The Sino-Soviet Conflict in the Fronts, September 1962 - December 1963 (CIA/DDI study, 12 June 1964)

=== [PDF page 1] === [Unreadable] APPROVED FOR RELEASE DATE. MAY 2007 12 June 1964 OCI No. 1855/64 Copy No. t. I THE SINO-SOVIET CONFLICT IN THE FRONTS September 1962 - December 1963 DDI/STAFF STUDY CIA/RSS REFERENCE TITLE: ESAU XXV *6RE T === [PDF page 2] === 36RJT Off. Ser. No. 14 OCI No. 1855/64 THE SINO-SOVIET CONFLICT IN THE FRONTS September 1962 - December 1963 This is a working paper of the DD/I Research Staff. It is the first in the ESAU series to consider the competition of the Soviet and Chinese Communist parties for influence within the Communist front organizations. The paper treats developments from the fall of 1962 to the end of 1963. In preparing this paper, we have had good counsel and from several officers of the DD/P. The DDI/RS would welcome further comment on the paper, addressed to Helen-Louise Hunter, who wrote the paper, or to the Chief or Deputy Chief of the staff |' *SRET === [PDF page 3] === THE SINO-SOVIET CONFLICT IN THE FRONTS September 1962 - December 1963 Summary and Conclusions It was apparently in the fall of 1962 that the Chinese--on the assumption that there would be no reconciliation with the Soviet party--made the momentous decision to compete with Moscow in every way. Shortly thereafter, they greatly expanded their campaign against the CPSU--in public and in private--all over the world. As one aspect of their over-all effort against Moscow, the Chinese have devoted considerable time, money, and effort to undermining the Soviet position in the fronts--in the interest, first of all, of denying Moscow an effective instrument of support for Soviet policies and, secondly, of securing the support of the front organizations for their own national policies. In itself, the record of Chinese anti-Soviet activities in the fronts since autumn 1962 shows how intense, uncompromising, and unrelenting is the Chinese challenge to the Russian position. The Chinese party renewed its vigorous opposition to Moscow in September 1962 at a meeting of the World Federation of Scientific Workers in Moscow. Since then, the Chinese have pressed with increasing intensity their demand that the fronts take a tougher stand against "U.S. imperialism" and in support of the national liberation movement, and they have also made direct attacks on Soviet manipulation of the fronts. Although they have failed to win over any of the traditional, Moscow-controlled front organizations--which still follow the Soviet line over the protests of pro-Chinese affiliates still very much in the minority--they have, by their aggressive minority tactics, substantially reduced the impact of meetings of the fronts. === [PDF page 4] === Where Chinese polemics used to be the main form of the challenge in the fronts, the Chinese now threaten the Soviet position in the fronts far more seriously as a result of other tactics introduced or greatly expanded since late 1962. Much the most serious challenge is the one posed by current Chinese efforts to develop in regional fronts a counterforce to the Soviet-dominated world fronts. Unable to make much impression on the original front organizations, such as the World Peace Council and the World Federation of Trade Unions, which are largely controlled by Europeans, the Chinese have for several years been making a special effort to establish their ascendancy within the Afro-Asian front movement. During 1960-196?e Chinese influence in the Afro- Asian People's Solidarity Organization, the parent organization of a number of minor Afro-Asian fronts, increased steadily; and at the third biennial conference of AAPSO at Moshi in February 1963, Chinese influence, for the first time, was dominant. Recognizing, however, that Moscow would make a determined effort to retain its foot, hold in AAPSO (the fortunes of the two parties have fluctuated from meeting to meeting), the Chinese at the same time have promoted new Afro-Asian front organizations with no organizational ties to AAPSO, from which the USSR can be excluded. At the Afro-Asian Journalists' Conference in Djakarta in April 1963, the Chinese revealed, this intention and had great success. At that conference, the USSR was refused full membership in the new organization and the established Soviet-Egyptian leadership in the Afro-Asian front movement was displaced by a new Chinese-Indonesian alliance. Even at the time of the Afro-Asian Journalists' Conference, the Chinese were moving aggressively to establish rival Afro-Asian front organizations in the trade union, student, youth, scientific, and peace movements as well. In all essentials, the regional trade union, student, and youth conferences were planned as repeat performances of the Afro-Asian Journalists' Conference; in each case, the initiative purported to come from the Indonesian front groups, the site of the conference was to be Djakarta, and the USSR was not to be included among === [PDF page 5] === the sponsoring countries. In the case of the scientific and peace movements, the Chinese have established in Peiping, within the framework of two international front organizations that have served Moscow's interests, regional offices to promote Chinese interests. In the event of a formal split in the world scientific or peace movements, the CCP will have at once--in the "Peking Center of the World Federation of Scientific Workers" and the "Chinese Peace Liaison Committee"--the nucleus of two rival organizations. During the first half of 1963, when the Chinese were continually on the offensive, Soviet tactics in the fronts were generally compromising and evasive. Beginning in late June of 1963, however, after their defeat at Moshi, Lhe Russians mustered their forces for a major counter-offensive during the rest of the year. Since that time, the Soviets have tried in a number of ways to slow down the erosion of their authority in the fronts. For one thing, they have launched a violent public attack on Chinese anti-Soviet activities in the fronts, concentrating on the exposure of Peiping's nationalistic motivations. The Chinese have shown themselves sensitive to this charge of Chinese nationalism as well as to the Soviet charge of Chinese exploitation of racism in the fronts. To meet the Chinese organizational challenge and their new lobbying effort in the fronts, the Soviet counter-attack has shifted from mere polemics to include the use of organizational and disciplinary measures. The procedural devices--e.g., the packed committees, the limitation on debate--which used to be employed to suppress non-Communist members of the front organizations, are now used against rival (Chinese) Communists. Moreover, the Soviets have shown considerable flexibility in compromising on issues in order to retain the support of the "unaligned" elements in the fronts. As for the plan of the Chinese for a rival Afro- Asian movement outside the traditional, Moscow-controlled front movement, the Soviets have also attempted to offset === [PDF page 6] === this by intensive efforts to promote an Afro-Asian front movement within the Soviet-controlled international movement. Their-success in frustrating Chinese plans for a separate Afro-Asian trade union organization, from which both the WFTU and the Soviet trade unions would be excluded, has been their most important victory to date in keeping Afro-Asian front activities under their organizational control. They have also at least delayed, and possibly disrupted, Chinese planning for an Afro-Asian student organization. Peiping has found the task of establishing new organizations in opposition to the Soviet-controlled front organizations to be a more complicated and difficult business than it had anticipated. While the Soviets have staged a strong comeback in the fronts, particularly since June 1963, the fronts will continue to be less effective instruments of Soviet policy than they once were. So long as the Chinese persist in standing and fighting within the organizations, their aggressive minority tactics at meetings and their publicity after the meetings will continue to reduce the impact of the meetings. Fully aware of this, the Russians may hold future front meetings on a regional basis or call them to consider specific topics, thus providing an excuse for not inviting the Chinese. This course seems more likely than that of expelling the Chinese from front organizations, so long as Moscow continues to see reason for not condemning the Chinese party itself and excommunicating it from the movement. The Chinese, if they succeed in setting up rival front organizations, may lead their followersout of the Soviet-controlled organizations. It seems more likely, however, that they willcontinue to see value in using all platforms, and will not leave the fronts unless expelled. === [PDF page 7] === 5EERT TABLE OF CONTENTS Summary and Conclusions...............................i Preface Chinese Splitting Activities...........................1 The Chinese Policy Decision to Split the Fronts.....1 The Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Conference, Moshi, February 1963..............................6 The Afro-Asian Journalists' Conference, Djakarta, April 1963.............................11 The Afro-Asian Trade Union Conference..............20 The Soviet Counter-Offensive.........................33 Front Meetings, June and July 1963.................37 The Women's Congress, Moscow, June 1963..........37 The Afro-Asian Writers' Conference, Djakarta, July 1963.............................41 Soviet Polemics.....................................42 Front Meetings, August and September 1963..........59 The World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, Tokyo, August 1963.............59 The Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Conference, Nicosia, September 1963........................60 The International Organization of Journalists' Meeting, Mediterranean, September 1963.........67 The New Afro-Asian Emphasis........................70 General..........................................70 The Afro-Asian Trade Union Conference............74 Front Meetings, November-December 1963.............88 The World Peace Council, Warsaw, November- December 1963...................................88 More Chinese Splitting Activities....................92 Afro-Asian-Latin American Students' Conference.....93 Chinese Peace Committee............................94 The Peiping Center of the World Federation of Scientific Workers...............................95 International Youth Solidarity Conference..........97 Conclusions and Prospects...........................100 *SRT === [PDF page 8] === Preface Since they were first created by Stalin to serve as instruments of support for Soviet policies and, to a lesser degree, as instruments of Communist penetration, the international fronts have become an important part of the international Communist apparatus. Outside of the Communist party organizations themselves, they are the centers of organized Communist and leftist opinion and activity. By virtue of their control and direction of the fronts, the Soviets for many years had been assured of the support of a vast international following. In recent years, however, this area of support has been invaded by the Chinese as competitors. In the interests, first of all, of denying Moscow an effective instrument of Soviet propaganda and, secondly, of-securing the support of the front organizations for their own national policies, the Chinese have devoted considerable time, money, and effort to undermining the Soviet position in the fronts. Prior to 1963, this Chinese challenge to Soviet leadership of the front movement was exclusively a challenge from within the front organizations--either in the form of open polemics at international meetings or in the conduct of business at the Secretariat level, the dispensing of funds and patronage, and the direction of meetings. As early as 1957, Sino-Soviet differences were being expressed at preparatory meetings, drafting committee meetings, and other front gatherings not open to the general public or to the mass of the organizations' membership. As these differences sharpened and assumed greater importance during 1958-1959, the Chinese attitude in the fronts hardened into one of distrust, obstructionism, and withdrawal from active work in the secretariats of certain fronts. In the spring of 1960, when the severity of the dispute between Moscow and Peiping was only just being admitted to the Communist world, still largely hidden from the outside world, meetings of the === [PDF page 9] === front organizations witnessed the first public attacks by the Chinese on the whole range of Soviet policies. Since theo,the various front meetings have continued to serve as an important platform for the Sino-Soviet polemics; now, virtually every'gathering reflects the two disputants' open battle to discredit one another. In a major development of the past year, Sino- Soviet competition in the fronts now takes place on two main levels. While they continue to press their atteEE in the public forums of the Moscow-dominated front organizations, the Chinese are also now trying to establish rival front organizations which will operate outside the traditional, Soviet-controlled world front movement. This paper will trace the developments of the past year that reflect Chinese intentions of forming new regional front groupings that can be used as instruments of support for Chinese policies. The latter sections of the paper will discuss the response that has been forthcoming from other Asian and African countries, as well as from the USSR. === [PDF page 10] === Chinese Splitting Activities The Chinese Policy Decision to Split the Fronts After a period of some six or seven months, during which time the Chinese challenge to Soviet leadership of the world Communist movement was somewhat subdued and the Sino-Soviet polemics muted, if not altogether halted, the Chinese began in the fall of 1962 an enormously expanded campaign against the CPSU--in public and in private--in every part of the world. At meetings of the international front organizations they renewed vigorous opposition to Moscow with sharply polemical demands for a tougher stand against "US imperialism" and a more militant struggle in support of the national liberation movement. At individual party congresses, such as the East German party congress in January 1963, they made the most intensive efforts to promote their views among the representatives of pro-Soviet parties of Western Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In other attempts to undermine Soviet influence in these parties, they sponsored large groups of Communists on trips to Peiping "for consultation," they sent private letters to many parties, and they made direct attempts (with offers of financial assistance) to subvert or split the party leadership of others, most notably the Mexican, Brazilian, Ecuadoran, Peruvian, Belgian, Moroccan, Ceylonese, and Australian parties. At the same time, they organized a propaganda campaign of unprecedented proportions, literally flooding selected areas of the world with anti-Soviet materials mailed from Peiping, Hong Kong, Prague, Paris, and Havana or otherwise distributed by the local Chinese Communist embassy or Chinese Friendship Society or NCNA branch office. If not immediately apparent in the fall of 1962, when the Chinese began to move against the Soviets on these many fronts simultaneously, Chinese strategy in this new phase of the Sino-Soviet dispute was by the spring or early summer unmistakably clear. Where they REGRET === [PDF page 11] === had failed to win over the leaders of Communist organizations around the world--both the party organizations in the various countries and the international front organizations--the Chinese were now promoting rival party and front organizations openly aligned with Peiping against Moscow in the Sino-Soviet dispute. At Chinese initiative, the split in the world Communist movement was being given institutional expression in a series of formal splits in individual Communist parties and front organizations, which confronted the traditional, pro-Soviet parties and front organizations with organizationally distinct and independent opposition groups. Chinese acceptance of--perhaps even desire for-- a split in the world Communist movement was implicit in Peiping's earliest efforts to promote factionalism within the Moscow-oriented Communist parties 'and front organizations. But while the Chinese may have anticipated a formal split in the world movement, there is no evidence that Peiping was advising the pro-Chinese minority factions in the various parties to effect an organizational break with the pro-Soviet leadership of these parties 'prior to 1963. Towards the end of 1962 and early 1963, however, there was a definite change in Chinese policy.* Suddenly, *It now seems likely that the Chinese took the momentous decision to work for the establishment of a worldwide array of pro-Chinese party and front organizations at the 10th plenum of the Central Committee of the CCP, which convened on 24 September 1962. This plenum was obviously a decisive one in the history of Sino-Soviet relations; the evidence suggests that the Chinese leaders made a final, irrevocable decision at this time 'to compete with Moscow in all respects. Having discounted the possibility of any reconciliation with the USSR, they could reasonably be expected-to turn to the business of organizing their own organizations independent of the Soviet apparatus. === [PDF page 12] === the CCP began to press for a clear line of demarcation between its friends and enemies in the movement. In violent public attacks on Yugoslavia and "modern revisionism," it began to draw the historical analogy between the present-day split in the world Communist movement and Lenin's split with Bernstein and his followers. Portraying themselves as the true defenders of Marxism-Leninism in their day as Lenin was in his day, the Chinese began to allude to a break with Khrushchev as inevitable: Marxism-Leninism has always developed steadily by overcoming opportunism of various descriptions in the course of - struggle....All the modern revisionists will become nothing but the refuse of history left behind by the torrents of the international Communist movement. People's Daily Editorial, 15 December T92 The history of the working class movement...is replete with sharp struggles between Marxism and all kinds of opportunism....Now we feel that Marxism- Leninism is at a new and important historical juncture. We are profoundly convinced that the Marxist-Leninists trend will eventually triumph over the anti-Marxist-Leninist revisionist trend. People's Daily Editorial, 31 December 1962 In a People's Daily editorial of 27 February 1963, they expressly warneaT~1at: if it is a case of masters (in the international Communist movement) wielding batons over the beads of servants, calling for 'unity, unity,' then what is actually meant is 'split, split.' === [PDF page 13] === -_ 3rRET DiscussLng Chinese strategy in private in early January 1963, a high-level NCNA official is reported to have described China's stepped-up anti-Soviet activity around the world as an all-out effort aimed at organizing Peiping's many supporters in the world Commuait movement into groups, thus making their position more effective againFsTtEe Soviets. In emphasizing the tremendous amount of work involved in building an international organization of this kind--an organization that was already well underway--he compared the current Chinese effort to the "underground work that was done during the Japanese and German occupations." Later in the spring, reports of secret talks in Peiping with leaders of the pro-Chinese factions in several Communist parties confirmed that the Chinese were indeed advising their supporters around the world to work towards splitting their respective parties; in some cases, the Chinese are known to have provided money for the work of establishing a separate, pro-Chinese Communist party in these countries. By this time, Chinese splitting activities had come out into the open. And it was in the front organizations that the Chinese first revealed their intentions to split the international Communist movement. In April, they succeeded in establishing the first new front organization (the Afro-Asian Journalist Association) with no organizational ties to the Soviet-dontrolled front movement. After this initial Chinese success in the front movement, there came news of similar developments in the party organizations; first, the Belgian and, then, the Australian Communist party was formally split, when pro-Chinese dissident members moved to develop a separate organizational machine in direct competition with the Moscow-oriented party. What had already become apparent in Chinese actions was soon confirmed in Chinese statements. The 14 June CCP letter to the CPSU openly proclaimed Chinese intentions to split the international Communist movement: If the leading group in any party adopts a nonrevolutionary line and converts it into a reformist party, then Marxist- ~IT7~kET === [PDF page 14] === Leninists inside and outside the party will replace it and lead the people in making revolution. Four months later, in the 21 October Red Flag/People's Daily editorial, the CCP was even moredirecT in calling Tor "a clear line of demarcation" between "true Marxist- Leninists" and "modern revisionists;" by this time, Peiping's secret directive to leaders of the pro-Chinese factions in individual Communist parties--to work towards splitting the party--had become an open call to all "genuine Marxist-Leninists." Since October, the CCP has mounted several other provocative attacks on the CPSU in which it has reaffirmed its intent to foster and support splinter groups opposed to Moscow. Confronted with this new and most serious challenge to Soviet authority in the world Communist movement, the CPSU has taken a firm position against a split in any Communist organization. Reporting on his talks with Soviet leaders in Moscow in August 1963, Indian Communist party chairman S. A. Dange stated the Soviet position, as follows: The Soviet leaders do not want a split in the CPI or in any other party. They said this would strengthen the hands of the Chinese because they would be able to claim they had supporters in every country. Even if some accommodation to the leftists had to be made, the party should be kept intact, so the Chinese would not be able to completely sway any group. As for Soviet strategy in the fronts: There should be no open split with the Chinese on any issue. Instead, the Chinese should be fought and isolated wherever possible, but no split in any movement should be made. === [PDF page 15] === To preserve unity, the Soviets are prepared to compromise on issues. But on the question of Chinese splitting activities, which involves the central question of the Sino-Soviet dispute itself--that of authority and discipline in the world Communist movement--there can be no compromise. The CPSL simply cannot accept a formal split in any Communist party or in the front organizations-- without accepting as permanent the losses the Chinese party has inflicted upon it. More than any other development in 1963, the Chinese move to establish separate party and front organizations under Chinese control has dramatized the Chinese challenge to Soviet authority in the international Communist movement. It has accordingly called forth the most determined response from the CPSU. The Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Conference, Moshi, February 1963 It was in the activities of the Chinese at the third biennial conference of the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization (AAPSO) at Moshi in February 1963 that the Chinese first revealed their intentions for what they were: the promotion of rival front organizations under Chinese control, operating outside the existing 'Soviet-controlled world front organization. It is not at all surprising that the Chinese should first have become active along these lines within the framework of AAPSO.* Unable to, *in one respectA7APSO differs from other front organizations, in that some delegations represent governments, while others represent national "solidarity committees" which have no governmental affiliation and exist only as member organizations of AAPSO. Soon after the organization was formed in 1957, the Soviets moved to consolidate their position as the leading power in AAPSO. Since then, it has operated very much like any other of the Communist front organizations. === [PDF page 16] === make much impression on the original front organizations, such as the World Peace Council and the World Federation of Trade Unions, which are largely controlled by European Communists, they had for several years been making a determined effort to establish their ascendancy within AAPSO, an organization representing, most significantly, mainly non-white, underdeveloped countries. The third biennial conference at Moshi brought a major confrontation between the Chinese and Soviets in their respective efforts to dominate AAPSO. Not only were instances of Sino-Soviet conflict obvious on all those issues that bore on the relative importance of peaceful coexistence and militant liberations, but an even more significant dispute took place over organizational matters; on these latter issues Chinese proposals for organizational changes marked a definite turning point in Chinese tactics to undermine Soviet influence in the fronts. In this their first successful attempt to exclude Soviet bloc representatives from a meeting of an established front organization, the Chinese were setting the stage for the next act: the establishment of new front organizations from which the USSR would be excluded from the start. The first organizational argument at Moshi--over the question of whether or not to include observers from the Soviet-backed World Peace Council and East European groups--was argued hotly in the Secretariat. Both sides initially took strong positions, from which they later retreated in order to prevent the open breach and organizational split that seemed to be developing; in the end, an uneasy compromise was effected, whereby 12 WPC observers were invited but all East European representatives banned. In the final analysis, however, it was an important tactical victory for the Chinese. For the first time, they had successfully blocked a Soviet request to admit East European observers to an international conference, a move that would have flooded the meeting with a large pro-Moscow group to propagandize the Soviet line. Of long-run significance, they had established a precedent for outlawing Soviet bloc participation in regional front organizations in which European countries had no geographical basis for membership. === [PDF page 17] === InEI |conversations 'with other delegates, the Chinese are reported to have extended the argument to the Soviet delegates themselves, suggesting that the latter also be disallowed on the grounds that they were neither African nor Asian. The whole Afro-Asian idea had, of course, always suggested geographical boundaries that had tended to isolate the USSR; but so long as the Chinese valued the Soviet contribution toward Communist domination of the Afro-Asian movement, they had supported the argument for Soviet participation based on Russia's Asian empire.