COMMUNISTS: The Split

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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 Khrushchev-Mao dispute now think it is real, and widening, and may even come to an open break.

Most obvious surfacing of this subterranean dispute is the growing rivalry between the Communist partners for dominance in the emergent new nations of Africa, the restless nations of Latin America. In Communist eyes, this means competition for the ultimate domination of the world.

In the past, the Communists dealt with such countries only through the apparatus of subversion—organizing cells, fomenting strikes, infiltrating fronts, subverting governments. But now new governments are taking power in these places, which are primarily anticolonialist. They look about in the spirit of the Arab proverb: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Moscow Flanked. The Chinese challenge is based on the contention that they hate colonialism even more than the Russians. The contention is couched in terms of an argument about "peaceful coexistence." But basically, Mao and his men charge that Khrushchev has lost his nerve; that the West's nuclear deterrent has intimidated him. Wrote China's Red Flag scornfully and pointedly: "To be afraid of war, and so to oppose all wars, even denying support to just wars, and to dream of begging peace from the imperialists will sap one's will to fight, bind one's own hands and feet, and weaken preparations against the imperialist war!"

Red China can show some success. More than 100 African delegations have been lured to Peking to discuss economic aid and cultural exchanges. Peking broadcasts 70 hours a week to Africa—twice as many as Moscow. "There are only two revolutions—ours and the Chinese," was a favorite saying in the Castro camps last year, and the Algerian rebels, when Khrushchev was too busy fraternizing with De Gaulle to grant them any favors, got quick promises of guns and money in revolutionary Peking.

In recent months, Khrushchev has been showing the symptoms of a worried man. He had committed the classic mistake (in Communist terms) of allowing somebody to get to the left of him. His wrecking of the summit and his furious rocket-rattling ever since are obviously designed to demonstrate to emergent nations and wavering comrades that nobody can be more militant than Khrushchev. He has cracked the whip among the satellites, demanded that his Communist satraps stand up and be counted. Last week the leaders of Communist North Viet Nam and later Mongolia were duly whipsawed into declaring their support for Khrushchev, and Seoul reported that North Korea's Kim II Sung, getting ready for Nikita's visit next month, had dutifully purged top leaders of the so-called Chinese faction from his government.