relations comes from transcripts of CPSU plenums. Reporting to the plenum on 13 July 1960, Khrushchev's party deputy Frol Kozlov reported that on 5 June the Politburo of the CC CCP" had invited around 40 communists-leaders of foreign trade unions, to dinner, followed by a conference" of trade unionists. Liu Shaoqi opened this conference, and then "com. Deng Xiaoping took the floor, and his speech contained a number of absolutely false positions, which contained an obvious distortion of the line of the CPSU." Deng, according to Kozlov's story, declared that the CPSU and other fraternal parties had "tossed overboard the main points of the Declaration" of the communist conference of November 1957.29 Perhaps this pushed Khrushchev over the edge leading to the abrupt removal of Soviet advisors and technical personnel from China.

The trade union conference in Beijing was, as it turned out, China's preparation for the clash with the USSR at the congress of "fraternal parties" in Bucharest in late June 1960, where Khrushchev and the leaders of the East European countries all participated. With Deng Xiaoping absent from the Bucharest congress, the role of ideological hit-men fell to Peng Zhen, Kang Sheng, Wu Xiuquan, and Liu Xiao. It is not clear what the little. "terrier" was busy with at that time. Three years later he explained it away with a joke. “I said [then] I was fortunate that [instead of me] went com. Peng Zhen. His weight is around 80 kilograms, so he endured. If I had gone, and I weigh only a bit over 50 kilograms, I would not have endured." Deng Xiaoping referred to the atmosphere of heckling in Bucharest that he blamed on the Soviets, 30

This first open split at a major communist forum led to the first bilateral consultations in Moscow on 17-22 September 1960. Deng Xiaoping headed the delegation which included Peng Zhen, Chen Boda, Kang Sheng, Yang Shangkun, Hu Qiaomu, Liu Zhengqi, Wu Xiuquan and Liu Xiao. The Soviet team included Suslov (head of the delegation), Khrushchev's first deputy Frol Kozlov, Kuusinen, Pospelov, Ponomarev, Andropov, Il'ichev, philosopher Constantinov, Grishin and Ambassador Chervonenko.31 The transcripts of the discussions, found in the East German archives, reveal tactics and positions of both sides.32 Apparently the Soviet delegation's main goal was to rescue the November conference and, while conducting ideological polemics with the Chinese, achieve some kind of a fraternal understanding. Deng must have understood that Khrushchev and the Soviets had a vital stake in preventing an open split. Yet he deliberately tested the Soviet mettle.

In one instance he drew a distinction between Khrushchev, who "stands at the head of Soviet comrades who attack China," and Kozlov and Suslov, from whom the Chinese "have not heard [anti-Chinese] speeches." That provocative pitch evoked indignant rebuffs from both. In another instance, Deng told the Soviet delegation that allegedly Khrushchev had remarked to the Vietnamese

delegation in Moscow that the Chinese were planning to give substantial means for restoration of the tomb of Ghengis Khan and that this smacks of "yellow peril."33

For his attack on Khrushchev, Deng singled out the Soviet Chairman's failed attempt to reach accommodation with President Eisenhower and Khrushchev's refusal to support China in its conflict with India in the second half of 1959-early 1960. "Why did comrade Khrushchev speak with such high expectations about Eisenhower?" "We would like to ask you with whom would you line up in the moment of trouble? With Eisenhower, with Nehru, or with

the fraternal socialist country, with China?"34 Then, to maximize the power of his attack Deng rolled out a complete list of complaints: Stalin's violation of Chinese sovereignty in the treaty of 1950, the discussion of radio stations and joint fleet in 1958, etc. He explained to the Soviets that this was necessary to overcome "father-son" syndrome in the Sino-Soviet relationship. However, the Soviets, who had heard it many times before since 1954, genuinely wondered why it was necessary to “unearth" all those issues that had been long resolved. The discussion revolved around the same issues without making any progress.