* By early 1963, however, having embarked on a new campaign to diminish and ultimately eliminate Soviet influence in large areas of Afro-Asia, the Chinese were prepared to reverse their position and argue against Soviet participation in AAPSO.** Though they introduced no formal resolution to this effect at Moshi--as they had done in the case of the East Europeans--they apparently worked hard behind the scenes, questioning in private the right of the USSR to attend regional gatherings of Afro-Asians. Thus, they avoided an open, direct attack on the Soviet position, while they organized an intensive "whispering campaign" against the Russian presence *In May 1959, for instance, when the Afro-Asian Organization for Economic Cooperation adopted a membership formula that excluded the USSR, the Chinese delegate, alone, protested vainly that it was "illegal, unreasonable, and contrary to the Bandung spirit." **Only once before Moshi--at an earlier meeting of AAPSO in Gaza in December 1961--are the Chinese said to have used the "geographical concept" of organizations to argue against Soviet membership in any regional organization, whether a Communist front organization or other. In an unconfirmed report on the Gaza meeting, they are reported to have tried, in private talks with other delegation, to secure the removal of the USSR on the grounds that the Soviet Union was not genuinely an Asian country. === [PDF page 18] === at Moshi. Having just won their case against the East Europeans on the same grounds, the Chinese could hope to spread similar doubts about the Soviets--and so win support for a later, public challenge of the USSR's right to membership in the Afro-Asian front organizations. Another device of the Chinese which drew Soviet protests was the introduction of the racial theme--a major new element in the Sino-Soviet dispute. In as much as they had decided to go after the Russians with no holds barred, the Chinese were now prepared to use any and all weapons at their disposal. In the race issue they found a dynamic and powerful weapon against the Soviets in Africa and Asia. In full recognition of the political advantage it gave them with the colored nations, they decided to drop all restraint on the issue and to use this and any other theme with an anti-Soviet bias. In lobbying for support at Moshi, they reportedly stressed that they were not white and were therefore dependable; whereas, the "white Soviet Union" would ultimately line up with "other white nations" in any conflict with the Afro-Asian countries. Although there had been fragnkentary evidence of Sino-Soviet racial antipathy prior to February 1963, Chinese efforts to undermine Soviet influence at Moshi had the first distinct racial overtones. The Soviet statements that first made the charge that the Chinese were taking a racial line privately specifically traced these activities from the APPSO meeting in Moshi. Not long after the conference, the issue was first pointedly raised in an official document in the Soviet letter to the Chinese of 30 March, which argued that Communist solidarity must be based on class--and "not nationality, color, or geographical factors." Later, in its letter of 14 July, Moscow provided details to support its generalized charge that Peiping was trying to divide along geographical and racial lines what zahould be a united front against imperialism; in particular, it revealed that "the leader of the Chinese delegation at Moshi (Liu Ning-i) told the Soviet representatives that 'the whites have nothing to do here."' Since they first made the point explicit, Soviet polemicists have increasingly SERNT === [PDF page 19] === referred to the inadmissibility of race as a factor in Communist doctrine and strategy; and in the course of re-iterating the charge that a geographical/racial approach is "un-Marxist," they have further elaborated on events at Moshi: Their racist theory was most frankly revealed in the position of the Chinese delegation at the Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference in Moshi. Matters there reached a point where the head of the Chinese delegation bluntly told representatives of the Soviet Union and the socialist countries of Europe: 'We regret that you have come here at all. What is the need for you here? The whites have nothing to do in Moshi. Do as you please. We shall be against you.' Yevgenyez, Komsomolskaya Pravda, 13 September 1963 If they were not above using crude racist appeals to win the support of Africans and Asians against the Russians, the Chinese were not above outright bribery, either. At Moshi, the Chinese delegation was reportedly lavish in distributing money and other favors among the African delegates.* *In their attempts to subvert or split the party leadership of Communist parties loyal to Moscow, the Chinese are known to have bribed or attempted to bribe party members in the Mexican, Brazilian, Ecuadoran, Belgian, Moroccan, and Ceylonese parties. The Soviets have even accused them of "buying out" the New Zealand party (and the Chinese have made the same charge against the Soviets with respect to the Australian party). It is-presumed that the Chinese have also used money freely to win votes in the front organizations, though we have direct reports of their having done this only in AAPSO. At the Nicosia meeting of AAPSO in September 1963, as at the Moshi meeting in February, the Chinese are reported to have "passed (footnote continued on page 11) === [PDF page 20] === The Afro-Asian Journalists' Conference, Djakarta, April 1953 The trend in events first discernible at Moshi was unmistakable in Djakarta, just two months later, at the opening meeting of the Afro-Asian Journalists' Association. Whereas the Chinese had won considerable ground at Moshi, at Djakarta they scored a major victory over the Soviets. A completely staged affair, the journalists' conference resulted in both a refusal to grant the USSR full membership in the new organization and the displacement of the established Soviet-Egyptian leadership in the Afro-Asian front.movement by a new Chinese-Indonesian alliance. Although the idea of a conference of African and Asian journalists had first been promoted by the Moscowdominated International Organization of Journalists, the USSR failed to get itself represented on the preparatory committee of 13 Afro-Asian countries. At the preliminary meeting in February, moreover, an attempt by the Egyptian and Lebanese delegates to include the Soviet representatives as voting members at the main conference was reportedly defeated by the Chinese and Indonesians; the final vote, 10 to 3, against the motion, was a considerable (footnote continued from page 10) out substantial sums in dollars. The Africans freely admitted to this, sometimes before accepting the money." If not through direct bribery, by paying the travel expenses of pro-Chinese delegates to the various front meetings, the Chinese also secured support at these meetings. As a reward for their support, the Chinese later sponsored delegates on all-expenses-paid trips to Peiping after the conferences. === [PDF page 21] === blow to Soviet prestige.* Although at one point, in an effort to exclude the Soviets entirely, the Chinese had threatened to boycott the conference if Soviet representatives attended in any capacity, they were forced to back away from this demand when it became apparent a large majority would not yield. After a lengthy and heated discussion, the committee finally adopted a compromise solution, issuing an invitation to the Soviets in the capacity of "observers" while deferring the final decision until the opening session of the general conference; for the first time, the Chinese had successfully relegated a Soviet delegation at an international congress to an "observer" status. Reacting sharply, the Soviet representative on the Permanent Secretariat protested the decision of the preliminary conference, which he labelled "a poor beginning in the Afro-Asian sphere," one that would ultimatedly "lead to the expulsion of the USSR:from the field." Pointing out the reasons why Soviet delegates should be invited in the capacity of members, Moscow asked that a new invitation be sent, by urgent telegram. When the delegate of China on the Secretariat objected, on the grounds that it was the Preparatory Committee, and not the Permanent Secretariat, that decided such matters, the Secretary General (Ysuf al Siba'i) took a middle course--in sending a telegram to the Preparatory Committee that noted simply: "You have arrived at your solution, but we observe that you have invited the Soviet Union in the capacity of an observer." In its determined *Only Mali supported the UAR and Lebanon; Communist China, Indonesia, Japan, North Korea, North Vietnam, Ceylon, Pakistan, Burma, Ghana, and South Africa voted against admitting the USSR as a full member. After the meeting, the Lebanese representative is reported to have protested strongly against the exclusion of the Soviets; the delegate for the UAR, who had also advocated their full participation, made no formal protest "so as to avoid difficulties." === [PDF page 22] === reply, the preparatory committee explained that the USSR would not be included as a full member for the following three reasons: (1) it had already put forward the idea of holding a similar conference later in the year, (2) it was a great power--like the USA, and (3) it was a European nation, not an Afro-Asian one. At this time, the Soviets are not known to have protested further. Apparently still undecided on their tactics, they may have preferred to preserve flexibility in their future course of action. Having been invited to send "observers" to the conference, they did so. At the first plenary session on 24 April, the Mongolians reportedly led the floor fight for the seating of the Soviet delegates as voting members rather than "observers." They argued that the Soviets--as representatives of the Soviet Asian territories--should be admitted and that denial of that right was motivated by a regional concept which militated against the worldwide character of the struggle against imperialism and colonialism; again and again they stressed the "close identification of the USSR with the struggles of the Afro-Asian peoples." The Chinese, as expected, opposed the move, insisting that the USSR "was not genuinely an Asian country and therefore ineligible for anything but observer status."* As a counter-argument to that raised by the Mongolians-- that an exclusive concern for Afro-Asian solidarity was undermining the unity of the anti-imperialist front--the Chinese suggested that the demand for Soviet representation was itself motivated by a desire to disrupt Afro- Asian solidarity. *Iinpublic, the Chinese have never based their case for excluding the USSR from the Afro-Asian front organizations on the racial issue, as this is clearly an "anti-Marxist" principle; instead, they have relied on the geographical issue--with its racial overtones. Although there are no reports that the Chinese took such a racial line privately at Djakarta, as they had at Moshi, it is presumed that they continued to use this effective theme. === [PDF page 23] === In the argument, China's control of the conference was clearly determining. Despite a belated effort by Sukarno to influence the conference, the Indonesian Government clearly lost control to the well-organized, pro-Chinese, Communist groups that held most of the key official positions. Thus, although the conference was ostensibly an Indonesian Government-staged affair, it was the Chinese who were directing the action from behind the scenes.* The Chinese nominee for chairman of the conference--the pro-Communist Indonesian M. Djawoto-- was duly elected. Through him, the CCP arranged to pack the meeting with pro-Chinese delegates. Those delegates who had not been selected for their pro-China views-- such as the representatives of Malaya, India, Mongolia, and Kuwait--were effectively kept silent by the failure of the chair to recognize them. *Much of the reporting on the Afro-Asian journalist conference--and other Afro-Asian front meetings held in Djakarta during 1963--has implied that the Indonesian Government has been a witting partner of the Chinese in the latter's efforts to promote Afro-Asian organizations from which the USSR is excluded--that the GOI has, at least, acquiesced in holding these rallies on the same basis as the journalist meeting, at which the Soviet delegation was reduced to observer status. It would seem, however, that Sukarno was actually taken by surprise by the turn of events at the journalist conference, especially by the move to exclude the USSR from membership in the journalists' association. The meeting was so contrived and manipulated by China that many Indonesians, whom the Chinese had wanted to impress, were instead repelled, and the Indonesian Foreign Office expressed informally its opinion that the meeting had been a disappointment "inasmuch as it did great harm to the national cause by the unashamed manner in which some (delegates) allowed themselves to be dominated by alien ideologies." === [PDF page 24] === Of particular significance for the vote on the admission of the USSR was the fact that Djawoto had personally selected the members of the presidium, after rejecting a Mongolian motion "to vote on the composition of the presidium as contained in the rules of the conference" on the excuse that he "had already canvassed the delegations and established a representative body." When at the first plenary session of the conference the Indians suggested that the motion to admit the USSR be put to a vote, he promptly called for a show of hands; but when the Chinese delegates objected vocally, he immediately declared the motion out of order. Although under the ruling of the preparatory committee, the status of the Soviet journalists should have been decided at that first plenary session, Djawoto insisted that the question be left to the presidium. The next day, in a closed session, the "handpicked" presidium voted against the motion. Once again, on 28 April, the Mongolians made a final--but again unsuccessful--attempt to have the Soviets admitted. This time, when their letter to the Presidium requesting the admission of the USSR as a full member was read to the conference,* the chairman again abruptly adjourned the meeting "amid cries to the Chair to reject the letter." A half hour later, when the conference was resumed, M. Djawoto read another letter signed by 24 countries opposed to Soviet admission, whereupon he announced a decision against the Mongolians "as the consensus of opinion." Despite Mongolian objections, a vote on the issue was never taken. Without doubt, the Chinese had inflicted a stunning humiliation on Moscow; first, in blocking Soviet membership in the new journalist association and, then, in using the conference as a platform for airing anti- Soviet views--all with the apparent approval and connivance of the Indonesians. As a result of the conference, *The Mongolian letter was signed by eight other delegations--India, Malaya, Jordan, Iran, Kuwait, the Philippines, Syria and the UAR. === [PDF page 25] === a new Communist front organization had emerged from which the USSR had been effectively excluded as a leading power.* While the conference was still in progress, the Soviet ambassador is known to have approached Sukarno on the question of Soviet membership.** Shortly thereafter, both President Sukarno and Foreign Minister Subandrio are reported to have asked M. Djawoto to admit the Soviet Union as a full member at a meeting with the conference chairman on 27 April. In a handwritten note, Sukarno reportedly made the same request to Deputy Foreign Minister Madame Supeni, a member of the Indonesian delegation at the confer Rs instructions, however, were not executed. '----- " Mine. Spent expand sne nau u he President's order "too late to carry out Sukarno's instruction;" to the press she gave the *The new organization will apparently have no organizational ties to either the Cairo-based Afro-Asian people's Solidarity Organization or the Soviet-dominated International Organization of Journalists. Its headquarters are to be in Djakarta, where an Afro-Asian Press Bureau has already been established under its direction. The Executive Board named to head the new organization is heavily weighted with pro-Chinese members. An Indonesian has been named Secretary General of the Board, which also includes members from Communist China, Japan, Pakistan, Ceylon, Syria, Mali, Algeria, Tanganyika, South Africa, and Northern Rhodesia; significantly, both the UAR -and India have been excluded, undoubtedly because of their usually pro-Soviet views. **Even without Soviet prodding, Sukarno is likely to have opposed a move to exclude the USSR--a development which he had clearly not anticipated in planning for Indonesian sponsorship of the conference and one which was to create serious political problems for Indonesia. His active intervention at this time, however, was no doubt prompted by the Ambassador's call. fc, RE T === [PDF page 26] === rather more intriguing explanation that "it would be better not to discuss Soviet membership because such a move could possibly spark a division within the Soviet Union between Asians and Europeans." In any case, neither the demarche of the Soviet ambassador to President Sukarno nor Sukarno's personal order to admit the USSR in any way altered the decision of the conference against Soviet membership. Although very much alarmed and angered by events at Djakarta, the Soviets reacted--in public--with great restraint. Addressing the conference on 28 April, the head of the Soviet delegation (C. Aymatov) tried to make the best of things by pledging continued Soviet support of the "Afro-Asian struggle against imperialism and colonialism" in spite of the vote against Soviet participation. Commenting on events at the conference more in sorrow than in anger, Aymatov expressed deep regret that the Soviet group could not take "competent part" in the work of the conference, adding that "no one could clearly explain to (him) why the preliminary meeting had made such a decision." Later, in private, he was more outspoken in expressing Moscow's annoyance at the failure of the conference to admit the USSR; in particular, he is reported to have insisted that the USSR had a right to membership because."a large part of Asia is populated by the USSR" and to have pronounced the decision of the conference "undemocratic" and "incomprehensible," in view of the fact that the meeting "was being held on the basis of solidarity in the struggle against imperialism." Except for these remarks of Aymatov at the conference, there was no off-icial comment from Moscow on events in Djakarta--either during the conference or immediately after. For more than two months, from the time of the conference until the release of its 14 July open letter to the Chinese, the CPSU maintained absolute silence on the subject of the' Afro-Asian Journalists' Conference. During this period, Soviet citizens were apparently kept === [PDF page 27] === completely uninformed of developments at the meeting;* monitored broadcasts of Moscow Radio's Domestic Service never once mentioned the conference, which also went unreported by the press. Although the Soviet defeat at Djakarta had occurred at a time when both the CPSU and the CCP were making an effort to play down the public aspects of their quarrel--pending bilateral negotiations in July--the complete absence of any public mention of the matter by the Soviets constituted more than mere restraint; it betrayed the nervous reaction of a Soviet leadership caught off-balance by this latest-- and most serious--challenge to Soviet authority. Un-' willing to admit to its own people the extent of Soviet reversals and apparently still undecided as to how best to cope with Peiping's new challenge, Moscow would seem to have been marking time--before announcing its next move in countering Chinese gains in the fronts. The only formal note of protest registered after Djakarta was the public declaration of reservation issued by the Mongolian delegation at the conference. Taking exception to the decision of the conference on the question of Soviet representation in the new journalist association, a "question which has not been solved positively at this conference," the statement charged that: on this occasion, the opinion of all the delegates was not listened to, and voting *While the Soviets maintained a complete news blackout on the subject of the journalist conference, the Mongolians were vociferously decrying the vote against Soviet admission in all their news media. Apparently unaware of the ignorance of the Soviet citizenry on the whole matter, they broadcast to the USSR interviews with African journalists who had attended the meeting and had the following to say: "We consider it unfair that Soviet journalists were not recognized as full and equal members of the conference. The Soviet Union is a good friend of the African people." === [PDF page 28] === was not carried out, as dQsired by a number of delegations. In other words, this important question was not solved in a democratic way. Once again it argued the Mongolian case for Soviet participation: It is quite clear that without the participation of the USSR journalist organization, without widening the scope and cooperation with other progressive journalist organizations, such as the International Organization of Journalists, the Afro-Asian Journalists' Association will not fully serve the cause of strengthening the unity and solidarity of the progressive and democratic journalistic forces from Asia and Africa as well as from the whole world. While Soviet propaganda completely ignored the conference, Chinese news media hailed the journalists' meeting as "an event of historic importance," "an epoch-making conference." In its propaganda coverage of events at Djakarta, Peiping gave enthusiastic' and extensive attention to individual speeches by delegates at the conference as well as to the final resolutions adopted by the conference. All during May and into June, the Chinese press daily carried articles on the subject, praising the conference's strong opposition to "imperialism and colonialism" and firm support of the national liberation movement. During these two months, 14 of the 48 journalist delegations at the conference--those from Basutoland, Cameroun, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanganyika, South West Africa, Uganda, Zanzibar, Ceylon, Japan, North Korea, Pakistan, Jordan, and Kenya--toured China at the invitation of the All-China Journalist Association. The visits of these delegations to Peiping--in the nature of a payoff for their rubber stamp support during the conference--further kept the subject of the journalists' conference in the public eye. The attention given to these visiting journalists, both as to the rank of === [PDF page 29] === n 71 Chinese officials entertaining them and the lavish activities planned for them--as well as the publicity afforded their every activity--was most impressive indeed. As the high point of their propaganda campaign, the Chinese staged a mass rally in Peiping on 25 May to celebrate the success of the journalist conference; eighteof the visiting journalists gave major addresses at this gathering. The Afro-Asian Trade Union Conference* The next Chinese move to bypass the USSR and its satellites in the establishment of a rival front organiiation under Chinese control was made in the trade union movement. Independently of the Moscow-dominated World Federation of Trade Unions, Peiping pursued the object of an Afro-Asian trade union organization, which had aroused interest at Moshi.** In all essentials, it was planned as a repeat performance of the Afro-Asian Journalists' Conference; once again the initiative purported to come from the Indonesian front groups, the site of the conference was to be Djakarta, and the USSR was not to be included among the sponsoring countries. Apparently an inspiration of President Sukarno himself, an Afro-Asian trade union conference to be held in Djakarta was under consideration by the Indonesian Government as early as mid-summer 1962. In late July the U.S. *Alternately called the Afro-Asian Workers' Conference or the Afro-Asian Labor Conference. **The Moshi Conference had recommended the convening of such a meeting without specifying when and where it should be held; presumably it was to have been under the sponsorship of the AAPSO Permanent Secretariat in Cairo though the Chinese and Indonesian proposal for a conference involved neither WFTU nor AAPSO sponsorship. === [PDF page 30] === Embassy (Djakarta) was first informed of GOI plans to host a preparatory meeting in September as a precursor to a full-scale conference in December. At this stage, the Indonesian Minister of Labor (Ahem Erningpradja) had been given coordinating authority in planning the conference, but the Joint Secretariat of Labor (JSL) had not yet been brought into the planning.* Capitalizing on President Sukarno's desire to enhance Indonesia's prestige among the Afro-Asian nations with the staging of these Afro-Asian rallies in Djakarta, the Chinese were even then planning to use this Indonesian-sponsored conference--as they had the Afro-Asian Journalists' Conference--as a vehicle for furthering their own policy objectives; from the beginning they gave their strongest backing to the proposal. Always the silent partner in the project, China was once again to become the controlling factor in the conference, with Indonesia's pro- Chinese labor groups serving as China's"front man.'