinese method of working for this objective is likely to yield results very easily because of the harshness of their critician,
1472 Of books being published in the Soviet Union, one of the first
publications Which is expected is the first part of the memoirs of General
Alexander Nikolayevitch Poskvebyshev, who was Stalin's private secretary at
the time of the Russian leader's death. “hilst the anti-Jewish moasures
form only a chapter in the book and arc, in a sense, only incidental to the
account of two decades of terror, this chapter is reliably reported to be of
such a nature that it will help to clarify why Stalin thought it necessary
to use antksomitian as one of his weapons, Professor Lins Stern, about
whom we wrote in an article on Stalin's medical obscurantiam a few weeks ago
is also having a volume of her Nomoirs published. Stern was rehabilitated
after previously boing persecuted for crossing Pavlov's medical theories.