Still, the Chinese did not burn their bridges to Khrushchev at that time: the Soviet chairman definitely "improved" after the U-2 incident. For that reason Deng Xiaoping, while criticizing Khrushchev and his foreign policy of the recent past, said words that were honey for the hearts of the Soviets: that "differences in opinions" between Beijing and Moscow would be gradually overcome through the mechanism of periodic consultations. and in the interests of joint struggle against "the common enemy." Reciprocating, Suslov asked the Chinese "to pass most sincere greetings on behalf of our delegation and the Presidium of our CC to the Central Committee of the CC of China and to comrade Mao Zedong." He then invited the Chinese delegation to lunch with the Soviet delegation.35 Once again, Deng was a tactical winner: he put the Soviets on the defensive by his criticism and still kept them at bay by dangling the promise of renewed friendship.

Deng Xiaoping soon came to Moscow again in October to take part in the work of a Commission and an Editorial Group, to prepare documents for the congress of communist parties in November 1960-the largest ever in the history of the communist movement. After the first two quiet days, according to Suslov's report, Deng criticized a draft declaration of the congress proposed by the Soviet side as "inadequate” and directed against the CCP. After that the confrontational atmosphere came back. At that time the Chinese delegation acquired a first satellite-the Albanian delegation.36

Mao's terrier leaped forward again amid the work of the great Moscow congress. After Khrushchev's major address to the meeting, in the presence of communist delegates from 67 countries Deng Xiaoping, according to Suslov's account, suddenly began to speak instead of Liu

Shaoqi who was announced on the list. Suslov remarked later that Deng "passed up in total silence the speech of com. Khrushchev."37 This figure of silence was probably meant to imply how unworthy of attention were the pronouncements of the Soviet leader who pretended to be the head of the world communist movement! Khrushchev swallowed the bait and had to give a rebuff to Deng Xiaoping in his second, unplanned speech on 23 November. Deng counterattacked on the next day and this produced a virtual pandemonium at the conference. Each and every leader of an East European country, West European communist party, and pro-Moscow organization elsewhere rushed to the podium to voice their full and unswerving support of the Soviet leader and to appeal to the Chinese not to break the "united" ranks.

The Soviet leadership, too, was horrified by a prospect of schism and preferred to offer a compromise to the Chinese, particularly on the interpretation of Stalin's role. At this point "bad cop" Deng Xiaoping receded in the shadow, and "good cop" Liu Shaoqi, much respected in Moscow, met with Khrushchev on October 30 to reach a deal. 38 All this division of labor on the Chinese side was probably orchestrated in advance, with the active participation of Mao Zedong. But the Soviets pretended they did not understand it, hoping to paper over the growing chasm and eager to end the conference on the note of unity.

The consultations of July 1963 were also the byproduct of these Soviet illusions. Moscow proposed them in a CC CPSU letter of 21 February 1963. Beijing, on the contrary, geared itself for ideological battle, publicizing its so called “25 points" (Proposal for the General Line of the International Communist Movement) on the very eve of the Sino-Soviet consultations. 39 The Chinese "points" of 14 June 1963 fell with a thud on the proceedings of the CC CPSU plenum on ideology and naturally became the focus of discussions there.

40

The discussion in Moscow was a bizarre event, more reminiscent of a scholarly exercise, where each side presented "a report" replete with citations from Lenin, Trotsky, Khrushchev, Mao Zedong, etc. Essentially it was just another act in the public show, where teams of speechwriters, cued by instructions of their chiefs, produced tomes of vituperative, albeit impossibly turgid polemics." Georgii Arbatov, then a scholar at IMEMO in Moscow and "consultant" for the CC International Department, became an assistant to the Soviet delegation at the Sino-Soviet talks. He recalls in his memoirs that "they consisted of endless unilateral declarations intended, first, to rip the other side to shreds and, second, to defend one's own case and Marxist orthodoxy." Each day of discussion was followed by "a day off." "As we understood it," writes Arbatov, "the Chinese would then go to their embassy and send the text of our statement by coded telegram (probably with their comments and proposals attached) to Beijing. They then would wait for the reply. We got the impression that this was in the form of a final text of their statement in reply to ours."41

The target of the Chinese delegation at the meeting was Khrushchev and his de-Stalinization. Kang Sheng delivered a most unrestrained speech. "Comrades from the CPSU call Stalin ‘a murderer,' ‘a criminal,' ‘a bandit,' ‘a gambler,' 'a despot like Ivan the Terrible,' 'the greatest dictator in the history of Russia,' ‘a fool,' 'shit,' ‘an idiot.' All of these curses and swear words came from the mouth of Com. N.S. Khrushchev." Kang Sheng continued sarcastically: "Frankly speaking, we cannot understand at all why the leadership of the CPSU feels such a fierce hatred for Stalin, why it uses every kind of the most malicious abuse, why it attacks him with more hatred than it reserves for its enemies?"