** In November, an Indonesian preparatory committee under the chairmanship of the minister of labor was set up in Djakarta. Immediately, China's hand in the planning of the conference became apparent when eleven Afro-Asian trade union organizations in China, Indonesia, Japan, India, Ceylon, Singapore, Iraq, the UAR, Morocco, Ghana and Guinea--but not the USSR--were invited to appoint *The JSL, the national labor organization of Indonesia, is an alliance of 6 trade unionfederations, established in 1961, ostensibly to mobilize labor for the fight for West Irian. The largest of the 6 labor union federations-- SOBSI--with an estimated membership of 2 million, is the PKI's major front organization. **The Chinese have made a special point of crediting the Indonesian Government (specifically the JSL) with the initiative in proposing the Afro-Asian trade union conference. They have thus sought to make themselves less vulnerable to Soviet charges that they are promoting rival front organizations. 3IReC T === [PDF page 31] === delegates to assist in the preparations for the conference.* A preliminary meeting of these eleven countries was called for May 1963. There was absolutely no publicity given this meeting of the Indonesian preparatory committee;. that it had so met and decided on a list of eleven co-sponsors for an Afro-Asian trade union conference was made public for the first time in late March 1963, some four months later--and then at Indian initiative. From the beginning, the Chinese-Indonesian effort encountered difficulties. Officially opposed by both the International Confederation of Free Trade-Unions (non- *In a letter of 27 December 1962 to the other 10 organizations invited to co-sponsor the conference, the Indonesian Joint Secretariat of Labor explained that the JSL, having decided that the time was opportune for the holding of a conference to discuss "the problems faced by the workers' movements and the peoples of Asia-Africa," had established a preparatory committee "charged with making preparations for (such) an Afro-Asian Trade Union Conference." Besidds having drawn up a "General Outline and Basic Themes of the Asian-Africa Conference" (which was simply a statement on the role of workers' organizations in the fight against 'imperialism'), this committee had proposed "that workers' organizations in the following eleven countries act as co-sponsors of the Conference (it then listed the countries). Accordingly, the JSL was now contacting organizations in these other 10 countries." In conclusion, the letter invited comments, expressing the conviction that the conference would be welcomed in the interests of the "successful consolidation of unity and solidarity in the common struggle to banish imperialism, colonialism, and neo-colonialism from Asian- African.grounds in particular and from the whole earth in general." === [PDF page 32] === Communist) and the World Federation of Trade Unions (Communist), the proposed conference stirred little enthusiasm in most of the neutralist Afro-Asian trade union organizations anxious to avoid getting unnecessarily embroiled in the Sino-Soviet dispute. It was further challenged by a simultaneous move on the part of the Yugoslavs, Japanese, and Moroccans for an international conference of "unaligned" trade union centers; and it was finally to be confronted with a major Soviet counter-offensive in the trade union field. Soviet supporters in Asia first sounded the call to battle in March 1963, when S. A. Dange, a WFTU vice president and chairman of the CP of India, bitterly attacked the Indonesian proposal on both ideological and organizational grounds, thereby making himself the spokesman not only for his own All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) but for pro-Soviet forces in Asia generally. Writing in the Indian Communist party weekly New Age (March 24), Dange expressed his fears that the proposed conference would become another "battleground" in the Sino-Soviet dispute, which had been "introduced by the Chinese comrades in all mass organizations in which they participate, viz, the Peace Council, the WFTU, the WFDY, and so on. The Afro-Asian Solidarity organizations also have not remained immune from this attack." While expressing willingness to meet with the delegates of the preparatory committee, Dange was extremely caustic about the procedure which the committee had followed in proposing the conference: All this looks rather too sudden. Everything seems to be already decided, the Basic Manifesto, the list of sponsoring countries, the time, the place, etc. Citing various meetings at which the Indonesians could have discussed an Afro-Asian conference with trade union delegates from other countries, he maintained that "no such proposal has ever been raised" at any world conference or in the WFTU Secretariat. Because the WFTU, to which the Indonesian trade union SOBSI was affiliated, had "from its very inception" been very much concerned === [PDF page 33] === with the development of the movement in Asia and Africa, he said the AITUC would have preferred the Afro-Asian trade unions affiliated with the organization to have first "consulted among themselves about this proposal." After thus reprimanding SOBSI for not having already consulted with other members of WFTU, Dange took the initiative in calling for a "preliminary exchange of thoughts under the guidance of the WFTU Secretariat or Bureau." In a final section entitled "Sbortcomings," Dange was more open in discussing the conference in the light of the Sino-Soviet conflict--even to the point of raising the sensitive subject of Soviet participation in the conference. The exclusion of the Soviet Trade Unions from the sponsoring countries (while" Singapore as a country is not forgotten) and the failure to consult the World Federation of Trade Unions show that the proposal is not as innocent as it is pretended to be. Pretending not to understand why the USSR should not have been "included in the list of eleven co-sponsors, in view of the fact that the Asian Republics of the Soviet Union are always given an important place in all Afro-Asian questions," he went on to suggest that the Indonesian Communist party might in fact be trying to set up a new Afro-Asian trade union center. Having thus implied just the opposite, he expressed the hope that "this conference is not another step in the direction of a split from the World Federation of Trade Unions." In spite of Dange's public denunciation of the Indonesian Communists for lending themselves to a Chinese bid to split WFTU, the plans for an Afro-Asian trade union conference went ahead; and the Chinese continued to canvass support for it all over Africa and Asia--regardless of whether the individuals they courted were in any sense representative or not. By mid-summer, Chinese missions travelling through Africa offering all-expenses- === [PDF page 34] === paid trips to Peiping had obtained commitments from some half dozen trade union organizations. In May a delegation of the All China Federation of Trade Unibns (ACFTU) visited Accra and secured the support of the Ghanaian Trade Union Congress for a joint resolution (May 14) calling for "a conference of African and Asian trade unions in the spirit of the Bandung Conference."* On 24 May J. H. Malhonga, described by the Chinese as the first General Secretary of the General Confederation of Labor in the Congo, arrived in Peiping as a guest of the ACFTU. When the Leopoldville newspaper Le Progres on 20 June reported that Mr. Malhonga represented a union which "has few members apart from its officials," it was hardly surprising that his Peiping trip produced the "identical views on a series of important questions" claimed in a statement by Peiping on 9 June. Besides endorsing the Chinese ideological line on the international situation, the statement "expressed the unanimous support (of the two parties) for the proposal of the six national trade union organizations of Indonesia for the convocation of an Afro-Asian trade union conference...in the Bandung spirit." On 18 June, four more trade union leaders--from Burundi, Northern Rhodesia, Tanganyika, and Angola**--issued a similar statement in Peiping, endorsing *This last phrase is now interpreted by the Chinese to exclude the USSR, which did not participate in the Bandung Conference bf 1955. **Two of these African trade union leaders--D. Mlangwa of the Tanganyikan Federation of Labor and D.B. Emile of the National Union of Angola Workers--had signed a joint statement with the Indonesian JSL in Djakarta on 9 June. Another trade unionist from Zanzibar had also signed this earlier statement in Djakarta, but apparently he did not go on to Peiping with the others; at least, no trade union representative from Zanzibar is known to have issued a statement while in China. Both the Indonesians and Chinese Communists gave full publicity to the two statements signed (footnote continued on page 26) === [PDF page 35] === the proposed conference, declaring significantly that only Afro-Asians could call a genuine Afro-Asian conference and condemning "any attempt by any country outside this area to sabotage the solidarity of Afro-Asian workers by convening a counter-conference." A week later, the CPR announced support from still another quarter. The General Secretary (N. Shanmugathasan) of the Ceylon Trade Union Federation, on a visit to Communist China in late May, had subscribed to a joint communique made public only on 24 June but actually signed in Peiping on 29 May. In opposing "any tendency towards whitewashing imperialism and submitting to imperialist pressure," the communique implicitly criticized the Soviet-led WFTU. In it, "both sides unanimously" held that the unity of the Asian and African workers and trade unions is an important component of the unity of the international working class and the international trade union movement. The strengthening of the unity of the Asian and African workers and trade unions will greatly increase the strength of the Asian and African peoples and deal telling blows to imperialism and new and old colonialism. For this reason, both sides actively support the proposal for convening an Afro-Asian trade union conference. (footnote continued from page 25) by the delegations from Tanganyika and Angola. In this way, they gained extra propaganda mileage from the support of these two trade union organizations. In similar fashion, the Chinese signed separate statements with the trade union delegates from Tanganyika (18 June) and Burundi (25 June) in addition to the joint statement of the 18th with Tanganyika, Burundi, North Rhodesia, and Angola. Each of these separate statements was widely publicized by NCNA, which gave the impression that more trade union organization were lining up in support of the conference than was in fact the case. === [PDF page 36] === In addition to the publication of these joint communiques signed by the ACFTU and these seven other trade union organizations, the Chinese came out openly in support of Indonesia's proposal for an Afro-Asian trade union conference in an editorial in Workers' Daily, the official organ of the ACPTU, on 20 June. Welcoming the project as "the universal desire of the workers of Asia and Africa," the editorial declared that "Chinese trade unions.will work for the realization of (this) invaluable proposal made by the six Indonesian trade unions." It is interesting to note that in this and other articles in the press, Chinese support for the conference was kept within the context of the trade union movement. (It has never, for example, been endorsed in an editorial in People's Daily.) The handling of the conference strictly as a trad e ulon matter, as well as the effort to play up Indonesian sponsorship of the project, was no doubt intended to give the appearance of a spontaneous response on the part of the Chinese trade unions to an Indonesian initiative rather than a Chinese party initiative in challenging Soviet authority in the fronts.* Except for the support of the seven trade union organizations in Ghana, the Congo, Tanganyika, Northern Rhodesia, Burundi, Angola, and Ceylon, Chinese efforts during the spring of 1963 to promote the Afro-Asian trade *Some two monthsbeore the Chinese came out openly in support of the Afro-Asian Trade Union Conference, the Indonesian Communists launched a major propaganda campaign in support of the project. In the first public endorsement of the conference--a May Day address by Njoro, a member of the Indonesian CP politburo and the vice president of the Indonesian Trade Union Council--Njoro urged "the workers of Indonesia...to strengthen the solidarity of the nations of Asia and Africa (by supporting) Indonesia's proposal for an Afro-Asian Labor Conference." === [PDF page 37] === .VTfJWT union conference, especially among the Africans, aroused little enthusiasm on the part of most neutralist Afro- Asian trade union leaders. Many organizations--including the UAR trade unions--turned down a Chinese invitation to visit Peiping. A CPR delegation visiting Mali, Guinea, and Ghana during May obtained the support of only the Ghanaian Trade Union Congress for the proposed conference. Moreover, a good many of the visiting trade union delegations at Peiping's May Day celebration--including those from Algeria, Uganda, Kenya, and New Zekland--apparently resisted Chinese pressure and refused to subscribe to a statement endorsing the conference. By June, the prospects for an Afro-Asian trade union conference were growing somewhat dim. With the interests of the Africans in the meeting being only marginal and with India's acceptance conditional on WFTU sponsorship, the cooperation of the Japanese labor movement--a key movement on the Afro-Asian scene--was becoming all the more essential.* Sohyo's attitude was, however, still equivocal. Seriously divided by internal controversies, the Japanese trade onion federation was, on the one hand, committed to a Yugoslav-sponsored meeting of unaligned trade unions which would exclude the Chinese but include the Yugoslavs and, on the other hand, faced with a vociferous minority (thh pro-Chinese "antimainstream" faction) anxious to support the Chinese-Indonesian sponsored conference. At the same time, Sohyo was concerned with'its relations with the Western-oriented ICFTU, which was opposed to both the Indonesian-Chinese and the Yugoslav-Japanese proposals. *The Japanese Labor Union Federation (SOHYO), with 4 million mem ers, is a key unaligned union (affiliated to neither WFTU nor the ICFTU); its official endorsement and participation would enhance the prestige and impact of any labor meeting. In Sohyo, as in the peace movement, the pro-Chinese Communist party (the JCP) plays a minority role; the majority of Sohyo's leadership-- mainly socialists--tend to back the USSR in the Sino- Soviet dispute. === [PDF page 38] === The rival campaign for an "unaligned" trade union conference was to become a major complicating factor in the planning of the Afro-Asian trade union conference. Starting in October 1961 at the Belgrade Conference of Unaligned Nations, Yugoslavia had been the first to promote the idea of the "unaligned" conference; in the meantime, Sohyo had become a prime mover in its preparations. In January 1963, when the competing Indonesian-Chinese efforts first started to make inroads of their campaign, the Yugoslavs had obtained commitments to their own initiative from the major neutralist labor unions at a meeting in Casablanca under Moroccan Trade Union (UMT) auspices.* During the winter and spring of 1963, they *Even at this time, there was apparently some feeling within the Central Council of the Conferation of Trade Unions of Yugoslavia (CTUY) that planning for the projected "unaligned" trade union organization should be suspended. The official reason given for such a change would have been the "lack of positive response from Asian trade union groups;" but in private the Yugoslavs are reported to have explained that it "was really because Yugoslavia did not want to take any initiative that might embarrass WFTU and the USSR" in view of the official rapprochement with Yugoslavia. The idea might well have been dropped at this time, had Sohyo not threatened to reconsider whether China should be invited if YugosLavia backed out. In view of the Sohyo ultimatum, the CTUY held hurried consultations with the Yugoslav party and agreed that it would participate in an "unaligned" conference under the following conditions: (1) that a statement on the aims and objectives of the conference be circulated and that it clearly state that it was not the endeavor of the conference to set up a new international trade union organization or center, (2) that the method of implementing all decisions be by consultation between the participating groups, and (3) that the venue of the conference be shifted from Casablanca to some other place in Asia. The Japanese promptly agreed to all three conditions. === [PDF page 39] === and the Japanese further intensified their efforts, in particular, Sohyo at the end of April sent a team (of socialist right-wing leaders, led by Oide) to Malaya, Singapore, and Ceylon to assure itself that previous commitments still held in the light of the new Indonesian- Chinese counter-drive. While they were making these efforts on behalf of the Yugoslav initiative, the Japanese are also known to have indicated that they might be willing to cooperate with the Indonesians, at the expense of the Yugoslavs, provided the Chinese were excluded. In May the Oide delegation went on to Djakarta to probe the Indonesians regarding possible mutual accommodations, such as the exclusion of both the ACFTU and the CTUY. During the discussions between the JSL and this Sohyo delegation, the Indonesians are reported to have agreed to discuss the matter further, asking Sohyo to send another delegation to Djakarta in June and promising to send an Indonesian delegation to Japan in July. The entire Sohyo delegation, however, is reported to have felt that the Indonesians were committed to Chinese co-sponsorship of tpe conference; in order to avoid entanglement with them, Oide rejected an Indonesian proposal to issue a joint statement in Djakarta. This Japanese visit to Indonesia followed earlier discussions with the ACFTU in Peiping at which the Chinese had sought greater Japanese collaboration, while Sohyo had tried at least to downgrade the role of the Chinese in such a meeting. Koyama Ryoji, the chief of Sohyo's International Affairs Bureau, urged the Chinese not to obstruct the holding of a nonaligned trade union conference and to use their influence to discourage the Indonesians from convening a competing conference. He succeeded in neither; instead, the Chinese made it clear they were in complete opposition to Sohyo's proposal. They are reported to have criticized Koyama so intensely for supporting Yugoslav efforts to promote an "unaligned" conference that he finally promised to consult with Sohyo leaders and reconsider the problem upon his return to Japan. === [PDF page 40] === In their efforts to secure Sohyo participation in the Afro-Asian trade union conference, the Chinese worked mainly through the pro-China "anti-mainstream" minority in Sohyo. In May 1963--just at the time when Koyama was in Peiping urging the CPR to take a 'hands-off' attitude towards Sohyo's plans to host a nonaligned conference, a group of left-wing, Sohyo leaders (led by Kitagawa Yoshiyuki) arrived there too--at China's initiative--to discuss with ACFTU leaders the formation of a new trade union organization in opposition to WFTU. Afterwards, the group was to have visited Indonesia for further discussions with SOBSI, Scheduled to arrive in Djakarat a few days before this pro-Chinese, left-wing group, the official Sohyo delegation led by Oide had been refused 'visas' until 11 May--to allow the pro-Chinese group to confer with SOBSI first.* However, Sohyo's president is *Although the withholding of Indonesian visas from the pro-Soviet delegation might seem to indicate the collusion of the Indonesian government in an anti-Soviet effort, it is quite likely that what really happened was that certain elements in the Foreign Ministry took advantage of Sukarno's particular style of leadership in manipulating the visa process without the President's knowledge, much less consent. (Sukarno generally makes the important decisions--such as the decision to sponsor an Afro- Asian journalist conference--and then leaves all the details to be arranged by the appropriate Indonesian officials.) In the case of the Afro-Asian trade union conference, Labor Minister Ahem apparently made all the plans for the conference with only the most general operating guidelines from'Sukarno. In the case of both the trade union and journalist conferences, the President intervened personally only when some difficulty arose (i.e. when the Soviet ambassador protested). Before his active intervention in the journalists' conference, pro-Chinese Indonesian journalists had pretty much had their own way in committing Indonesia to the Chinese side. In much the same way, officials in the foreign ministry could have withheld Indonesian visas from the pro-Soviet Sohyo representatives without Sukarno's explicit approval. === [PDF page 41] === reported to have cabled Oide (then in Ceylon) to proceed to Djakarta immediately and to have cabled the Indonesian Joint Secretariat of Labor that the group in Peiping was not authorized to present the federation. FinAlly, Sohyo headquarters ordered Kitagawa to refuse the Indonesian invitation and return home, which he did on 19 May. During June and July, the Chinese made other overtures to left-wing elements in the Japanese trade union movement. At least four pro-Chinese Japanese trade unions (minority affiliates of Sohyo) were sponsored on trips to Peiping; and, in every case, they responded to China's propaganda campaign with a public declaration of support for the Afro-Asian trade union conference.*- Ready to accept support from any quarter where they could get it, the Chinese were clearly willing to settle for a 'piece' of Sohyo. By mid-summer, 1963, after more than 6 months of intense lobbying, the Chinese and Indonesians could claim the support of trade union organizations in,but 12 countries--including several questionable and, in any case, unrepresentative unions. But in spite of their difficulties in planning the conference (the preliminary meeting, originally scheduled for May, had now been postponed *In the case of the African trade union delegations, which at least purported to represent national trade union organizations, the invitation to visit China had been extended in the name of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions and the Africans had signed joint communiques with the ACFTU. Since the Japanese delegations represented at best individual affiliates of Sohyo--such as the All- Japan Dockworkers' Union--and sometimes apparently only a minority faction within one such union--as in the case of the delegation of the Japanese Building and Building Materials Workers Union--the Chinese trotted out parallel delegations from China and North Korea to sign joint statements with the Japanese groups. === [PDF page 42] === until the fall), the Indonesians were undeterred in their efforts to sponsor an Afro-Asian trade union meeting. In response to a direct order from Sukarno, Labor Minister Ahem on 11 July is reported to have appointed 3 teams of Indonesian labor leaders to visit 11 Afro-Asian countries-- Japan, the Phillipines, Ceylon, Burma, India, Pakistan, Mali, Guinea, the UAR, Nigeria, and Algeria--in still another attempt to drum up support for the proposal. Travelling through many of the same countries in which Chinese delegations had earlier solicited support from left-wing elements in the trade union movement, the Indonesian trade union delegations sought the participation of non-Communist as well as Communist trade union organizations.* To this extent, the Chinese and Indonesian delegations travelling around Africa and Asia during the summer worked at cross-purposes in a common effort to enlist support for an Afro-Asian Trade Union Conference. The Soviet Counter-Offensive The divisive tactics of the Chinese in the fronts, particularly their efforts to set up rival Afro-Asian front organizations, were undoubtedly a source of growing *Determined to avoid Communist domination of the conference (such as had happened at the Afro-Asian Journalists' Conference), Labor Minister Ahem was reportedly anxious to ensure the attendance of ICFTU unions at the Indonesian-sponsored labor conference. Thus, he deliberately selected 2 representatives of ICFTU-affiliated Indonesian unions and 2 representatives of WFTU-affiliated Indonesian unions to compose each of the 3 teams of Indonesian labor leaders which negotiated with their counterparts in the 11 Afro-Asian countries. I'_kPSFT === [PDF page 43] === concern to Moscow. In mid-November 1962, Bulgarian First Secretary Todor Zhikov made one of the earliest direct references to this problem in his address to the 8th Bulgarian Party Congress when he attacked the Albanian (and, by implication, the Chinese) leadership for trying to "disrupt our friendly work in the international front organizations." There is evidence that Moscow was active as early as January in countering Chinese moves to establish new front organizations under Chinese control. The Indonesian Communist labor leader D. S. Atma reported early in May that at a recent WFTU conference--presumably the executive committee meeting in Prague in late January--he had been approached by a Rumanian WFTU secretary who wanted to know why the USSR had not been made a sponsor of the projected Afro-Asian trade union conference. Atma stated he was certain the Rumanian had raised this matter at Soviet request. There is also an unconfirmed report of a secret meeting in Moscow in late April of "trade union representatives of all the Communist parties except China and Albania"; the Russians are quite likely to have called such a meeting to discuss CPSU strategy in dealing with the Chinese move to split the international Communist labor movement. During this period--from late fall 1962 to mid-summer 1963--the Russians avoided public comment on their difficluties in the fronts. Moreover, at a time when the Chinese were continually on the offensive, Soviet tactics in the fronts were generally compromising and evasive rather than aggressive. Controversial issues were omitted from or glossed over in proposed resolutions;* at least one meeting--a WPC Presidium *At the WPC Presidential Committee meeting at Malmo- Sweden in March 1963, for instance, the Russians wanted to have no resolution at all on Cuba to avoid controversy. === [PDF page 44] === I 6RE I meeting--was postponed when too much controversy threatened.