COMMUNISTS: The Split

As that floating committee room, the Baltika, churned and rolled across the Atlantic with Nikita Khrushchev and his claque of Communism's top brass, most pervasive presence aboard was the man who wasn't there—Red China's Mao Tsetung. It is increasingly apparent that, more than the Congo or Cuba, what is chiefly on Khrushchev's mind is his clash with Mao.

To the West, the squabble may seem merely a falling-out among ideologues. But in reality the dispute has been translated into a bitter competition for high stakes. Western experts who used to discount the...