"Can it really be that the achievements of the national economy and the development of the newest technology in the Soviet Union in several decades have been attained under the leadership of some sort of 'fool?' Can it really be that the bases for the development of nuclear weapons and missile technology in the Soviet Union have been laid down under the leadership of some sort of 'fool'? ...Can it really be that the great victory of the Soviet Army during World War Two was won under the command of some sort of 'idiot?'...Can it really be that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union which for a long time had the love and respect of the revolutionary people of the whole world had a 'bandit' as its great leader for several decades?...Can it really be that communists of all countries considered some sort of 'shit' to be their flagbearer for several decades?” "Let us take, for example, com. Khrushchev. He heaped all of the errors of the period of Stalin's leadership...on Stalin alone while he presented himself as being completely clean. Can this really convince people? If the memory of men is not too short, they will be able to recall that during Stalin's leadership com. Khrushchev more than once extolled Stalin and his policy of struggling with counter-revolutionary elements."42

As we have seen, Deng Xiaoping, by comparison with Kang Sheng, used specific examples from recent international history and history of the crises and tensions inside the communist camp in which he was often a direct participant. He, as a leader of the Chinese delegation, found the weakest spot in Khrushchev's defenses-his inability to end the Cold War with the West and the zigzags of his foreign policy. First, Deng Xiaoping implied that Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin at the 20th Congress of the CPSU was the result of his political egotism which produced a severe crisis in the communist movement and alliance.

"After the 20th congress of the CPSU, as a consequence of the so-called struggle against the cult of personality and the full, wholesale denial of Stalin, an antiSoviet and anti-Communist campaign was provoked around the whole world. Taking up a good chance, the imperialists, Titoist clique and reactionaries of various countries unleashed an offensive against the Soviet Union, socialist camp and communist parties of different countries and created grave difficulties for many parties." "On 23

October 1956...com. Mao Zedong said that you had completely renounced such a sword as Stalin and had thrown this sword away. As a result, enemies had seized it in order to kill us with it. That is the same as if, having picked up a stone, one were to throw it on one's own feet.”43

Second, Deng Xiaoping condemned Khrushchev's diplomacy of detente toward the West as futile and selfdestructive and here he rose to the height of his rhetoric: "Frankly speaking, into what chaos you have plunged the beautiful socialist camp! In your relations with fraternal countries of the socialist camp you do not act at all in the interests of the entire socialist camp but you act from the position of great power chauvinism and nationalist egotism." "When you consider that your affairs go well, when you believe you grasped some kind of a straw handed to you by Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nehru or somebody else, then you are beyond yourself from joy and in all fury against those fraternal parties and fraternal countries which do not obey your wand and do not want to be under your sway, and then you condemn the socialist camp to total oblivion."

"When you are in trouble, when you suffer setbacks because of your erroneous policy, then you get enraged and vent it on fraternal parties and countries who stick to principles and the truth, then you make them 'scapegoats,' then you even sacrifice the interests of the entire socialist camp in order to cater to imperialists and reactionaries and to find a way out."44

Some of the Soviet representatives seated on the other side of the table, particularly Suslov, a crypto-Stalinist, had their own grave doubts about Khrushchev's foreign policy that coincided with Deng's observation. Yet, as loyal apparatchiks they expressed outrage at "personal attacks on com. N.S. Khrushchev." Mikhail Suslov described Khrushchev's great leadership qualities: “By his work and struggle, unshakable faith in the cause of the working class, by flexible revolutionary tactics, com. Khrushchev deals precise blows to the imperialists, cleverly uses contradictions in their camp, reveals to broad masses methods of struggle against imperialism and colonialism, for peace, democracy and socialism."45 It was of course the same Suslov who directed criticism of the ousted Khrushchev slightly more than a year later, at the October 1964 Plenum of the CPSU.46