* The temporizing Soviet reaction to Peiping's attack suggests that the Russians were at this time undecided as to what course to pursue in response to China's stepped-up offensive in the fronts. That they had been taken by surprise by the Chinese moves to establish their own organizations--both party and front organizations-- seems clear. In the fronts--especially in AAPSO and the Afro-Asian Journalist Association--where the Chinese first revealed their intentions of splitting the international Communist organization, the Soviets were obviously unprepared for the new challenge; beginning in June, they mustered their forces for a major coubter-offensive during the rest of the year.** *The WPC meeting planned for 8-12 June in Warsaw was suddenly cancelled at the last moment, in spite of advanced preparations in many countries; no public announcement was made by the WPC. The reason for the cancellation is believed to have been Soviet concern over Chinese disruptive activities in the fronts. **It has been suggested that the Soviets reacted far more sharply to the challenge in the international labor movement than in the journalist movement because they considered this as coming closest to a confrontation on the party level. It seems to us, however, to be more a question of the timing of the Chinese challenge in the two fields. When the challenge in the journalist front materialized (April 1963), the Soviet policy was characterized by a hiatus in the struggle with the Chinese; in striking contrast to the air of decisiveness and selfconfidence (fo6tnote continued on page 36) === [PDF page 45] === Since June, the Soviets have shown a growing determination to reassert control in the fronts. During this period, they have tried in a number of ways to slow down the erosion of CPSU authority in the fronts, the trend of the past several years which had been greatly accelerated during late 1962 and early 1963. For one thing, they have mobilized their resources at the various front meeting in an effort to isolate the Chinese. Secondly, they have opened a violent public attack on Chinese anti-Soviet activities in the fronts. And thirdly, they have made a determined effort to assert their presence and that of the Soviet-controlled front organizations on the Afro-Asian scene. In countering the Chinese threat in Africa and Asia, they have not only exerted pressure on certain key national organizations--such as the Japanese Sohyo, which plays a pivotal role in the Afro-Asian labor movement--but they have used their influence in diplomatic channels, directed mainly at the Indonesians. (footnote continued from page 35) exhibited by Peiping at this time, there was a mood of indecision and uncertainty within the Soviet leadership. By June, however, the Soviet leaders appear to have accepted the need to meet the Chinese challenge head-on, in a fashion previously avoided. (The final decision would seem to have been taken at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU in June 1963.) Moscow's strong counter-attack in the trade union field during the latter half of 1963 was but one element in the new, coordinated Soviet counter-offensive, which began in mid-July with the publication of the 14 July CPSU open letter to the CCP. IT6ET === [PDF page 46] === Front Meetings, June and July 1963 The Women's Congress, Moscow, June 1963 At front meetings, in June and July, the Soviets revealed a new determination to fight back. While the. Chinese continued to press their attack:.With ever greater intensity, the Soviets now responded with equal forcefulness. Having been caught unprepared at both the AAPSO meeting in February and the Afro-Asian Journalist meeting in April, the Soviets were in June well prepared to dominate the next major front meeting--the 5th World Congress of Women held in Moscow from 24 to 29 June 1963. Prior to the meeting, they had gone to considerable lengths to lobby among the prospective delegations; at the conference itself, they carefully rigged the proceedings against the Chinese.* In all these preparations *At the plenary session on 26 June, the executive chairman of the congress prevented the Chinese delegate from answering Indian attacks on the Sino-Indian border dispute. Three days later, on the 29th, the conference ended in a virtual uproar. At the plenary session that morning, when the Chinese delegate finally won the right to speak for three minutes, she was almost immediately compelled to discontinue reading a Chinese statement on the Indian boundary question when the chairman turned off the loud-speakers on the pretext of overtime. Afterwards, the Indian delegate was allowed to make a second, over-time speech on the Sino-Indian boundary, in which China was roundly attacked. In the afternoon session, the election of WIDF executive bureau officers was announced; at this time, the Chinese apparently tried to put up another slate of officers or add new names to the proposed list, but the chairman completely ignored the proposals of China, North Korea, North Vietnam, Albania, (footnote continued on page 38) === [PDF page 47] === for the meeting and in their tactics at the Women's conference, the Soviets revealed more clearly than ever. before their overriding concern to isolate the Chinese. In an effort to prevent the Chinese from lobbying against Soviet positions in private conversations with other foreign delegates, the Soviets had physically isolated the Chinese in Moscow; besides lodging them in a hotel with no other Congress participants and forcing them to dine by themselves, they excluded the Chinese from the invitation lists for all Soviet-sponsored social activities. With even greater skill, they managed to isolate the Chinese at the conference. In order to gain the support of pro-Chinese delegations (such as the Japanese, Cuban, and Ceylonese delegations), whose votes they needed to isolate the CCP, the Soviets were willing to make--and did make--concessions to these parties which other CPSU supporters were reluctant to approve.* In the end, though TYfotnote continued from page 37) and Indonesia for nominations. Later that day, when the Chinese delegate tried to give her dissenting views on the draft of an 'appeal to the women of the world,' there was organized booing and shushing and the chairman again rang the bell to interrupt. *After the Women's conference, the Communist members of the Italian delegation to the congress were reported to have complained to Ponomarev that the Russians had not supported the Italians in their denunciation of the reports submitted by the Japanese and Cuban delegations. Ponomarev answered with the following explanation of Soviet conduct at the meeting: Our principal concern today is to isolate the Chinese. We agree with you that the Japanese and Cuban reports are extremist and have no respect for the present historical situation, but we had both reports read and approved because if they had been (footnote continued on page 39) === [PDF page 48] === 3F1PT they may have compromised on the propaganda line deemed most suitable for Soviet national interests, the Soviets had isolated the Chinese overwhelmingly.* Frustrated in their attempt to muster widespread support for their hard-line views at the Soviet-dominated Women's Congress, the Chinese adopted disruptive tactics. With only a few suppoerters at the conference, they succeeded in reducing a major front meeting to an uproar-- by insisting on speaking without the permission of the Chairman and by publicly challenging the policies of the Tf-btnote continued from page 38) rejected also with the vote of the USSR and the people's democracies, the Japanese and Cubans would have largely gone over to the Chinese side. When the Italians expressed their view that the CPSU had made a "very serious mistake" in thus allowing "Chinese ideas to be propagated in the open Congress as ideas of the WIDF," Ponomarev replied: It may be that in general you are right, but..your attitude is very dangerous to us. You have attempted to drive yourselves into a.position, whereas we, at this moment, do not wish to assume a position but only move, I repeat, to isolate the Chinese completely. *Only Albania and North Korea joined the CPR in voting against the final "appeal to'the women of the world,' which stressed peaceful coexistence and disarmament; besides China, North Korea, and Albania, Indonesia also voted against the WIDF program (and Japan and North Vietnam abstained). === [PDF page 49] === leadership.* In the furor that followed, delegates witnessed the most violent clash of Soviet and Chinese views to date in a front meeting context. Peiping's challenge to Soviet authority was expressed more dramatically than ever before--in the first negative Chinese vote at an international front meeting.** It is interesting to view Chinese tactics at the Women's Congress in the light of an article--"Lenin's. Struggles Against Revisionism and Opportunism"--which appeared in Red Flag, No. 9, May 1963. In this article, printed one monttW5fore the Women's Congress, Cheng Yenshih describes in detail Lenin's fight against the "revisionist" line of the international socialist women's *In the Yugoslav newspaper Vjesnik of 30 June 1963, the attitude of the Chinese delegates was best expressed in a cartoon, which showed two Chinese women delegates walking away from a table at which other women delegates are seated beneath an arch labelled "World Congress of Women." One of the departing Chinese delegates is saying: "Not even the elementary principles of democracy are honored here. If they had agreed with our idea of disrupting the meeting, we could have been unanimous." **In the past (at the WPC meeting in Stockholm in December 1961, for instance) the Chinese had introduced and voted for draft resolutions that argued the Chinese case in opposition to the Soviet line; when these draft resolutions were defeated by an overwhelming majority, they had not persisted in their opposition by voting against the final conference resolutions. For the first time, at the Moscow meeting of the World Federation of Scientific Workers in September 1962, they abstained from voting, when their demands that the congress take a tougher stand in "exposing U.S. imperialism" were not accepted. Then at the Women's Congress in June 1963, they carried their challenge one step further, in voting against the final conference 'appeal to the women of the world.' === [PDF page 50] === conference in Berne in March 1915. The author's selection of a women's conference to illustrate Lenin's opposition tactics in the fronts seems to have been a deliberate effort to provide a historical precedent for Chinese opposition to the conference resolutions adopted at another Women's Congress, some 48 years later. The Soviets sought, in connection with the Women's Congress, to maintain at least an appearance of unanimity. Only the barest reports of the friction which developed there were published by the Soviet press. The Chinese, on the other hand, compounded their insult to Soviet authority by publishing all the details in a blistering attack on Soviet handling of the conference. In mid-July, Peiping was still persisting in its publicizing of Chinese dissent by holding mass rallies staged in honor of the visiting women's delegations from Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the returning Chinese representatives. These rallies of the dissident delegAtions of the congress had all the trappings of a rump session of the Women's Congress itself, purporting to "speak with the true voice of revolutionary women everywhere." Moreover, the Chinese attack on the Soviet and other WIDF leaders who had turned the congress "into an instrument serving the requirements of the foreign policy of a single country" seemed to foreshadow a move to set up a rival Peiping-dominated women's organization when it implied that "the world's revolutionary women" would "desert" these leaders who "talk emptily of disarmament and peaceful coexistence." The Afro-Asian Writers' Conference, Djakarta, July 1963 The USSR's violent maneuvering and use of a whole series of pressure tactics to steamroller the opposition at the Women's Congress probably only strengthened Peiping's resolve to support its own brand of front activities. At the next meeting of a front organization--the second conference of Afro-Asian Writers, held in Djakarta from 16 to 21 July--the Chinese pressed their challenge in the only other Afro-Asian front organization (bther than AAPSO) originally planned with Russian support; and, for the === [PDF page 51] === second time in an established front organization, this challenge was successful. Not only did the final conference resolutions closely parallel standard Chinese formulations regarding "national liberation" from "imperialist domination," but the organizational changes adopted by the conference greatly increased pro-Chinese representation in the policy-making machinery.* Soviet Polemics The Afro-Asian Writers' Conference would seem to have been the highwater mark of the Chinese offensive in the fronts which began in late 1962. On 14 July, two days before the start of the conference, Khrushchev opened a new stage in the Sino-Soviet dispute with the publication of the 14 July letter. Since thex; the CPSU has countered the Chinese challenge in the fronts more effectively than at any time since 1960. Prior to mid-July, there had been few public references to Chinese efforts to organize an Afro-Asian voting bloc in the fronts in Soviet media. The Soviet warning in the 30 March CPSU letter to the CCP that proletarian unity must be based on class, and not "considerations of nationality, color, or geography":,was.the first clear--if indirect--reference to Chinese efforts to establish new Afro-Asian front organizations; the letter coincided with the disclosure by Dange of "the new Chinese scheme to rid the Communist-dominated Afro-Asian trade union movement of Soviet influence. A Pravda article of *When their draft resolution on general and complete disarmament was violently opposed by the Chinese in committee, the Soviets apparently decided not to submit it to the conference; later, the Russians were also thwarted in an attempt to replace a pro-Chinese Sudanese delegate on the permanent bureau with a Sudanese candidate of their own. === [PDF page 52] === 23 March reporting on events at the AAPSO conference at Moshi was more direct in referring to the attempt by "certain individuals" to "exclude from the conference delegates from both the European bloc states and the "international democratic organizations." The first instance of public Soviet pressure on the issue of Soviet participation in Afro-Asian front meetings came four months later--in the 12 July Pravda article, which argued that Soviet workers should take part in the Afro-Asian trade union conference since the USSR "belongs to the group of states which consider themselves the 'emerging forces."' On the whole, however, as noted earlier, the Soviets during the first half of 1963 refrained from public comment on their difficulties in the fronts. With the publication of the 14 July letter, however, the Soviets launched a major propaganda attack on Chinese activities in the fronts. Tracing the history of the Sino-Soviet dispute back to 1960, the letter gave the following details of alleged anti-Soviet activities by the Chinese: In June 1960, during the session of the General Council of the World Federation of Trade Unions, which took place in Peiping, the Chinese leaders, without the knowledge of the leaderships of fraternal parties, called a meeting of representatives of several parties which were then in Peiping and started criticising openly the positions of the CPSU and other Marxist-Leninist parties and the declaration adopted by the Moscow Meeting in 1957. Furthermore, the Chinese comrades made their differences with the CPSU and other fraternal parties the subject of an open discussion in a non-party organization (the WFTU)..... Since the end of 1961, the Chinese representatives at international democratic organizations have openly imposed their FZIMSUT === [PDF page 53] === erroneous views. In December 1961, at the Stockholm session of the World Peace Council the Chinese delegation came out against the convocation of the World Congress for Peace and Disarmament. In the course of 1962, the activities of the World Federation of Trade Unions, the World Movement of Peace Partisans, the Afro-Asian Solidarity movement, the World Federation of Democratic Youth, the Women's International Democratic Federation and many other organizations were endangered as a result of the splitting activities of the Chinese representatives. They came out against the participation of representatives of the Afro- Asian solidarity committees of the European Socialist countries in the Third Solidarity Conference of the People of Asian and African countries in Moshi. The leader of the Chinese delegation told the Soviet representatives that 'the whites have nothing to do here.' At the journalists' conference in Djakarta the Chinese representatives followed a line towards preventing Soviet journalists from participating as full-fledged dele-. gates on the plea that the Soviet Union was not an Asian country. It is strange and surprising that the Chinese comrades made accusations of splitting activities and an erroneous political line against the overwhelming majority at the recent World Congress of Women, while during the adoption of the appeal to the women of all continents only representatives of two countries--China and Albania*-- *Peiping NCNA a Pyongyang KCNA reported that North Korea also voted against the appeal. === [PDF page 54] === out of 110 countries represented at the Congress voted against (the appeal). Well, indeed; the entire multi-million army of freedom-loving women is marching out of step and only two are marching in step and keeping in line. Since this first open Soviet denunciation of Chinese activities in the fronts, Moscow has continued to heap abuse on Peiping for "its splitting tactics in the fronts." The purpose of all the attacks has been the same: to try to prove conclusively that the Chinese are in fact engaged in a major effort to split the international front movement. During July and August, the CPSU launched several major counter-blasts in Pravda and Izvestiya, later repeated on Moscow Radio. One of these-- the 15 July Pravda article "The Unity of All Peace-Loving Forces is the Task of Paramount Importance in the Struggle for the Prevention of a World War"--elaborated on Chinese anti-Soviet activities in the World Peace Council: The Chinese comrades have been trying to impose their erroneous views upon the world movement of peace partisans for a long time. In December 1961 at the Stockholm WPC session, they openly opposed the convening of a world congress for general disarmament and peace. They finally took part in the work of the Congress and voted for its decisions along with all the others. But the ink was not yet dry on these decisions when they hastened to repudiate them,,stating that the message did not contain revolutionary slogans and direct attacks on U.S. imperialism.* *The Soviet charge That the Chinese have voted for resolutions at various front meetings and later attacked them is quite true, the disarmament congress in Moscow (footnote continued on page 46) === [PDF page 55] === A month later, the Soviet indictment of Chinese activities in the peace movement was most fully documented in the 20 August Pravda article, which accused the Chinese of trying "to liquidate the organized movement of peace champions" and replace it "with a militant worldwide movement for peace based on the unity and militant spirit of the peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America." In the article the CPSU first revealed that the Chinese had "withdrawn their permanent representative from the WPC Secretariat and ceased rendering it any aid whatsoever."* (footnote continued from page 45) in early July 1962 being a case in point. Under the pressure of domestic economic problems, the Indian border situation, and the threatened Nationalist attack, the Chinese leadership was minimizing its differences with the USSR in June and early July 1962; at the disarmament congress, the Chinese delegate stated the Chinese position moderately and voted for the conference proposals. Later, however, Chinese media indirectly attacked the Congress' stand on peaceful coexistence and disarmament. *Despite the Soviet allegation that the Chinese had withdrawn their permanent representative from the WPC Secretariat and the Soviet implication that the Chinese have decided not to cooperate in the future in any of the executive organs of the WPC, three Chinese turned up at the September meeting, in Vienna, of the WPC Presidential Committee. It seems that the Chinese do not intend to participate actively in the work of the Secretariat, which is concerned with carrying out the plans and policies of the WPC, so long as these plans and policies do not meet with Chinese approval. But where there is a possibility of influencing the line taken by the WPC (as there is at Presidential Committee meetings or at the main international conferences) or a chance of disrupting proceedings so as to deny the Soviets a pliable instrument of support, the Chinese will want to be there. The 20 August Pravda footnotee continued on page 47) === [PDF page 56] === In late August--some four months after the fact-- Soviet citizens were finally told "the whole story of the Afro-Asian journalist conference," including the details of the "unsavory role" of the Chinese at the conference and "the amazing, unfair decision of the sponsoring committee to invite the Soviet delegation in the capacity of observers." In an article in Soviet Press, Boris Burkov, Secretary of the Board of the USSR Union of Journalists, explicitly accused the Chinese of behavior which was likely to split the international movement of journalists: If the idea of settLng up an Afro-Asian organization of journalists stems from a desire for the unity of all progressive journalists of the world, why must one be afraid of the participation of Soviet journalists? Why must one be afraid of cooperation with the International Organization of Journalists? A few days later (4 September), Pravda carried its first article on the Afro-Asian journalists' conference. Attacking "the Chinese proposal to convene a separate congress of African, Asian, and Latin American journalists, without inviting our Soviet colleagues" as an attempt "to strike a blow at the unity of all progressive journalists," it concluded: Thotnote continued from page 46) article made a special point of the fact that (although they have withdrawn their representatives from the Secretariat) the Chinese representatives do not refuse to take part in international congresses and meetings organized by the WPC and attempt to use its speaking platform for struggle against the world movement of peace champions. === [PDF page 57] === Of course, there can be special problems for definite geographical regions, but they must be discussed within the framework of existing organizations with concern for strength and unity, since neither language nor color of the skin nor way of life can divide journalists striving for the same ideals. On 8 September, another article in Pravda announcing the Chinese decision not to participate inThe next meeting of the International Journalists' Organization, scheduled for late September and early October, cited this as proof that the Chinese were now trying "to split the IOJ." In September, an editorial in the World Marxist Review made the charge more general, whenfTlYlEaTy sted: "The Chinese are now pursuing a policy aimed at splitting the international democratic organizations." In one of their strongest public attack to date, in Kommunist No. 15 (October 1963), the Soviets charged the Chinese with trying not only to weaken existing fronts but to set up rival, Chinese-controlled organizations: They strive to set up separate closed organizations and to counterpose these to the international organizations of the working people: the World Federation of Trade Unions, the Women's International Democratic Federation, the World Federation of Democratic Youth, the International Students' Union, the International Journalists Organization, and others. The Chinese leaders have decided, judging by their action, to destroy the international Communist movement and to create some kind of new movement under their aegis. === [PDF page 58] === In mid-July, when it was mounting this massive public attack on Chinese activities in the fronts, the CPSU began to call upon its army of supporters throughout the movement to bring united pressure on the CCP-- through party resolutions and other public statements-- to yield to Soviet authority in the fronts. Moscow's intention to reverse the trend unfavorable to CPSU authority by employing the weapon of open condemnation was clearly stated in the following passage of its 14 July letter: The splitting activity of the Chinese leadership in the rniaks of the international Communist moVement evokes rightful indignation and rebuff by fraternal Marxist-Leninist parties. Typical of the "rebuff" from other pro-Soviet parties was the statement of the Czechoslovakian Communist party of 19 July, which first used the phrase later used by Kommunist to describe the Chinese front groupings--"separate, closed organiZations." The next day, the Yugoslav!, joined in the open attack on Chinese activities in the fronts. In the first public mention of the Afro-Asian Trade Union Conference since Dange's open attack in March 1963, Rad, the weekly organ of the Yugoslav trade unions, attacRZd the proposed meeting as a "dangerous attempt to split the international workers and trade union movement...and the developed from the underdeveloped world." While it acknowledged the Indonesians as the "official initiators" of the conference, the editorial represented the conference as a Chinese effort to take over the leadership of the underdeveloped countries and to dominate the labor movements in these countries: The Chinese trade unions, by exclusively stressing Afro-Asian solidarity, try to separate the workers and trade unions of underdeveloped countries from the world movement of the working class....This undermining within the international labor movement constitutes at the same time a direct,tendency of the Chinese trade unions to L 15P*r === [PDF page 59] === impose themselves as the sole leaders of the working class of underdeveloped countries. Since July, many of Moscow's other adherents in the Sino- Soviet dispute have attacked Chinese anti-Soviet activities in the fronts in similar public statements.* Since they first exposed the Chinese attempt to split the fronts in their 14 July letter, the Soviets have expounded various arguments for opposing Chinese moves to "isolate" the Afro-Asian fronts from the world "progressive" movement. They have attacked the Chinese initiative in establishing new Afro-Asian fronts on both doctrinal and political grounds. *In the editorial in Kommunist, No. 15 (October 1963), the Soviets sought to exploit their majority strength in the world.movement by quoting some of these public statements by foreign Communist leaders condemning Chinese splitting activities; the article noted that "these statements reflect the opinion of the overwhelming majority of the Communist parties of the entire world. Up to this time, already 65 parties have condemned the views and actions of the Chinese splitters in the official resolutions of their leading organs." In most cases, these statements referred generally to Chinese "splitting activities," which would include Chinese efforts to split the individual Communist parties as well as the front organizations. Fewer parties have specifically condemned Chinese splitting tactics in the fronts, as have the Czechoslovakian and Yugoslav parties. === [PDF page 60] === The CCP's new theory* that the "decisive struggle against imperialism is not the world system of socialism but the national liberation movement" in Africa, Asia, and Latin America has been denounced as an anti-Marxist view that ignores "the basic contradiction of our times-- the contradiction between imperialism and socialism" and causes "tremendous" harm to the national liberation movement by "isolating it from the international working class and its offspring, the world system of socialism." The Soviets first advanced this general argument that an exclusive concern for Afro-Asian solidarity was undermining the unity of the anti-imperialist front in their 30 March letter to the CCP. But they did not at that time directly attack China by name, nor did they provide the details of Chinese activities in the fronts that supported their generalized charge that Peiping was seeking to divide along geographical and racial lines what should be a united front against imperialism. The Mongolians too had used essentially the same argument at Djakarta in April in defending the right of the USSR to membership in the Afro-Asian Journalists' Association. After July, it was to become the main argument of the pro- Soviet forces in opposing Chinese efforts to promote Afro- Asian front organizations operating outside the traditional Soviet-controlled front movement. During the past six months, countless articles in the Soviet press have attacked the Chinese "theory" of a special community of interest between the peoples of Africa and Asia; in all these articles, the concept of regional affiliation promoted by the Chinese has been denounced as "diametrically *In their 1 March 1963 Red Flag article "More on the Differences Between Comrade Togliatti and Us," the Chinese first presented a new thesis that the "focus" of the four basic contradictions between (1) the socialist and the imperialist camps, (2) the international proletariat and the bourgeois, (3) the oppressed and the oppressor nations, and (4) between different imperialist nations is in the revolutionary movements of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. ~7T7f~RJ~T === [PDF page 61] === counter to Marxism-Leninism" and serving only to "isolate" the peoples of these continents from the "general stream" of world revolution. Despite these efforts of the CPSU to provide a theoretical justification for opposing Chinese moves to split the fronts, the Sino-Soviet power struggle on the issue has never been hidden by ideological phrases. As the Soviet attack has developed, moreover, the Russians have been less concerned to justify their opposition to Chinese splitting activities in the fronts in terms of Marxist theory. The 14 July letter first indicated that the CPSU had decided not to continue its dispute with the CCP along the same lines, as though it were merely a matter of doctrinal purity. For the first time, in the letter, the Soviets hinted that the Chinese--in playing down the "main contradiction" and emphasizing the contradiction between national liberation and imperialism--were really trying to win "easy popularity" among the peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In their strong counterattack in Kommunist No. 11 (31 July 1963), they later made the point explicit: the Chinese leaders...speculating with the national liberation movements, would like to promote therein their own hegemony, isolating the movements from the international workers' class and the world socialist system. The Russians have had little difficulty in demonstrating their general thesis that "far from advancing the interests of the peoples fighting for national liberation, the Chinese leaders pursue their own great-power aims"* when discussing the matter of the Afro-Asian front organizations; Chinese moves to exclude the USSR from participation in these new organizations provide a clear-cut illustration *Soviet Government Statement, 21-22 September 1963. === [PDF page 62] === of Chinese efforts "to undermine the authority of our (CPSU) party...with those who are struggling for national independence."* ... the Chinese attempt to create exclusive Afro-Asian organizations of journalists, trade unions, women, and youth... has nothing in common with internationalism and has a strong smell of nationalism.** The Soviets' exposure of Peiping's nationalist motivation in establishing new front organizations which will serve as Chinese instruments of control has been a most effective argument in prejudicing the Chinese cause; the point cannot have been lost on the Africans and Asians, whom the Chinese have made particular efforts to attract. The Soviets profess to see in China's bid for "isolated solidarity" not only a concerted effort to consolidate Chinese power in Africa and Asia but a budding racial approach to the Marxist concept of class struggle.*** *Kommunist, No. 15, October 1963. **Moscow Broadcast to Europe, 9 October 1963. ***The Chinese have never openly waged their struggle against the Soviet Union on a racial basis--and are extremely unlikely to do so in the future--as this is clearly an anti-Marxist principle. In private conversation with Afro-Asians, however, they have been clearly opportunistic in seizing on this (and any other theme with an anti-Soviet bias) to stress the affinity of the situations in the underdeveloped countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The Russians, on their part, have become increasingly fearful of this Chinese line; in retaliation, they have surfaced the fact that the Chinese are taking a racial line privately. === [PDF page 63] === On two or three occasions prior to July, the CPSU had alluded to the racial theme--in general public statements on the inadmissability of race as a factor in Communist doctrine.* With the publication of the 14 July letter, however, with its direct charge of Chinese racism, the race issue emerged as a question of significance in the Sino-Soviet dispute. In reporting the statement by the leader of the Chinese Communist delegation at Moshi that "whites have nothing to do here," the CPSU letter provided a startling example to Soviet citizens of Chinese racial antipathy towards Russians. In a major propaganda follow-up on the letter, Izvestiya on the 15th went a step further, explicitly charging the Chinese with "setting the colored races against the white:" Willingly or unwillingly, they (the Chinese) inculcate among the peoples of these areas (Africa and Asia) the idea of their exclusiveness, of their *The first public allusion to the racial theme in the press was in Pravda, 10 February 1963: "Irrespective of nationality, race, language, or color of skin, the workers of all countries are united class brothers." Then, in the March edition of the World Marxist Review, the Soviet editor of the publication (Rumyantsev) was quoted at an international seminar held in Prague in December 1962 as saying: "We cannot accept the views of those who invoke Kipling's 'East and West will never meet,' that is, who reduce everything to geography and ethnographic differences." Once again in March, the race issue was raised in the CPSU 30 March letter to the CCP, which argued that Commundst solidarity must be based on class--and "not nationality, color, or'geographical factors." === [PDF page 64] === .rRYTWAT superiority over the white race. (They try to find allies among the nonwhite nations) by opposing colored peoples against the white race and demarcating peoples according to racial, national, and continental lines. This is one step from an appeal for a split in the world Communist movement and for the setting up of a new international Communist center. Since July, CPSU propaganda on the Chinese use of racism to split the world Communist movement has become voluminous. Most often, it has been in the activities of front organizations that Moscow has found its evidence for this new charge against the Chinese.* *The Soviets have publicized only one instance of the Chinese having taking a racial line privately outside the context 6f the front organizations. During the visit of Kenzo Matsumura, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, to Peiping in September 1962, a Chinese official is charged with having asserted: "The East still remains the East; the Asian people must change world history." After Matsumura had outlined his plan to establish a bloc of Asian countries, one of the prominent Chinese leaders said: 'In the world there 'is east and west, and for that reason both our countries which have the same written language and racial characteristics must unite and live in friendship and our children and grandchildren must carry on with the job.'....At the basis of this friendship as understood by Matsumura and his Chinese partners is not good-neighborly, peace-loving aspirations but racism, an (footnote continued on page 56) === [PDF page 65] === 31W~RE T At the Tanganyika conference the Chinese even made overtly racist assaults. They said to the representatives of the Afro- Asian countries regarding not only the Soviet delegation and the delegations of the other Socialist states, but about the representatives of European Communist parties: 'these are white men; it is impossible to come to an agreement with them about the anti-imperialist struggle.' Kommunist, No. 15, October 1963 The fact is that now the Peiping discordmongers are carrying out an indiscriminate campaign to use these new international gatherings in Indonesia for their own narrowminded purposes. They industriously publicize racist theories, demanding that these gatherings be participated in only by colored people. Moscow Broadcast to Indonesia, 4 October 1963 Soviet charges of Chinese racism clearly have struck home; the CCP has definitely been at pains to deny these charges. On 16 July, two days after the Soviets first publicly accused the Chinese of exploiting nationality, color, and geographical location to split the movement, the Chinese delegate to the Afro- Asian Writers' Meeting gave the first public Chinese refutation to the charges. (footnote continued from page 55) attempt to divide the world into black, yellow, and white. Pravda, 27 August 1963 === [PDF page 66] === Now (certain people) have again fabricated a ridiculous and strange argument. Without any grounds whatsoever,'they have accused the Afro-Asian peoples of using nationality, color, and geographical location as a barrier to split forces. Have they forgotten the historical fact that the peoples of Asia and Africa, who for a long period of time were ruled and oppressed by imperialism, face a common enemy and share a common fate? It is fully just and right for Afro-Asian peoples to unite together and engage in a common struggle. The tremendous significance of this struggle lies in the fact that... it exerts a gigantic influence on the revolutionary cause of the peoples of the whole world. How can it be called a barrier of nationality, color, and geography? These people, on the pretext of breaking down the barriers of color....actually oppose all anti-imperialist revolutionary movements of Asia and Africa and want to do away with these movements....No strange argument about nationality, color, and geographical location can split this great unity and militant friendship. Those with a feeling of national superiority and great power chauvinism who want to stand over the heads of the Afro- Asian peoples to control, manipulate, or even hold down the revolutionary struggles of the Afro-Asian peoples, will surely be cast aside with contempt by Afro-Asian peoples. In deprecating the Soviets as great power "chauvinists" who were destined to be repudiated by Afro-Asians, the Chinese delegate had not really met Soviet criticism on the race issue head-on. Three weeks later, Mao himself tried to lend doctrinal sanction to the use of the race issue; in his statement of 8 August, he declared that "a national struggle is a question,of class struggle," fkT === [PDF page 67] === using "national" in a context which obviously meant "racial." The major Chinese counter-attack on the race issue came in October, in the fourth installment of the Red Flag/People's Daily series answering the 14 July CPSU Tefter. Protestingfthat it is "the leaders of the CPSU"-- and not the Chinese party--that "incite racial hatred among the white people in Europe and North America," the article all but directly compared Khrushchev with Kaiser Wilhelm in propagating the "theory of the yellow peril... to carry out the partition of China, to suppress revolution in Asia."* That the Russian charge of Chinese racism in the 14 July CPSU letter was considered damaging by the Chinese is suggested by the fact that the CCP made no move at the meeting in Djakarta (16-21 July 1963) to exclude the USSR from participation in the Afro-Asian Writers' Association. There have been no reports that the Chinese took a racial line at this conference--even in private. Highly sensitive to the charge of Chinese racism, the CCP seemed to be anxious to avoid lending substance to the Soviet argument just at the time when this new charge in the CPSU letter was receiving international attention.** *The Chinese charge that the Soviets "propagate the theory of the yellow peril" is just as true as Soviet charges that the Chinese use racial propaganda to gain adherents in the international fronts. In full recognition of the political advantage it gives them with white nations, the Russians have deliberately raised the spectre of the "yellow peril" in private conversations with Europeans. In November 1962 a Soviet military attache stationed in the Middle East is reported to have told a European resident of the area that "the concept of the yellow peril has indeed proved to be true; the Soviet Union had no illusions on that matter whatsoever." **It is indeed curious that the Chinese did not push their efforts to exclude the USSR as a leading power in (footnote continued on page 59) === [PDF page 68] === Front Meetings, August and September 1963 When the Sino-Soviet dispute reached the stage of open name-calling around mid-July 1963, the front organizations also faced the full force of the conflict. While sharp exchanges between Soviet and Chinese delegates at front meetings were hardly unprecedented, these meetings had never before witnessed anything like the acrimonious outbursts of August and September. The World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, Tokyo, August 1963 In August, a violent exchange between the Chinese and Soviet delegates at the 9th International Conference Against Nuclear and Hydrogen Bombs* actually ended in fist-fights. The issue at dispute--the test-ban agreement--was by all odds the most explosive issue of the (footnote continued from page 58) the Afro-Asian front organizations at the writers' conference in mid-July. The publication of the 14 July CPSU letter--with its public charge of Chinese racism and its exposure of Chinese nationalist motivation in establishing Afro-Asian front organizations--may not have been the only reason, if it was the answer at all. The Russians may well have exerted pressure on the Indonesian Government (as they were later to do in the case of the Afro-Asian trade union conference) to prevent a Chinese move at the conference to exclude the USSR; we have no direct evidence of this, however. *The World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs is sponsored annually by Gensuikyo, a Japanese peace organization made up of Communist and non-Communist left-wing groups. === [PDF page 69] === Sino-Soviet controversy in the summer of 1963; and the Hiroshima conference was the first, crucial test of strength on the issue since the signing of the agreement in late July. When the Chinese opened the meeting with vituperative charges against the USSR on the test ban, the Soviets initially made conciliatory statements; soon, however, they began to reply in kind. The Japanese--and doubtlessly other delegations as well--were reportedly shocked by the spectacle. It seemed that the intra-bloc quarrel had reached a point where it was becoming a source of disgust to the non-Communist public to which the fronts were designed to appeal. Some of the delegates at Hiroshima are reported to have felt that the Chinese and Soviets were more interested in fighting one another than in helping other people. And indeed both did show primary concern for tactical considerations. For example, the Russians, in their overriding concern to isolate the Chinese at Hiroshima, showed considerable forbearance with such Chinese supporters as Ceylon and North Korea, though their position on the test ban and other controversial issues was exactly the same as the Chinese, whom the Soviets attacks vigorously. In the interests of avoiding a public showdown at the conference, the CPSU finally compromised on the conference 'appeal,' which altogether avoided any mention of the test ban agreement. Once again--as they had done at the Women's Congress in June--the Soviets had sacrificed the propaganda line deemed most appropriate for Soviet national policies in a tactical move to avoid a test of strength under adverse conditions. The Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Conference, Nicosia, September 1963 The same tactical considerations--the Soviet concern to isolate the CCP in the international front movement and the Chinese interest in disrupting front meetings, where they could not direct them--guided Chinese and Soviet actions at the next meeting of a front organization--the AAPSO Executive Committee meeting, held in === [PDF page 70] === Nicosia from 9-12 September. In the Sino-Soviet confrontation at this meeting, the Soviets could claim a substantial victory, which was all the more significant because it was fought--and won--on Communist China's own chosen battleground--the Afro-Asian front scene. Having learned a lesson from their defeat at the last AAPSO meeting at Moshi, the Soviets were well prepared at Nicosia to fight for their place in the Afro- Asian front movement. Prior to the meeting, they had campaigned extensively among the various affiliates of AAPSO. Where the local Communist party was pro-Soviet in the Sino-Soviet dispute, they had also used their influence with the party leadership to assure support for Soviet policies at the conference; it is known, for instance, that the Soviet Embassy in Rabat contacted the Secretary General of the Moroccan Communist party with a direct request that the MCP send two delegates to the AAPSO conference.* Mainly, the Soviets worked through the Cypriot Communist party, a firm supporter of the CPSU. Because Cyprus is the only European country (other than the USSR) in AAPSO and because its Communist party is strongly pro-Soviet, the Russians were extremely anxious to secure Nicosia as the site of the conference. When leftist Cypriot politicians finally succeeded in persuading Archbishop Makarios to have the meeting there, the Soviets had won half their battle in advance.** *In early March 1964, the Soviet Embassy again contacted the MCP with another request that the party send two delegates to toie'22-24 March AAPSO meeting in Algiers. Whereas in September the MCP had sent two delegates, as requested, to the Nicosia meeting, the party Secretariat reportedly decided against sending delegates to the latter meeting, in part, because the Moroccan party delegates to the September meeting had not been given official status, in part, because the Soviet Embassy had not yet reimbursed the MCP for the air tickets to the Nicosia conference. **The fact that the Cypriot hosts were pro-Soviet considerably boosted Soviet fortunes at the meeting. Dr. (footnote continued on page 62) === [PDF page 71] === At the meeting, the high-powered Soviet delegation of eight was the largest in Nicosia; moveover, it brought with it reinforcements in the form of "observers" from Eastern Europe and from the World Peace Council and the Women's International Democratic Federation. At the opening session, this Soviet team lost no time in distributing copies of a statement issued by the Soviet Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee on the "Future of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Movement." The Soviet tract prepared in Moscow for circulation at the AAPSO meeting argued Moscow's right to a place in the Afro-Asian Solidarity movement with a forcefulness that the CPSU had not shown before at a front meeting: The all-important condition for the successful accomplishment of the tasks of the anti-imperialist and anti-colonial revolutions is a resolute struggle against all attempts to wrest the national liberation movement and one of its component parts, the Afro-Asian Solidarity movement, away from the general stream of the world revolutionary movement, and thereby to isolate it from the countries of the socialist camp, the wokld working-class and democratic movement. In the fight against imperialism the Asian and African peoples... (footnote continued from page 61) V. Lyssarides used his key position as chairman to buttress the Soviet position through parliamentary maneuvers. Over Chinese objections, he ordered that Bulgarian, Czech, and East Germans in attendance be seated at the meeting as "observers." He was also responsible for railroading through a resolution endorsing the test ban treaty in the early morning hours of the final session. The quid pro quo for Lyssarides, who had long urged Makarios to seek XATo-Asian support for revision of Cyprus' Constitution, was a strongly worded AAPSO resolution in support of the Greek-Cypriot position on the Cyprus question. === [PDF page 72] === Z-~rLTq have a reliable buttress in the shape of the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries. We are of the opinion that the Afro-Asian solidarity movement does not constitute a boxed-in movement....Any attempt to tear the Afro-Asian solidarity movement away from the other revolutionary forces of our times, regardless of who is doing it and of the nature of the slogans used to cover this up, would only be to the advantage of imperialism and to the disadvantage of the movement itself. One has to lose all sense of reality to assert that the Asian, African, and Latin American peoples can, without the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries,... put an end to the world system of imperialism. The whole world knows that the Soviet Union has indeed supported liberation wars. Our country has always extended moral and material assistance, including the supply of arms, to those who are struggling for their freedom and independence. Those who are trying to cast aspersions on the policy of our state in this question willy-nilly side with imperialists in slandering the Soviet country. In equally direct and explicit terms, it described as racist the suggestion that the USSR be "excommunicated" from AAPSO on the grounds that it is not an Asian country: The imperialist colonizers...have expended no little energy on raising all sorts of barriers between the 'white' and the 'non-white' peoples. The task facing the === [PDF page 73] === participants of the Afro-Asian solidarity movement is not to cling to these or raise new obstacles in their place, but to destroy all such obstacles to their very foundations. A graphic example of the absurdity to which people can descend in narrow nationalist 'researches' is the fuss made by the newly-baked geopoliticians over the 'problem' of whether the Soviet Union relates to the category of Asiatic countries or not. The preaching of national exceptionalism, chauvinism and racism, whatever the quarter from which it comes, is incompatible with our movement's tasks. We cannot reconcile ourselves both with racial discrimination in the U.S.A. and with the policy of apartheid in South Africa, with the policy of genocide pursued by the Baathists in Iraq, the Salazarists in the Portuguese colonies, and the Ngo-Dinh-Diemites in South Vietnam. We cannot reconcile ourselves to appeals for the unification of Asia and Africa on a racial basis. Outmaneuvered and out-gunned from this opening maneuver of the Soviets to their premature departure from Nicosia, the Chinese could only stand by as a number of obvious pro-Soviet resolutions were forced upon them. In addition to their defeat on two important organizational resolutions--one, that voting be carried by a simple majority, and a second, that the "practice of individual invitations extended by affiliated organizations to nonrepresentative persons" be condemned*--and *This resolution was obviously aimed at the Chinese, whom the Russians have accused of bringing "stooges" to Afro-Asian meetings. On this occasion, the delegate from Ceylon, Theja Gunawardena, was so described. After the conference, Radio Moscow took up the theme, charging the Chinese Communists with bringing with them "from conference to conference people who do not represent anyone." 