There was "the dog that did not bark" in the course of the discussion. The Soviet delegation emphasized the nuclear revolution and the danger of nuclear war as the core of their rethinking of international relations. More concretely, the Sino-Soviet meeting took place in the shadows of the momentous American-British-Soviet negotiations in Moscow that began on July 15 and ended on August 5 with a signing in the Kremlin of a Limited Test-Ban Treaty. In the background exchanges and consultations with Khrushchev, the Americans implicitly and sometimes explicitly proposed to join efforts to thwart the efforts of Beijing to become a nuclear power. On July

15, Kennedy instructed his negotiator Averell Harriman "to elicit K's view of means of limiting or preventing Chinese nuclear development and his willingness either to take Soviet action or to accept U.S. action aimed in this direction."47 Harriman and other U.S. representatives who met with Khrushchev several times in the period between July 15 and 27, noted that "China...is today Soviet overriding preoccupation" and sought to exploit it by raising the issue of joint preemptive actions against China's nuclear program. However, to the Americans' disappointment, "Khrushchev and Gromyko have shown no interest and in fact brushed subject off on several occasions."48 Knowing the precarious state of SinoSoviet relations, it is easy to imagine how dismayed and fearful the Soviet leader could have been. For instance, in the morning on Monday July 15 Peng Zhen talked about "serious disagreements" between the CCP and CPSU and appealed to "value unity" between the two countries.49 And only in the evening of the same day Harriman probed Khrushchev on the Chinese nuclear threat! If the Chinese had only learned about the American entreaties, they would have had deadly ammunition for their attacks against Khrushchev. He would have been compromised in the eyes of most of his own colleagues.

Deng Xiaoping must have been under strict instructions not to touch on the Soviet-American test-ban negotiations. Only in a few instances did he let the Soviets feel how displeased the Chinese were with the rapprochement of the two superpowers on the grounds of mutual regulation of nuclear arms race. "On 25 August 1962,” he said, "the Soviet government informed China that it was ready to conclude an agreement with the USA on the prevention of the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In our view, you were pursuing an unseemly goal in coming to such an agreement, namely: to bind China [in its attempts to join the nuclear club-VZ] by the hands and feet through an agreement with the USA." In commenting on the Cuban Missile Crisis, Deng Xiaoping said that Khrushchev "committed two errors: in shipping the missiles to Cuba, you indulged in adventurism, and then, in showing confusion in the face of nuclear blackmail from the USA, you capitulated.”50

Without seeing cables and instructions from Beijing, it is not possible to say what prompted Deng Xiaoping on July 20 to suggest suspension of the consultations. Researchers have long suggested it was a reaction to the CC CPSU open letter to the Chinese published on July 14. But it is equally plausible that the start and progress of the U.S.-Soviet test-ban talks in Moscow made Mao Zedong increasingly impatient with the consultations. Immediately after the breakup of the consultations the Chinese side began attacks on the talks and on three occasions, 31 July, 15 August, and 1 September 1963, published official 51 statements condemning the Moscow treaty.

What was the significance of all these episodes for Deng's political career and the development of his views? The July 1963 performance of Deng Xiaoping was highly

acclaimed in Beijing. According to one biographer, “the failure to shore up Sino-Soviet relations was greeted as a victory over revisionism by the CCP leadership who turned out in force to welcome Deng back from Moscow." He was also the leader of the group of speechwriters that drafted CCP letters, probably including the ones criticizing the test ban.52 Salisbury concludes that Deng's ideological exploits in Moscow (he mentions only one in November 1957) earned him Mao's gratitude and a relatively mild treatment during the Cultural Revolution. If this version is true, then Deng Xiaoping proved his credentials as a loyal subordinate of Mao Zedong and demonstrated his ability to work very successfully together with the Chairman in the area of foreign policy.53

But does it mean that the "little terrier" had the same views on Stalin, Stalinism and international relations as Mao Zedong? There is a more complex explanation of Deng's role. According to recent revelations of Dr. Li Zhisui, Mao's personal physician, Deng Xiaoping, as well as Liu Shaoqi, lost Mao's trust at the Eighth CCP Congress in September 1956, when they spoke too fervently about the impossibility of any cult of personality in China.54 Mao Zedong considered Deng a politician with a great future (as he told Khrushchev in November 1957) and considerable political ambitions. However, in the atmosphere of power struggle and Mao's emerging dictatorship this praise could bring Deng as easily to the gallows as to the pedestal: Mao, like Stalin before him, had shrinking tolerance for men of political ambition in his immediate vicinity. Therefore, it is only logical that Mao should have. watched Deng very keenly and tried to find tasks for him where Deng's energy would have been utilized for Mao's benefit rather than against his interests. According to this logic, Mao Zedong wanted to send Deng to Moscow not because he particularly trusted his loyalty, but for the opposite reason, because he wanted to neutralize his potential opposition to his rising cult of personality.