7 a"~JF.7T === [PDF page 74] === a third political resolution on the Sino-Indian border question, the Chinese suffered humiliating defeats on the test ban issue and the question of the Afro- Asian trade union conference. Moscow had overlooked nothing in marshalling support for its position on the test ban.* Though the language of the final resolution was somewhat softened as a gesture to the Chinese,=who had officially denounced the treaty as a "big fraud" and "an open betrayal of the interests of the socialist camp," the resolution was an unquestionable Soviet.victory; only North Korea, North Vietnam, Indonesia, and Japan supported China in voting against it. The final resolution on the trade union conference amounted to a censoring of Chinese intentions and methods in organizing an Afro-Asian conference outside the organizational framework of AAPSO; it was a major breakthrough for the Soviets in their campaign against the Chinese-Indonesian plan to sponsor a separate Afro-Asian trade union conference. Again, China's only supporters were North Korea, North Vietnam, Indonesia, and Japan. The Chinese appear to have been successful in defeating only one Soviet draft resolution at the meeting. On 24 September, NCNA claimed that the AAPSO executive committee rejected a Soviet draft on "racism," "which never once mentioned the oppression suffered by the American Negroes...but on the contrary attacked what it called 'racism, chauvinism, and national exclusiveness;'" the final conference resolution on the "Struggle of the African Negroes Against Racial Discrimination" was reportedly one *The CPSU Secretariat is reported to have given the Soviet delegation to Nicosia only one directive--to avoid at all costs any condemnation of the Moscow Treaty by the AAPSO Committee. Within this one broad directive, the delegation was given complete freedom of maneuver without reference to Moscow. (The Soviet opening address was reportedly re-written without reference to Moscow to meet the delegation's appreciation of the mood of the meeting.) [Unreadable] === [PDF page 75] === drafted by the Chinese. Although NCNA tried hard to convey the impression that the Afro-Asian delegates had sup-. ported the Chinese on other resolutions--such as the ones. on Cuba, the Sino-Indian border, and particularly the Moscow test ban treaty--Chinese commentary on the conference was, on the whole, a labored, defensive, and generally implausible effort to cover up the Chinese defeat at Nicosia. Moscow media, as would be expected hailed the meeting as a great Soviet victory. Once again, at Nicosia, procedural arguments, propaganda harangues, and tactical maneuvers stemming from the Sino-Soviet rift had overshadowed all other considerations. Sentiment was reportedly growing among the non-Communist affiliates of AAPSO that the Sino-Soviet rivalry was becoming detrimental to AAPSO's promotion of the interests of the nonaligned Afro-Asian countries. One AAPSO official reported that there had been talk among these delegations at Nicosia of reconstituting AAPSO without the Soviets and Chinese.* Despite its predominance at Nicosia and its propaganda claims for the conference, Moscow apparently had some doubts about the prospects for future Soviet domination in the organization. In a conversation with Lebanese delegates at the meeting, Dimitry Dolidze, Secretary of the Soviet Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee is reported to have asked the Lebanese delegation to prepare a report on the following subjects: (1) an appreciation of the present Soviet strength in AAPSO, including detailed proposals for steps to be taken to strengthen Soviet influence, (2) an appreciation of Algerian views expressed privately during the meeting that the Soviet Union was interested only in fighting its 'ideological' war and would sacrifice the solidarity of the AAPSO for this end, (3) an appreciation of the view expressed by *The Egyptians, for one, are known to be in favor of ejecting both the USSR and Communist China from AAPSO. === [PDF page 76] === the Egyptian Secretary-General of the AAPSO that the Soviet Union might eventually be excluded from AAPSO, and (4) an appreciation of the possibility that the Chinese might create a second Afro-Asian organization in opposition to AAPSO. Within AAPSO, Sino-Soviet fortunes have fluctuated during the past year. The Soviets probably know they can count on a majority at Executive Committee sessions, such as the one at Nicosia; but they have good reason to be concerned about their future prospects at plenary sessions. During the past several years, Chinese influence in the organization has increased steadily; at Moshi, for the first time, it was dominant. So long as there is a good chance of their being able to take over the leadership of the organization, the Chinese are not likely to create a second Afro-Asian front organization in opposition to AAPSO. The International Organization of Journalists' Meeting, Mediterranean, September 1963 The Chinese, on their part, seem to have been quite impressed by the strong Soviet counter-offensive at Nicosia and other front meetings in July and August and September. On 4 September, the All-Chinese Journalists' Association announced that it would not send a delegation to the next scheduled meeting of an international front-- the Third World Meeting of Journalists, to be held in the form of a two-week cruise (19 September to 3 October) on a Soviet ship making stops at various ports in the Mediterranean.* The device of holding the conference *Following the Chinese lead, the IOJ affiliates in Albania, North Korea, North Vietnam, Japan, Burma, and Indonesia did not send delegations to the meeting, either. There were unofficial "observers" from some of these countries, however--sUch as Japan. === [PDF page 77] === aboard a Soviet ship not only added to the attraction of the meeting but--and this was the important point--it afforded the Soviets a special security advantage in keeping unwanted persons from attending, in concealing dissension, etc. The Chinese were clearly concerned to avoid defeat at a front meeting which was so obviously tailor-made for Soviet purposes. As noted earlier, Soviet media immediately began to link the Chinese decision not to participate in the IOJ meeting with the CCP's promotion of a separate Afro- Asian Journalists' Association with the implication that the Chinese had decided to withdraw from the IOJ, having already formed a rival journalist organization. -Because the Afro-Asian journalist association had been the first such front organization constituted on a regional basis that had excluded the USSR as,a full member and because a meeting of the IOJ was the first major front meeting to be boycotted by the Chinese and other pn>-Chinese groups, many Western observers concluded what the Soviets implied--that the Chinese had indeed decided to pull their supporters out of the Soviet-controlled front organizations, once they had succeeded in establishing their own rival Afro-Asian organizations. There was nothing at the time, however--and there has been nothing since then--to indicate that the Chinese have formally resigned from the IOJ, or any other front organization. On the contrary, the Chinese have shown no disposition to abandon any platform where they can deliver their message in the hope of winning more supporters for their side. Thus, it seems the Chinese boycott of the IOJ meeting was a tactical move to avoid an open confrontation with the CPSU at an unfavorable time (when the CCP was very much on the defensive on the test ban issue) and in an unfavorable situation. Under more favorable circumstances, the Chinese-can be expected to pursue their disruptive tactics at future meetings of the IOJ. The device of holding a conference aboard a Soviet liner was one of the Soviets' more novel--and also more costly--innovations to ensure Soviet control at a front === [PDF page 78] === meeting.* Another of Moscow's new tactics in countering Chinese influence at the journalists' meeting, as at the AAPSO meeting at Nicosia earlier in September, was the selection of an unusually high-level delegation to represent the USSR. The CPSU delegation of about 40 journalists, by far the largest and most high-powered delegation aboard the Litva, was one of the most impressive Soviet delegations ever to attend a front meeting; it included no less prominent personalities than P. Satyukov, Chief Editor of Pravda, Khrushchev's son-in-law Alexei Adzhubei, editor of Izvestiya, and D. Goryunov, Director-General of TASS. The representation from Eastern Europe--about 40 delegates in all--was also of unusually high caliber; for instance, Henryk Korotynski, Chairman of the Central Board of Polish Journalists, was the chief Polish delegate. Messages to the conference from Khrushchev and the Soviet Union of Journalists further pointed up the CPSU's interest in making the conference an unqualified Soviet success. To the same degree that the prominent representatives of the Soviet press and information agencies dominated the assembly of journalists, Soviet ideas dominated the conference. With the absence of the Chinese and many of their supporters, Soviet attention at the conference shifted from Chinese "splitting activities in the fronts" to the building of a socialist Africa; thus, there was a soft-pedalling of Sino-Soviet differences at the journalists' conference that was the exception rather than the rule at front meetings during the ltter half of 1963. The Soviets had obviously taken every precaution to keep the subject of the Sino-Soviet dispute from coming up. It may be noted that the cruising conference stopped at six Afro-Asian ports, after sailing from Naples--the *Ronald Payne, a correspondent for the London Sunday Telegraph who participated in the journalists' meeting aboard the Soviet ship Litva estimated the costs of the conference at "not less than L60,000." The Soviets apparently underwrote the entire costs of the operation. === [PDF page 79] === "European locale" of the meeting being one of the minor points in Chinese criticism of the conference. It was indeed unusual, if not unprecedented, for a major meeting of an international front organization to be held outside the USSR-European setting; it appeared to be part of an emerging pattern of Soviet efforts to expand the activities of the traditional, S6viet-controlled front organizations on the Afro-Asian scene. The New Afro-A$ian Emphasis General Although the Chinese had in late 1962 and early 1963 assumed the lead in setting up regional front organizations in Africa and Asia, it was the Soviets who originally promoted the fronts among Afro-Asians. The first front organization of a regional character that developed beyond the first formative state - the Afro-Asian Peoples' Solidarity Organization, established in 1957-- was set up on the initiative of the WPC. In 1958, the Afro-Asian Writers' Association was founded under AAPSO sponsorship and with Soviet participation, and in 1960 the Afro-Asian Solidarity Fund was set up as a subsidiary organization of AAPSO; in addition, AAPSO has organized several Afro-Asian conferences which have not resulted in permanent organizations--the Afro-Asian Youth Conference in Cairo in February 1959, the Afro-Asian Women's Conference in Cairo in January 1961 and the Afro-Asian Economic Seminar in Colombo in October 1962. One of the earliest Afro-Asian front organizations--the Afro-Asian Lawyers' Association, founded in 1956--stemmed from the Soviet-controlled International Association of Democratic Lawyers. When in 1962 and 1963, growing Chinese influence in the Afro-Asian front movement threatened to become dominant, Moscow recognized the need for a new and determined effort to re-assert CPSU leadership on the Afro- Asian scene. In an attempt to offset the plan of the Chinese for a separate Afro-Asian movement outside the traditional, Moscow-controlled front movement, tHe Soviets have made the most intensive efforts to promote an Afro- Asian front movement within the Soviet-controlled international movement. === [PDF page 80] === , EZN4 1 X14, Since the spring of 1963, the "orthodox" front organizations have considerably increased their activities in the underdeveloped areas, especially in Africa. In April, the World Federation of Democratic Youth celebrated "World Youth Day" in Algiers and later that month arranged an International Seminar Against Colonialism, also in Algiers. In May, the International Union of Students chose the same location for its Executive Committee meeting on 13-21 May. Around this time, the World Peace Council also noticeably 'increased its attention to African affairs. Issue No. 6 (April) of the "Bulletin of the WPC" was mainly devoted to Africa. The general theme of the bulletin--that "general and complete disarmament" can render the greatest service to the cause of national liberation--was specifically applied to the African scene; the activities of several recently-formed African peace committees were also reported in the issue. Late in the summer, two high-level delegations from the WPC were despatched to Africa, to urge local groups to affiliate with the organization and to attend the next meeting of the WPC in Warsaw in December. At this meeting, the African delegates are reported to have met unofficially to appoint a leader for the "African peace movement." This leader subsequently addressed the Warsaw conference and offered the support of the African peace movement to the WPC. While the WPC delegation was travelling around Africa, a similar delegation from the World Federation of Democratic Youth was touring Asia; it was announced that other delegations from the WFDY would soon visit East Africa, West Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, as well. As noted earlier, the Soviets were also at this time working patiently behind the scenes in AAPSO; by September, they were well-prepared to venture an open engagement with the Chinese in the organization--the first such open Sino-Soviet confrontation in an Afro- Asian front organization since the Soviet defeats at Moshi and Djakarta. The focus of a carefully planned Soviet propaganda campaign on the role 6f the Afro-Asian solidarity movement in the international front movement, === [PDF page 81] === the September meeting of AAPSO saw a remarkable Soviet comeback in an organization in which the Chinese had come to exert greater influence than the CPSU itself during 1962 and the first half of 1963. At the meeting, the Soviets proposed widening AAPSO's activities in several fields. The final conference decision to hold both an Afro-Asian economic seminar and an Afro-Asian women's conference under AAPSO sponsorship was an important victory for the Soviets in their drive to keep Afro-Asian front activities under their organizational control. With this and other developments at the meeting, it became apparent that the Soviet Solidarity Committee bore the major responsibility for promoting an Afro-Asian front movement within the Soviet international front movement. In a [7 conversation with the Lebanese delegation at the meing Dimitry Dolidze, Secretary of the Soviet Solidarity Committee is reported to have made a special point of congratulating the Lebanese Communist party on "its constructive interest in the Afro-Asian movement, which is now the most important battleground in the ideological war." He explained that it was one of the most important tasks of the Soviet Committee to encourage other Communist parties and sympathizers to take a greater interest in the movement in their respective countries. In their willingness to organize and underwrite the considerable expenses of the journalists' cruise to Africa, the Soviets also showed their special interest is wooing Afro-Asians in the front movement. Following up the inroads made in the journalist field in Africa through this 3rd World Congress of Journalists and the 2nd Congress of the Pan-African Union of Journalists held in Accra in November 1963, the IOJ in late January 1964 launched a special 6-month course for training African journalists in Algiers. (Previously, the IOJ had administered short courses in Bamako and in Conakry. Another institution in Budapest run by the IOJ had just been opened in October 1963; some 30 African journalists from 12 African countries had enrolled in its opening session.) Through these courses and through direct contact with individual journalists, the IOJ - considerably expanded its contacts in Africa in late 1963-64. === [PDF page 82] === The WFTU-sponsored International Solidarity Meeting in Support of the Workers and People of South Vietnam, held in Hanoi on 20-23 October, was the next determined attempt of the Soviets to assert their presence on the Afro-Asian labor scene. The device of an international trade union solidarity meeting was not a new one; it had been used before in support of the Algerian independence struggle and the national liberation struggle in South Africa. In the South Vietnamese liberation struggle, the CPSU and WFTU found another ideal issue for impressing the North Vietnamese, in particular, and other Asian nations, in general, with Moscow's support of the "national liberation struggle." The central theme of the conference--the liberation struggle in South Vietnam--was essentially non-controversial; there was sufficient common ground between the Soviets and the Chinese to make this a major show of international Communist solidarity. Without having to take a clear policy position on the Vietnam issue, the USSR and WFTU were able to profit from the propaganda impact of an Afro-Asian conference held under their own organizational aegis. In another major propaganda play to the Afro-Asian front groups, the CPSU gave special prominence to the Afro-Asian trade union movement at the national congress of Soviet trade unions, held in Moscow from 20 to 28 October. In the major address of the conference, Victor Grishin, Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions emphasized Soviet support of trade unions in Africa and Asia: The Soviet trade unions attribute great importance to the development of their contacts with the trade unions of the Asian, African, and Latin American countries. We are greatly satisfied to see that our ties with the trade unions of recently liberated countries are becoming stronger. During the past few years we have established close cooperation with the trade unions of Algeria, Burma, Morocco, Ghana, Mali, Guinea, Tanganyika, and other young states. The Soviet people rejoice === [PDF page 83] === with all their hearts about each success of the peoples of these countries achieved in the solution of the problems they face-- overcoming 'their economic backwardness, liberating themselves from all types of imperialist intrigue, and raising the masses' standard of living. ... the Soviet Union always help the peoples trying to win and to consolidate their-national independence. The Soviet people and their trade unions determinedly advocate the liberation from the colonial yoke of the peoples of South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, Aden, and other enslaved countries. The task of the Soviet trade unions is to render fraternal support to the working people of Asia, Africa, andLatin America and to struggle to liquidate all forms of imperialist oppression. Grishin's appeal to the Afro-Asian trade unions was the climax of a carefully planned Soviet campaign to win the support of Afro-Asian trade union leaders. Because they had been faced with a concrete challenge in the trade union field--in the form of the proposed Afro-Asian trade union conference--the Soviets had for some months been making their most determined effort to counter the Chinese threat in this field. In this effort, they had brought to bear a whole range of pressure tactics; not only had they worked through international trade union channels but diplomatic channels as well. The Afro-Asian Trade Union Conference The Soviet counter offensive in the trade union movement appears to have got underway in June 1963; at least, it was then that the important decisions would seem to have been taken in Moscow. At this time, the === [PDF page 84] === Russians are reported to have asked the WFTU to invite its affiliated organizations in Asia and Africa to a meeting'in Prague on 27-28 July'to discuss the trade union situation in Afro-Asian countries." Quite obviously designed to counteract the analogous plan of the Chinese and Indonesians for an Afro-Asian trade union conference in Djakarta, the WFTU initiative was Moscow's first public move along this line.* In early July, discussions on the same subject--WFTU trade union activity in the Afro-Asian countries--also took place in Budapest at meetings of some WFTU trade departments. Furthermore, a number of Communist and neutralist trade union leaders from all parts of the world were invited to Moscow during June and July to discuss international labor matters including "ideological" questions. On 27 July TASS announced the arrival in Moscow of Renato Bitossi, president of the WFTU, "at the invitation of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (AUCCTU)" On 30 July it announced the arrival of S.A. Dange, Chairman of the Indian Communist party and General Secretary of the All-India Trade Union Congress, who was reported to have conferred with "highranking functionaries" of the AUCCTU. It is safe to assume that the subject of the Afro-Asian Trade Union Conference was discussed with both Bitossi and Dange, as well as with the Indonesian Communist delegation visiting Moscow about this same time.** *The joint statement of the four trade union organizations of Burundi, Northern Rhodesia, Tanganyika, and Angola signed in Peiping on 18 June which condemned "any attempt by any country outside the (Afro-Asian) area to sabotage the solidarity of the Afro-Asian workers by convening a counterconference" may have referred to the decision taken by WFTU only a few days earlier (14 June) to call a meeting of its Afro-Asian affiliates, as well as to the Yugoslav counterproposal for an "unaligned" trade union conference. **Between his visits to Cuba, East Germany, and Communist China, Chairman Aidit of the PKI was in Moscow from 20- 23 July, 1-6 August, and 12-28 August. === [PDF page 85] === In July, the Russians also approached the Japanese Sohyo, as well as the unaligned trade unions of the UAR and the Singapore National Trade Union Congress, and possibly others, for support of their cause against the Chinese.* In their overtures to Sohyo, they pressed the "mainstream" or majority, pro-Soviet faction, where the Chinese had solicited support from the pro-China, "antimainstream" minority. The position of Sohyo on the Afro- Asian Trade Union Conference--for several months equivocal-- was finally clarified at the 23rd annual convention of the federation in Tokyo at the end of July. Taking up the defense of Soviet interests against the Chinese, the Japanese demanded as the condition for their participation in the conference that WFTU and the Soviet AUCCTU be invited to send full-fledged delegations and South American, European, and U.S. unions be included as observers.** It was the same conditional response to the Indonesian initiative for an Afro-Asian trade union conference that the Indian AITUC had first made in Dange's public attack on the conference in March. And it was apparently just the tactical response that the Soviets had urged the Japanese to make.*** *C.V. Devan Nair of the Singapore NTUC, although invited, did not go to Moscow. **Sohyo's conditional acceptance of the Indonesian invitation to participate in an Afro-Asian trade union conference to be held in Djakarta was communicated to the Indonesians in a letter from Secretary General IWAI Akira of Sohyo to Labor Minister Ahem Erningpradja. On 11 August, Sohyo's stand was made public in a joint statement issued by Sohyo and the Indonesian labor delegation visiting Japan. The Indonesian Joint Secretariat of Labor reportedly responded to Sohyo's conditions by closing the door to participation by non-Asians in the conference while agreeing to USSR participation under certain unspecified conditions. (These conditions were later spelled out in the Indonesian invitation to the USSR of 26 September.) ***The CPSU is known to have advised the Indians--and presumably the Japanese too--not to reject the idea of (footnote continued on page 77) 1TI~IT === [PDF page 86] === Once the Soviet position in support of an Afro- Asian trade union conference--but one conceived in terms favorable to the CPSU rather than the CCP--became clarified, both the Japanese Sohyo and the Yugoslav trade union federation (CTUY) abandoned their efforts to promote a rival nonaligned trade union conference. At a time of improved relations with the USSR, Yugoslavia was concerned not to embarrass WFTU with its efforts to promote a separate international organization of trade unions, independent of the Soviet-controlled World Federation of Trade Unions. Thus, on 18 June, President S. Vukmanovic-Tempo of the CTUY advised Sohyo of his federation's decision to "suspend CTUY planning of an international labor conference."* On 5 September, Secretary General IWAI Akira of Sohyo replied to the Yugoslav letter, stating Sohyo's agreement with the decision to "postpone" the conference. Having obtained support for their right to participate in an Afro-Asian Trade Union Conference from both Sohyo and the CTUY, the Soviets next made the surprise move of addressing a direct request to the Indonesian Joint Secretariat of Labor for an invitation to its planned conference. In August, a Russian delegation led by Mr. Nekrasov, chairman of the trade union council in the Volgograd district, was despatched to Indonesia; on the 19th, the delegation was received by Labor Minister Ahem Erningpradja. An Indonesian domestic broadcast of (footnote continued from page 76) an Afro-Asian Trade Union Conference outright, as this would leave the door open to Chinese domination of the conference; instead, the Russians proposed to fight the Chinese within the trade union movement for control of an Afro-Asian meeting. *This does not mean that Yugoslavia intends to join the WFTU; at least at present, there is apparently no possibility of such a move. But on the other hand, the Yugoslavs will not try to organize a Third Trade Union International. === [PDF page 87] === the same day reporting on the meeting said the "Soviet representatives made the suggestion that the Soviet Union should participate in the projected conference, both as sponsor and participant. The Soviet delegation pointed out that two-thirds of the country lay in the Asian continent." Ahem reportedly told the Soviets that he would forward their "suggestion" to the joint secretariat of labor. The Indonesian Government's public announcement of the Soviet request was unusual and suggests that Sukarno had already decided in favor of Soviet participation.* Had Sukarno intended to support--or even acquiesce in--the move to exclude the USSR, he would hardly have authorized the publication of the Soviet request; as an Indonesian decision against the Soviets after its publication would have further embarrassed relations with the USSR. It may be that he still hoped to avoid an open confrontation with the Indonesian Communist party on the question of Soviet participation in the conference and so deliberately delayed public announcement of his decision.** *Labor Minister Ahem had all along urged the inclusion of the USSR to help counter Chinese influence and to assure the participation of Sohyo. The Communist labor federation Sobsi had, of course, strongly opposed Soviet participation. The final decision to admit the USSR was reportedly made by President Sukano personally. In favoring attendance by both the USSR and CPR, he apparently hoped to avoid taking sides in the Sino-Soviet dispute. **Since it is part of the political machinery on which Sukarno has come to rely for marshalling mass support for himself, the Indonesian Government was not likely to embarrass Sobsi by making it accept a public defeat on the question of Soviet participation in the conference. Instead, it was more likely to make its position known--in private and indirectly in public--in the hope that the Indonesian Communist party would change its position in order to avoid a direct confrontation with Sukarno. This is exactly what happened, as it turnediout. === [PDF page 88] === On 20 August, Labor Minister Ahem made a formal announcement that a preliminary meeting to prepare for the Afro-Asian Trade Union Conference would be held in Indonesia by the end of October or early November. There was no mention of an invitation to the USSR. But among the 15 countries that were listed as "having already expressed their endorsement of the preparatory conference" or "expected to follow suit soon" were Japan and India; because their acceptance was known to be conditional on WFTU and Soviet sponsorship of the conference, Ahem's announcement implied his government's acceptance of these conditions. For almost a month thereafter, however, there was no Indonesian announcement of the decision to admit the USSR; and there was no invitation to the USSR. Inside government circles, however, it was known that Sukarno had personally ordered that the USSR be invited. Overridden by the President, Sobsi initially adopted an obstructionist attitude towards.the conference, which persisted until Aidit's return from his tour of the bloc countries in late September.* With the change in attitude on the part of Sobsi from obstruction to active promotion of the-conference (with Soviet participation), the Joint Secretariat of Labor finally issued an invitation to the USSR on 26 September 1963. By that time, the Soviets had ventured an open engagement with the Chinese on the question of the trade *Aidit's acquiescence in Soviet participation at the Afro-Asian Trade Union Conference after his return from his tour of Cuba, East Germany, the USSR, Communist China, and North Korea is all the more interesting in view of the fact that on all the major issues of the Sino-Soviet dispute he came down more strongly on the side of Communist China after his return than ever before. The Soviets had apparently met with little success in influencing the PKI delegation on these other issues. Thus, in the case of the Afro-Asian Trade Union Conference, it seems the PKI was primarily concerned to avoid a major confrontation with Sukarno rather than to accomodate the CPSU. === [PDF page 89] === union conference. At the executive committee meeting of AAPSO at Nicosia on 9-12 September, the Soviets announced support of a conference of the workers of Africa.and Asia-- on terms favorable to the CPSU rather than the CCP. The final resolution calling for "an Afro-Asian Trade Union Conference...under the sponsorship of the Permanent Secretariat (of AAPSO)...with the collaboration of Indonesia" was a decisive victory for the Soviets--and all the more so because it had been won on Communist China's own chosen ground, at a meeting of an Afro-Asian front organization. Chinese-Indonesian planning for an Afro-Asian trade union conference was badly jolted by the decision reached At the AAPSO meeting. While Peiping media deplored the "resolution on the Afro-Asian trade union conference which was adopted in disregard of the just objections of a number of delegations," the Indonesian delegation to the conference issued a formal statement "deeply regretting the decision of the political commission on the holding of an Afro-Asian Workers' Conference in Africa." We are not responsible and we are not bound by this decision which does not benefit the cooperation between our movement and the workers' movement. On the 30th, the joint secretariat of labor issued a similar statement which "fully supported the (earlier) statement delivered by the Indonesian delegation at the AAPSO meeting." Threatened with a rival plan for an Afro- Asian trade union conference under the sponsorship of AAPSO, the JSL was now more disposed than ever to solve the problem created by the AAPSO decision by inviting the USSR to become one of the sponsoring nations for the Indonesian conference. The invitation to the Soviet Union, extended on 26 September, contained several published conditions: (1) that both the WFTU and AAPSO abandon the plan adopted at Nicosia to hold an Afro-Asian trade union meeting in Africa, (2) that the Indonesian conference be independent of any other international organization, and (3) that the USSR declare its complete support of the conference to === [PDF page 90] === be held in Djakarta. These conditions could obviously not be made binding on WFTU or AAPSO--even if the Soviets had agreed to them. Thus, they appear to have been a face-saving gesture to Sobsi. On 4 October, the Russians answered the Indonesians indirectly in an editorial in the Soviet trade union magazine Trud, indicating their support of an Afro-Asian Trade Union conference "so long as it is conceived on a broadly representative basis" and both the WFTU and the Soviet labor organization have essential roles to play. Picking up the CPSU's general line of criticism of Chinese activities in Africa and Asia, the Trud article accused the leaders of the Chinese trade unlTonh of "building an artificial barrier between the working class movement and the national liberation struggle," of splitting international organizations and isolating the labor movement of Africa and Asia from the "international solidarity of the working class." For more than three weeks the Soviets withheld a formal answer to the -Indonesian invitation. During this period in early October, the Indonesian-Chinese campaign again bogged down, as an increasing number of unions refused to be drawn into the Sino-Soviet conflict.* The joint Chinese-Indonesian Communist announcement of the 11th that 17 countries would attend the preliminary meeting and 70 organizations from 32 Afro-Asian countries would attend the main conference was a transparent effort to *Several of the trade union organizations that had previously accepted the Indonesian invitation had now reneged. (In mid-October, for instance, Sohyo, which had given a conditional acceptance, decided not to participate in the conference.) As of the 17th the UAR, Morocco, and Algeria had declined; Ceylon and Japan had announced they would send individuals only, not official delegations; and Burma, Pakistan, Mali, Nigeria, and the USSR had not sent definite answers. Only Indonesia, Communist China, North Vietnam, Ghana, and Guinea were then definitely planning to attend. === [PDF page 91] === raise flagging hopes for the success of the conference; it was a gross exaggeration of the response from other Afro-Asian trade union organizations--which is known to have been disappointing.- The Indonesian government itself never made such an inflated claim for the conference; in a last-ditch attempt to stimulate interest in the conference, however, the Indonesian Foreign Office reportedly cabled its representatives in the countries that had not yet answered or had indicated they would not attend to urge them to exert pressure to obtain a favorable decision. Labor Minister Ahem is also reported to have requested an interview with Soviet Ambassador Mikhailov on 15 October, at which he urged the USSR to participate in the preliminary meeting and received the assurances of the ambassador that he would try to persuade the Soviet trade union council to send a delegation.- At this meeting, the ambassador did not disclose--and apparently did not know--the Soviet stand on the conference, which was to be communicated three days later. On 18 October, the Soviet All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (AUCCTU) sent its official reply to the conditional Indonesian invitation. Announcing Soviet participation in the conference, it declared Indonesia's conditions unacceptable and went on to establish its own conditions: (1) that the frame of reference of the main conference be jointly worked out in a preparatory conference according to the normal precedures for preparing for an international conference, (2) that the preparatory meeting be open to all organizations willing to take part, including the WFTU and AAPSO, and (3) that the Soviet delegation at the conference represent all Soviet workers and not just those of the Soviet Asian republic. These Soviet conditions for participation in an Afro-Asian trade union conference were made public two weeks later at the 13th Congress of Soviet trade unions held in Moscow on 20-28 October. In the closing speech of the congress, Victor Grishin, Chairman of the All- Union Central Council of Trade Unions, made the only direct reference at the congress to the "practical measures which are being taken to convene an Afro-Asian trade union conference." === [PDF page 92] === Such a conference can be useful it it is based on the principles of proletarian internationalism, and if its goal is to promote, with the WFTU actively participating, the further development of the trade union movement in the Asian and African countries and consolidate their cohesion with the workers class of all continents... But we cannot support such a conference if it is based on the principles of national differences and if it is held without the participation of the representatives of trade union centers in other continents, without the Soviet trade unions, and without the WFTU. To convene a conference on such a basis would only be harmful to the international trade union movement and to the interests of the working people and the trade unions of the Afro-Asian countries themselves (applause) The task of the Soviet trade unions... is to strive to liquidate the split and to strengthen the unity of action of the world trade union movement in the struggle for peace and social progress, to support the WFTU by actively participating in its activity, and to unmask the splitting maneuver of trade union leaders. Behind the scenes at the Soviet Trade Union Congress, Russian and Chinese lobbyists kept up a running fight, both of them focusing their attention on the matter of the Afro-Asian trade union conference.. As noted previously, the congress was the climax of a carefully planned Soviet campaign to win the support of Afro-Asian trade union leaders for Soviet participation in the Afro- Asian trade union conference. The Soviet labor council had apparently sent invitations to the congress to all === [PDF page 93] === the WFTU affiliates in Africa and Asia; in most cases, the invitation included an additional invitation to remain in the Soviet Union for a two-week visit. Clearly a success in this regard, the congress could boast the presence of a hundred foreign delegations. During these last several weeks before the convening of the preparatory meeting, the Sino-Soviet conflict over the Afro-Asian trade union reached a fever pitch. In their competing efforts to win over Afro-Asian trade union leaders to their respective positions on the conference, the Chinese were no less extravagant than the Russians in entertaining foreign trade union delegations in Peiping. Ostensibly there to celebrate China's national day (1 October), trade union delegations from Indonesia; Japan, Algeria, Ghana, Portuguese Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, Ceylon, and Zanzibar spent up to a month in China on a "study-tour" of the country. Reminiscent of the flurry of visits to Peiping in late April and early May, these visits produced,, in almost every case, a public declaration of support for the proposed conference in Djakarta; but again, as in early 1963, the visiting trade union delegations were hardly representative of the national trade union movement in their countries. Due to the hesitancy of so many prominent African, Middle Eastern, and Asian unions, the preparatory meeting got off to a bad start. Besides the CPR, the USSR, and Indonesia, only Ghana, the DRV, Mali, Ceylon, and the Philippines were represented by official delegates; Japan sent one unofficial delegate, a member of the pro-Chihese minority of Sohyo, and there was also one Moroccan, who came as an individual delegate rather than a representative of the Union of Moroccan Workers. Conspicuously absent were India, the UAR, Algeria, Angola, Pakistan, Burma, and an official delegation from Sohyo, At the meeting (28 October-4 November), the Russians and Chinese refrained from open attacks on each other, which had become the standard bill of fare at front meetings since June 1963. But if the reduction in hostile exchanges at the meeting created an illusion of an improvement in Sino-Soviet relations, there was noebatement === [PDF page 94] === in the bitter, subterranean contest for power and influence in the Afro-Asian trade union movement. Only the need for official Indonesian support of the main conference, scheduled for early 1964, checked the Chinese from persisting in their demand that only bona fide Afro-Asian unions be admitted to the conference. To boost the chances for a more successful meeting in the spring, the Indonesian Joint Secretariat of Labor finally offered the Soviets a compromise, whereby the WFTU and other international organizations outside the Afro-Asian area "which support the conference may be invited as observers." The USSR also managed to gain recognition as a co-sponsor of the meeting; moreover, the Soviet delegate was appointed as one of the five vice-chairmen (Mali, the USSR, the CPR, Ceylon, and Morocco) on the executive committee. In its propaganda on the conference, Peiping gave no indication that any Sino-Soviet confrontation had, occurred. Interestingly enough, CPSU media altogether ignored the conference, despite the presence of a Soviet delegation and its success in blocking the Chinese-Indonesian Communist move to exclude the WFTU, the Soviets, and their trade union allies from an Afro-Asian trade union platform. Apparently, the Soviets were not to be satisfied with anything less than WFTU sponsorship of the Afro-Asian trade union conference. At the preliminary meeting, their delegation had formally dissented from the decision of the plenary session of sponsors to admit the WFTU and the Permanent Secretariat of AAPSO only as honorary guests or observers;" it had stood firm on the CPSU's original demand that "WFTU and AAPSO be included in the organizing committee." On the final day of the preparatory conference, Soviet Ambassador Mikhailov is also reported to have stated privately that the Soviet Union was "still not happy" about the Afro-Asian trade union conference, "which should be in the framework of a world organization, not a regional organization." Though the composition of the executive and orgaAizational committees, announced at the preliminary meeting, gives the Soviets a reasonably good chance of withstanding Chinese-Indonesian efforts'to control the new labor organization, the CPSU has obviously not given up === [PDF page 95] === the idea of a WFTU-sponsored Afro-Asian trade union conference. There is an unconfirmed report of a split in the executive board of WFTU on the issue, with the majority of the board, including Secretary General Saillant, reportedly favoring WFTU and AAPSO attendance at such a conference in the role of observers, and the minority supporting the USSR in imposing the condition that both WFTU and AAPSO play important roles in the conference. Though the Sino-Soviet polemics on the subject of the Afro-Asian trade union conference have been relatively restrained since November 1963, the USSR has restated its position publicly on several occasions. Shortly after the preliminary meeting in Djakarta, the Soviet All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (AUCCTU) issued a statement, noting that many trade union centers of Asia and Africa, as well as certain international organizations, had not been represented at the preparatory meeting. Most noteworthy was the AUCCTU's new proposal. that the scope of the trade union conference be broadened to include trade union delegations from "all continents." We hold that representatives of the trade unions of all continents which are interested in strengthening the unity of the working people of Africa and Asia, of all the world labor movement, should be invited to the Afro-Asian Workers' conference. The Soviet trade unions hold that it will be useful to arrange a broad international rally and invite to it representatives... of the interested international organizations which support the struggle of the working people. The Soviet trade unions will go on promoting in every way the...close cohesion (of the trade unions of Asia and Africa) with all the progressive forces of the world trade union movement. To broaden the scope of the Afro-Asian trade union conference--to include representation from Eastern Europe and Latin American trade unions and the Soviet-controlled === [PDF page 96] === international front organizations--is still the main aim of the Soviets, who have apparently not despaired of their chances of succeeding in this. Failing this, however, they seem prepared to participate in the conference, determined to fight the Chinese for control of the meeting rather than leave the door open to Chinese domination of any international front platform. In preparation for such an eventuality, Soviet trade union leaders have urged the All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) and the Japanese Sohyo--and no doubt other pro-Soviet trade union organizations (such as the UAR trade unions) that had decided to boycott the conference--to take part in the Afro-Asian conference. (The CPSU is reported to have communicated this "request" to the AITUC and Sohyo almost immediately after the Soviet Union had been made a cosponsor of the conference.) Although President Dange of the AITUC was reported determined to stay away from the conference as late as mid-February 1964, because of the enmity that had arisen in late January between the Indian and Indonesian Communist parties, he has just recently announced the participation of the AITUC in the conference. And Sohyo is expected to follow suit shortly. The Chinese and Indonesian Communists have also continued their intensive efforts to win the support of prospective delegations at the conference. In November and December 1963, another group of trade union delegations--from Japan, Ceylon, Zanzibar, Kenya, Tanganyika, Guinea, and Nigeria--was wined and dined in Peiping, while a Chinese trade union delegation was making still another tour of Africa. At the same time, the Indonesian Communist labor federation SOBSI was financing an extended trip by one of its members to Ghana, Mozambique, the Congo, Angola, Tanganyika, Nigeria, Mali, Guinea, Algeria-, Morocco, and Pakistan. Once again, however, in spite of all their efforts to stir up enthusiasm for an Afro-Asian trade union conference in Djakarta, the Chinese and Indonesians were finding the "unaligned" trade unions, especially the African trade unions, generally unresponsive to their proposal. By late March 1964, the prospect of a full conference in the near future was fading rapidly. === [PDF page 97] === At this stage, the Soviets have already won the first crucial round in the Sino-Soviet fight over an Afro-Asian trade union conference; and they appear to be gaining strength, relative to the Chinese, for the next confrontation at the main conference. If, and when, this conference ever does got off the ground, they should have at least a fighting chance to establish their leadership in the organization. Front Meetings, November-December 1963 The World Peace Council, Warsaw Whereas in October 1963, the Russians and Chinese had avoided open friction At both of the international front meetings held that month--the Conference of the International Trade Union Committee for Solidarity with the Workers and Peoples of South Vietnam, held in Hanoi, and the preparatory Afro-Asian Trade Union Conference, held in Djakarta--they clashed in angry debate at the World Peace Council meeting in Warsaw from 28 November to 2 December. At the last plenary session of the WPC at Stockholm in December 1961, as well as at every meeting of the Presidential Committee in the interval, the Chinese had severely disrupted WPC deliberations. The Soviet leaders, prefering not to project this damaging disunity on to a larger scene, had kept postponing the next meeting of the full Council, even though--according to the organization's charter--one was supposed to be held at least once a year. In June 1963, they had cancelled a meeting of the Presidential Committee altogether, only days before it was scheduled to convene--apparently out of concern over Chinese disruptive tactics. When in July 1963 the nuclear test ban agreement was signed in Moscow and the Russians were presented with a new issue that was to give them much the better cause within the world peace movement, the CPSU suddenly changed its tactics in the WPC. Anxious to take full advantage of the new situation created by the signing of the test ban treaty, Moscow now favored the holding of a Council === [PDF page 98] === meeting at the earliest possible date. Thrbwn on the defensive in the WPC by their opposition to the test ban, it was the Chinese who now opposed the convening of the meeting; theirs was the only dissenting vote at the Presidential Committee meeting in Vienna in late September, which made the final decision to convene a Council meeting "as soon as possible, specifically at the end of November.". At the Council meeting, the clear division between the overwhelming majority of delegates who supported the Moscow line of "peaceful coexistence and general disarmament" and the minority supporters of Peiping who claimed an altogether different priority for the peace movement-- namely, the struggle for national independence--was obvious in every discussion; in the secret committee meetings, it was apparently manifest in "vicious" exchanges of "wild accusations" between the two sides.