To understand this logic, it is perhaps useful to start with the opposite pole, the Soviet one. After 1960 the Chinese criticism of Khrushchev and his de-Stalinization tied the hands of the Stalinists in Moscow like Suslov. According to Georgi Arbatov's thoughtful observation "from 1962-1964 the Chinese factor weakened the position of the Stalinists in the USSR. As it developed, the conflict with China had positive influences on the policy of Khrushchev, who had been slipping back to Stalinism only too often since 1962. The debate with the Chinese leaders provided the anti-Stalinists with the opportunity, while defending our policies, to speak out on many political and ideological subjects that had lately become taboo."55

Actually, when Khrushchev was overthrown at the CC Presidium in October 1964, Alexander Shelepin, Secretary of the CC and the former head of the KGB, repeated almost verbatim Deng's criticism of the Soviet leader's "two mistakes" during the Cuban missile crisis. Yet, the Soviet leaders were too embarrassed to repeat this criticism at the plenum, because it would have implied that the

Chinese had been right all along. Therefore, Khrushchev's foreign policy errors were not criticized at the top party forum.

In China the same logic worked the other way around. Mao Zedong may well have cleverly decided to direct the energy of his potential critics, Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi, for external, foreign policy use. Deng Xiaoping must have been critical of Mao's exercise of power and his disastrous "great leap forward." Since 1960 he and Liu expressed an inclination to oppose the leftist economic experiments of the Chairman. But in foreign policy Deng enthusiastically shared Mao's goal to strive for China's equality in the communist camp. As a delegation head, Deng Xiaoping must have been held on an extremely short leash by Mao. In any case, Deng's personal role in implementing the Sino-Soviet split made him a committed advocate of this policy. According to his biographer, during the early 1980s, when Mao's role in the politics of the PRC was being reassessed, Deng was "at great pains to stress that Mao Zedong's policy in foreign affairs had been correct and highly successful."56

This must be a missing part in the explanation why, in 1956-1963, the reformer of contemporary China had been the central figure fighting de-Stalinization and reform in the Soviet Union, instead of being a reform-minded analyst of the damages that Stalin and the logic of his tyranny had caused to the Soviet Union, China and other "socialist" countries.'

Vladislav Zubok is a senior fellow at the National Security Archive, a non-governmental research institute based at the George Washington University in Washington, DC. He is the coauthor of Inside the Kremlin's Cold War (Harvard University Press, 1995) and a frequent contributor to the Cold War International History Project Bulletin. The author thanks Professor Chen Jian for his comments on a draft of this paper.

1 Harrison E. Salisbury. The New Emperors: China in the Era of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, (Boston, Little, Brown, 1992), pp. 153-154.

2

3

See on this in the existing biographies: David Bonavia, Deng Xiaoping (Hong Kong: Longman, 1989), p. 83; David S.G. Goodman, Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese Revolution: A Political Biography, (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 71-73. The bound copy of the transcripts of the meeting were found in the papers of the International Department of the former Socialist Unity Party (SED) of the GDR in the Bundesarchiv, Berlin. (SAPMO Barch JIV 2/207 698, pp. 187-330 is the Russian version.) The conference's participants on the Chinese side were, besides Deng Xiaoping, Peng Zhen, mayor of Beijing and secretary of Beijing's Party Organization (Deputy Head of the delegation); Kang Sheng, Mao's security specialist and probably his "eyes" and "ears" in the delegation; and Yang Shangkun, long-time head of the CCP's General Office. That was a senior "troika," who had been close to Mao Zedong and knew the history of Sino-Soviet relations well. Kang Sheng and Yang Shangkun, like Deng himself, had studied and lived in Moscow. The delegation also included the head of the All-Chinese Federation of Trade Unions Liu Ningyi and two other CC CCP