* Without directly naming the Russians, the Chinese delegation chief Liao Cheng-chih delivered a blistering attack on Soviet disarmament policies at the opening plenary session. Some people in the peace movement have consistently advocated general and complete disarmament as the sole magic wand for the defense of world peace... ... to urge all oppressed countries and peoples to disarm...can only be a fraud to make the world peace movement abandon its task of fighting imperialism. The tripartite treaty concluded in Moscow a few months ago runs counter to the peoples' *After the conference, European delegates compared the Chinese invective in these closed sessions to that of the Nazis. This was the first explicit charge of Nazism made against the Chinese in the Sino-Soviet dispute. Since then,the Russians have publicly made the (footnote continued on page 90) lftr-&PFT === [PDF page 99] === desire for the complete prohibition of nuclear weapons. It allows the nuclear powers to continue stockpiling and manufacturing large quantities of nuclear weapons, much to the advantage of their nuclear monopoly and blackmail. In an attack on Soviet overtures to the U.S., he accused the USSR of "begging for peace from imperialism." In order to defend wQrld peace, it is necessary to support the national independence movement in Asia, Africa, and Latin America honestly and not hypocritically, by deeds and not merely by words. And in a final bid for Chinese leadership of the Afro- Asian countries, he accused the Soviet Union of "great power chauvinism which gives aid and comfort to U.S. imperialism." ... the WPC, being an international mass organization, must not let itself become a diplomatic tool of this or that country and fall in line with every step the foreign policy this or that country takes. To our regret, however, there are some who are bent on making the WPC an instrument of their own; they have even gone a step further to make use of footnotee continued from page 89) same charge; in a press interview after the AAPSO meeting in Algiers on 22-24 March 1964, the head of the Soviet delegation to the conference compared the Chinese position on war and the Chinese use of racism to that of the Nazis. Significantly, it is in the activities of the Chinese in the front organizations that Moscow has found its evidence for this new charge, much the same as it has for its charge of Chinese racism. === [PDF page 100] === this organization to carry out anti-China activities. It grieves us to see that the WPC is following somebody's baton, is going further and further along a wrong path. The Soviet chief delegate who followed Liao as speaker refrained from polemical attacks on the Chinese;* contrary to what many observers had expected, he did not urge the expulsion of the Chinese from the WPC. However, he is presumed to have inspired the provocative act of Jacques Madaule, the French delegate, who suggested to the conference that the delegates rise for a minute of silence in memory of President Kennedy, a "man of good will." Throwing the assembly into a turmoil, the Chinese delegate rushed to the rostrum to protest the tribute to a man who was "the arch-enemy of peace." Later Sino-Soviet debate at the conference focussed on the Presidium's and Chinese drafts for a general "Call to Action" for the peace movement. The former--a strongly pro-Soviet document calling for further specific steps along the lines of the partial nuclear test ban treaty towards a world free of weapons and wars, the settlement of important international problems through negotiation, the elimination of forms of colonialism and racial discrimination, the liquidation of foreign military bases everywhere, and the removal of all barriers to the development of international trade--was adopted by an overwhelming vote of 292 to 42, with 4 abstentions. Only Albania, North Korea, North Vietnam, Indonesia, and Japan supported China in voting against it. (The Japanese delegation was apparently split.) As the Chinese must On 5 October 193, Khrushchev had unilaterally declared a moratorium on public polemics. Thus, the Soviet delegate avoided a direct rebuttal to the Chinese onslaught at the WPC meeting but used a proxy instead to deliver an attack on the CCP. For the same reason, Soviet press comment on the WPC meeting refrained from polemics. === [PDF page 101] === I ECWEI have feared, when they voted against convening the WCP meeting at a time when the Soviets were on the offensive on the test ban issue, the CCP had been effectively isolated on the most important international question of the day. At Warsaw, the WPC had appeared well under the control of the Soviets, who did not have to resort to the elaborate stage-managing of proceedings that had ensured Soviet control of the Women's Congress in Moscow in June. Moscow broadcasts could legitimately claim an "overwhelming rejection" by the delegates of the views of the Chinese. But in stressing "the unity of views expressed on the essential issues" at the conference, Soviet media presented a far from complete picture of the dimensions of the struggle being waged by the Chinese against "the general orientation of the peace movement." In its nonpolemical comment on the conference, the Soviet press ignored Liao's diatribe, reporting only that he spoke; it also made no mention whatever of the incident over the homage paid to PresidentkKennedy. Peiping, on the other hand, played up the verbal and procedual clashes and keyed its comment to Liao's speech, which was printed in full in Peking Review, as part of a special feature on the WPC Uongress.Boycotting the main press conference at the end of the session, the Chinese held one of their own, at which they accused the Soviet and Indian delegations at the conference.of "collusion against Communist China." More Chinese Splitting Activities Although still avidly pursuing their tactics of disruption at meetings of the Soviet-controlled front organizations, the Chinese had made slow progress during the second half of 1963 in setting up rival Afro-Asian front organizations. The set-back to their plans for a separate Afro-Asian trade union organization, from which both thw WFTU and the Soviet trade unions would be excluded, has already been discussed. Where in early 1963 they had also been moving aggressively to establish rival organizations in the student, scientific, and peace === [PDF page 102] === movements--they were in late 1963 making little headway with their announced plans in these fronts. -Their only new initiative in the second half of 1963--which came in the international youth movement--was still in its initial planning stage at the end of the year. Afro-Asian-Latin American Students' Conference In the international student movement, the Chinese effort to promote a rival Afro-Asian student organization, after an auspicious start, made little headway after April 1963. In that month, the Indonesian Student Organization (the PPMI) had announced that it would convene a conference of students of Africa, Asia, and Latin America in Djakarta in April 1964. This time, the Indonesians frankly acknowledged the role of the Chinese in planning the conference. Few, if any other, student organizations had apparently been consulted. In May, the PPMI reportedly held private discussions on the subject of the conference with students from Africa, Asia, and Latin America attending the Executive Committee meeting of the International Union of Students (IUS) in Algiers. After these discussions and further discussions in Prague in July and August, an International Sponsoring Committee was set up comprising representatives of student organizations in Indonesia, Communist China, Algeria, Cuba, and Brazil. At a rather hastily summoned and little publicized meeting in Djakarta on 27-30 November, this sponsoring committee is supposed to have agreed to hold a conference of African, Asian, and Latin American students in Indonesia "in the near future." Judging from the unusually vague communique of the sponsoring committee, planning for an Afro-Asian-Latin American student conference has been temporarily suspended. The original date for the conference--April 1964--has come and gone, and still there has been no announcement of even an approximate date for the preparatory meeting of the conference. The Chinese and Indonesians are apparently finding it difficult to establish a new organization === [PDF page 103] === in opposition to the IUS, which has a considerable following in the underdeveloped countries. Chinese Peace Committee One of the tactics of the Chinese in their efforts to split the fronts has been the establishment of a regional office in Peiping. In the case of the World Peace Council, the CCP has re-activated a regional office set up in October 1952 but largely dormant from that time until late 1962. The Peace Liaison Committee for the Asian and Pacific Regions, a regional bureau of the WPC, started publishing its own bulletin sometime in early 1963; this bulletin and other circulars and letters written by the Committee attacking the general line of the peace movement have been given the widest distribution in all parts of the world. In one such letter, dated 20 June 1963, Peiping threatened to convene a militant peace conference under Chinese sponsorship unless the leadership of the WPC abandoned its present "bourgeoisdeviationist" policies in favor of more militant policies. If the bourgeois-deviationist elements in the World Council of Peace leadership should yet prove incapable of showing a real change of heart, then there would be no point in holding another futile Council session in the autumn, and the Chinese People's Committee for World Peace would have no other alternative but to mobilise'a truly Marxist- Leninist, revolutionary, united fighting peace movement of the world, based on the tremendous unity and fighting spirit of the Asian, African, and Latin American peace movements. Despite these brave words threatening a split, the Chinese have taken no concrete steps since June 1963 to organize a rival peace organization. Thrown on the defensive in the WPC by their opposition to the nuclear test === [PDF page 104] === ban treaty, they may have been forced to revise their time schedule for calling for a regional meeting in opposition to the WPC. In the event of a formal split in the world peace movement, they will already have the nucleus of a rival organization in the Chinese Peace Liaison Committee; in the meantime, they are likely to continue to threaten a split in the movement in the hope of winning concessions from the pro-Soviet majority in the WPC which still hopes to avoid a final break with the Chinese. The Peiping Center of the World Federation of Scienti fic Workers (WWW) Another Chinese effort to compete for leadership within an established Soviet-dominated front organization was revealed on 25 September 1963 with the announcement of a new Peiping Center of the World Federation of Scientific Workers, to be devoted to the "promotion of international, scientific interchanges for the advancement of science in Asian, African, and Latin American countries." To celebrate the occasion, "more than 1,000 scientists" from Africa, Latin America, and Asia representing a total of 22 countries met in Peiping from 25- 30 September. Following 2 days of celebration and speechmaking in honor of the Center, the scientists held a preparatory conference for an international scientific symposium to be convened in Peiping in August 1964 under the joint auspices of the newly founded Center and the Chinese Scientific and Technical Association. The Chinese claim that the founding of the Peiping Center is 'in accordance with the decision unanimously adopted at the 24th Executive Council Meeting of the WFSW held in Moscow in September 1962." In view of the existence of 2 or 3 WFSW regional centers, their claim of legitimacy for the Peiping Center may be correct; the secretary-general of the WFSW has not publicly disagreed with their statement. We do know that a Chinese proposal for an East Asian regional center in Peiping was discussed '9ERET === [PDF page 105] === at the 24th meeting of the Executive Committee and at a commission meeting of the WFSW General Assembly that same month; however, a final decision on a formal opening of the Peiping Center was apparently put off until a later date. With or without WFSW's blessing, the Chinese went ahead with their planning after September 1962. Sometime in early 1963, they contacted scientists in North Korea, North Vietnam, Japan, and Indonesia in a preliminary exchange of opinion on the "appropriateness of a Peiping Center;" the final decision to establish the Center and to organize an international scientific symposium in 1964 was apparently made in May 1963 after consultation with the Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Indonesians. Invitations to the preparatory meeting connected with the symposium evidently went out in late July and early August. At least in some cases, these invitations specified that the Chinese would pay the travel expenses of the individuals concerned; moreover, at least some of the delegates were invited to spend two weeks in Communist China after the celebration meeting and the preparatory work for the symposium had been completed. Even if WFSW has not opposed the Chinese move, it is clear that Peiping intends to use the Center as another vehicle in its competition with Moscow. It is obviously not just aV.Asian Regional Center, as delegates from all over the world were invited to Peiping in September. Quite significantly, however, no Soviet delegation attended the meeting. The broad inter-regional area of interest which the Center has staked out for itself, together with its plan to convene an international scientific symposium in 1964, suggests that Peiping intends to establish within the framework of a Communist front organization that basically has served Moscow's interest a rival center that will promote its own interests. The WFSW and the CPSU, on their part, have taken no official notice of the Center; by refraining from public comment on the subject, they have preserved their flexibility in countering the Chinese challenge in the international scientific field. To date, there has been no indication of the general line of attack which they must now be === [PDF page 106] === planning, but it is presumed they will fight for Soviet and WFSW participation in the symposium, as a minimum requirement, as they did in the case of the Afro-Asian trade union conference. International Youth Solidarity Conference Towards the end of 1963, the Indonesians played a key role in the latest of Communist China's attempts to establish a rival front organization. In this case, what appeared to be a Soviet victory in the making was suddenly turned against the Soviets to the advantage of the Chinese. According to information now available, functionaries of the All-China Youth Association first began to negotiate with Afro-Asian and Latin American youth organizations about the setting up of a regional youth federation sometime around May 1963. From the beginning, the Indonesian representatives supported the Chinese. As a reaction to the CCP initiative, the WFDY Secretariat at the end of May decided to send the Secretary General and the Vice-President on a trip through the most important Asian countries in order--if not to prevent the establishment of such a federation--at least to ensure that the WFDY had some influence in it and that it was formally declared a regional organization of WFDY. In another move to assert its presence on the Afro-Asian scene, and so undercut the appeal of the Chinese proposal, the World Federation of Democratic Youth also won approval from the Indonesian Government for the holding of the WFDY Executive Committee meeting in Djakarta in December 1963. The quid pro quo for Sukarno was WFDY support for Indonesia's anti-Malaysia policy, an issue which WFDY officials apparently considered useful for impressing Afro-Asians with their support of the national liberation struggle. Though the pro-Chinese Indonesian youth organization at one point threatened to boycott the meeting of the Soviet-controlled front organization, the Indonesian Government gave the WFDY its full support. === [PDF page 107] === The first indication that the GOI may have run into problems with the WFDY or had second thoughts about the meeting came in early December, when it was announced that the WFDY session had been postponed until mid-January 1964. Then, only days before it was to convene on 15 January, the meeting was suddenly cancelled, allegedly at the direction of President Sukarno; the official reason given was the reluctance of the Catholic and Islamic youth groups in Indonesia to attend the meeting. As a substitute for the WFDY meeting, the GOI announced that it would hold an "International Youth Solidarity Conference for the Independence of North Kalimantan and the Destruction of Malaysia." Although it did appear at first that Sukarno had indeed been responsible for cancelling the WFDY session, recent reporting indicates that the decision was a WFDY decision. At least some WFDY officials apparently were concerned to avoid too close an association of the WFDY with Sukarno's "crush Malaysia" campaign. Thus, it seems very likely that the substitute Youth Solidarity Conference was a Chinese-endorsed, if not Chinese-suggested, move by the GOI to conceal a Soviet withdrawal. In convening his own conference, which better served basic Indonesian purposes,* Sukarno was able to capitalize on the WFDY's preparations for a meeting in Djakarta and the presence of foreign delegates in Indonesia. All the arrangements for the conference were made by the Indonesian youth front, the Pemuda. Members of the WFDY Executive Committee, who were still in Djakarta, *Sukarno was reported to have regarded the substituted youth solidarity conference as a consolidation of the Ganefo success of late 1963. (The Ganefo, or Games of the New Emerging Forces, took place in Djakarta from 10 to 20 November; they were followed by a Ganefo conference which established a new international sports organization in potential competition with the International Olympic Committee.) In the case of the youth solidarity conference, Sukarno is reported to have personally donated the rupiah equivalent of $30,000 to insure the success of the conference arrangements. ~SEGREI === [PDF page 108] === ~Pt~ET were invited to attend as observers. But the USSR itself was apparently not invited; at least, when the conference opened on 24 January, there was no Soviet delegation present.* Once again, as at the earlier Afro- Asian front meetings in Djakarta, Chinese influence was dominant; it was reflected in the decision taken at the meeting to establish an Afro-Asian youth solidarity organization. Thus, at the beginning of 1964, the Chinese had won another tactical victory in setting up their own front organizations. However, their success in establishing a preparatory committee for an Afro-Asian youth organization is still only the initial step in the process of organizing a new association. Their troubles in the trade union movement had only just begun at this stage. *There is some confusion on this point. Radio Djakarta included the USSR among the countries represented at the meeting. But Radio Peiping did not. The Yugoslavs have made the explicit charge that "the fact that representatives of the Soviet youth organizations were not invited to the conference, although the Soviet Union is also an Asian country, (shows) that Peiping wants to split the World Federation of Democratic Youth." The Soviets themselves have made no public comment on the subject. I T6REI === [PDF page 109] === Conclusions and Prospects Although the Chinese have been actively mobilizing opposition to CPSU policies in the fronts for a period of some 5 or 6 years now, there has been a distinct change in the nature and intensity of the Chinese challenge during the past year. Prior to the fall of 1962, the persistent attempts on the part of the Chinese to assert their own interests in the fronts were confined mainly to polemics; in formal, prepared speeches delivered before the assembled representatives in the fronts the Chinese publicly disputed the orientation which the Soviets wished to give to the fronts. Since late 1962, these Chinese polemical attacks have become increasingly more violent. But where they used to be attacks on specific Soviet policies in the fronts, they are now direct attacks on Soviet manipulation of the fronts. That these organizations have been used by the Soviets as instruments of support for Soviet foreign policy had been apparent not only to Westerners but to the bloc as well. As long as Sino-Soviet relations were cordial the Chinese were willing to tolerate the situation; it is a reflection of the deterioration in these relations that Peiping is now making every effort to expose the Soviet use and methods of control in the front organizations. To support their explicit charge that the Soviet Union tries to "convert the international democratic organizations into mere instruments of Soviet foreign policy" the Chinese have gone back to 1960 in exposing how the CPSU has used its position in the fronts to have the latter support Soviet policies. Where the Chinese polemics at front meetings used to be the main form of the challenge in the fronts, the Chinese now threaten the Soviet position in the fronts far more seriously as a result of other tactics introduced or greatly expanded since late 1962. By far the most serious challenge to continued Soviet leadership of the fronts is the one currently developing in connection with Chinese efforts to develop a counterforce to the Sovietdominated fronts in the regional fronts in which the === [PDF page 110] === Chinese have a natural advantage, the most obvious being the Afro-Asian front movement. Confronted by a determined--and so far successful--Soviet effort to retain the foothold it has in the parent AAPSO structure, the Chinese are now trying to promote new Afro-Asian front organizations, with no organizational ties to AAPSO, from which the USSR can be excluded. As part of their effort to discredit the USSR in the eyes of the Afro-Asians and disqualify it as a member of the new Afro-Asian front organizations, the Chinese have launched an enormously expanded lobbying campaign against the CPSU in the fronts. Although they are known to have lobbied against Soviet positions in talks with other delegates at front meetings as far back as 1959, they did not launch a systematic attack along these lines until the end of 1962, at which time they decided to drop all restraint and go after the Russians with no holds barred. Since then, they have used the race issue and other themes with an anti-Soviet bias to great advantage in private conversations with Africans and Asians at front meetings. In their greatly expanded campaign against the CPSU, they have also not been above bribing delegates and misrepresenting the credentials of others; in short, they have spared nothing in time, money, or effort in undermining Soviet influence in the fronts. In the face of this new and serious Chinese challenge to its continued authority in the fronts, Moscow has put up the most determined fight to preserve the unity of the fronts as effective instruments of support for Soviet policies. To meet the Chinese tactics, the Soviet counterattack has gone from mere polemics to the use of organizational and disciplinary pressures. The same procedural devices--e.g., the packed committees, the limitation on debate--which used to be used to suppress opposition by non-Communist members of the front organizations are now used against rival (Chinese) Communists. Moreover, the Soviets show considerable flexibility in compromising on issues in order to retain the support of the "unaligned" elements in the fronts. In this way, they have managed quite successfully to isolate the Chinese in the major international front organizations. For instance, the CCP has obviously felt great LRE === [PDF page 111] === discomfort at having been maneuvered into extreme isolation in the WPC on the question of the nuclear test banagreement. At the same time the Chinese have also revealed their sensitivity to certain of the Soviet public charges regarding CCP activities in the fronts; specifically, the charge of Chinese nationalism in setting up new Afro-Asian front organizations and the charge of Chinese exploitation of racism in the fronts. Even in the Afro-Asian context, the Soviets continue to compete effectively with the Chinese, particularly in the AAPSO central organization. At least for the time being, the Chinese program to establish new Afro- Asian front organizations under Chinese control has been delayed and, to some extent, disrupted by the Soviets. One of the most important conclusions to emerge from this survey of the Sino-Soviet conflict in the fronts this past year has been the CPSU's relative success in frustrating Communist China's plans for an independent front movement under Chinese direction and control--compared, that is, to its relative lack of success in blocking Chinese moves to organize rival pro- Chinese party organizations where they have failed to win over the leaders of the established Communist party. In the case of the fronts, which are so much less disciplined than the party organizations, the relative lack of discipline has made the Chinese task more difficult. Already a disciplined group, the pro-Chinese members of a national party organization have considerably more organizational ability and experience than similar elements in the front organizations. The Chinese have found them more reliable in using Chinese funds and more responsive to Chinese direction in establishing a formal organizational structure. Moreover, once they have been won over to the Chinese side, they stay won over. Peiping has apparently found the task of manipulating Afro-Asian delegates at front meetings to be a much more complicated business. In spite of some tacticalsuccesses, the Chinese have won no major victory in the fronts. Perhaps the most significant Chinese accomplishment to date has been the demonstration (a) that in virtually all the fronts Peiping leads a generally consistent group of militant === [PDF page 112] === national contingents that includes the Indonesians, the Japanese, the North Koreans, and the Vietnamesp, and (b) that it has supporters in many of the other national groups that participate in front activities. These pro- Chinese affiliates are, of course, still very much in the minority; there is almost no chance of their capturing any of the major international front organizations in the foreseeable future. In the long run, however, it may prove even more important that Peiping has convinced many persons and groups in the fronts that it is determined to continue its anti-Soviet drive as long as necessary. It is this prospect that is demoralizing many of the leaders of the fronts and inspiring others to react vigorously against both Chinese and Soviet pressures. While the Soviets have staged a strong comeback in the fronts, particularly since June 1963, the fronts will continue to be less effective instruments of Soviet policy than they once were. So long as the Chinese persist in standing and fighting within the organizations, by their aggressive minority tactics at meetings and their publicity after the meetings, the Chinese can substantially reduce the impact of front meetings generally. Fully aware of this, the Russians are apparently now reappraising their policies in the fronts. As of April 1964, they reportedly had not made a final decision, but there were indications that future front meetings might be held on a regional basis or be called to consider specific topics, either of which would provide a logical excuse for excluding the Chinese. So long as Moscow continues to see reason not to assemble a world Communist conference to condemn the Chinese party and excommunicate it from the movement, the Russians are more likely to seek excuses for not inviting the Chinese to front meetings than they are to take formal action in expelling them from the front organizations. === [PDF page 113] === It remains to be seen whether the Chinese, if they succeed in setting up their projected rival front organizations, will choose to lead their followers out of the Moscow-controlled organizations; in the past, however, they have shown no disposition to abandon any available platform for delivering their message. Because formal unity provides them a more favorable ground for undermining Soviet influence in the fronts than would an open split, they are not likely to depart from the fronts without being pushed. === [PDF page 114] === SECRET SECRET