5

Shi Zhe, At the Side of Mao Zedong and Stalin: Shi Zhe's Memoirs, Chapter 14, “De-Stalinization, Poland, Hungary: 1956” (being translated by Chen Jian; quoted with permission). 6 L.W. Gluchowski, "The Struggle Against 'Great Power

Chauvinism': CPSU-PUWP Relations and the Roots of the SinoPolish Initiative in September-October 1956, a paper presented at the conference "New Evidence on the Cold War in Asia," January 1996, Hong Kong; Chen Jian, "Beijing and the Hungarian Crisis of 1956," presented at "International Conference on "Hungary and the World, 1956: The New Archival Evidence," in Budapest, 26-29 September 1996.

7 Malin Notes, CWIHP Bulletin, no. 8-9 (Winter 1996/97), p.

388

26

Stenographic Report, p. 142. To strengthen his arguments, Suslov cited interesting statistics on Soviet military and economic assistance to the PRC. "The 24 defense enterprises built with the technical assistance of the Soviet Union were the basis for the creation of corresponding branches of Chinese industry. Another 33 defense enterprises are being built. At one time, 60 infantry divisions were equipped with arms and militarytechnical property supplied from the USSR, and from 1955-1956 the modernization of the Chinese army with more modern types of armaments and materiel was carried out. In past years our country has given the PRC a large quantity of technical and technological documentation by which China was able to organize the production of the MIG-17, MIG-19, MIG-21-F, and TU-16 airplanes, MI-4 helicopters, "air-to-air," "ground-to-air," "ground-to-ground," "air-to-ground," and "ship-to-ground" missiles, naval materiel, submarines, and fast boats of various types. The Soviet Union helped the PRC develop the basis of a nuclear industry." Stenographic Report, p. 141

27 Memo of conversation with General secretary of the CC CCP, member of the Politburo of the CC CCP Deng Xiaoping, received at the CC on 6 June 1960. I am grateful to Odd Arne Westad and to the Cold War International History Project for bringing this and a number of other Chervonenko-Deng memcons to my attention. [Ed. note: Six are presented in this section of this Bulletin.]

28 Political letter of the embassy of the USSR in the PRC for the second quarter of 1960 [no date recorded in my personal notes], TsKhSD, f. 5, op. 49, d. 340, 1. 133.

29 Kozlov's report at the CC CPSU Plenum, 13 July 1960, TsKhSD, f. 2, op. 1, d. 458, 1. 10.

30 Stenographic Report of the Meeting, p. 93.

31 Report of Suslov to the CC CPSU Plenum, 10-18 October 1961, p. 34.

32 Kurze Wiedergabe der Verhandlungen, die zwischen einer Delegation der KPDSU mit einer Delegation der KP Chinas gefuehrt wurden, 17 September 1960, SAPMO Barch, JIV 2/ 202-280. The author thanks Christian Ostermann and David Wolff of the CWIHP for sharing this information. [Ed. Note: CWIHP, in turn, thanks Dr. Tim Trampedach of the Free University - Berlin for his aid in obtaining this document.] 33 Kurze Wiedergabe, pp. 7, 13

34 Kurze Wiedergabe, p. 14

35 Kurze Wiedergabe, pp. 17, 31-32

36

Report of Suslov, pp. 38, 40-41.

37

Report of Suslov, p. 53.

38

Report of Suslov, pp. 72-73.

39

For this chronology and the Soviet semi-official view of the consultations, see O.B. Borisov, B.T. Koloskov, Sino-Soviet Relations, 1945-1973: A Brief History (Moscow: Progress, 1975), pp. 203-208.

21 "Posledniaia antipartiinaia gruppa [The last anti-party group],

Minutes of the June 1957 Plenum of the CC CPSU, June 24," Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 4, (1993), p. 12.

40

See, e.g., compilations of Peter Berton, The Chinese-Russian Dialogue of 1963. A Collection of Letters Exchanged Between the Communist Parties of China and the Soviet Union and Related Documents. (School of International Relations, University of Southern California, 1963).

41

Georgi Arbatov, The System: An Insider's Life in Soviet Politics (New York: Random House, 1992), pp. 97-98. Stenographic Report, pp. 293-295.

42