Communists: Rickety Revisionists v. Leftist Adventurers

American pilots over North Viet Nam have often wondered why the Russian-made SAM missiles that whoosh toward them like floating phone poles have proved to be so ineffectual. A possible answer came last week from Red China in the form of a sneer. Charged Peking's People's Daily: "So far, a great part of the Soviet military equipment supplied to North Viet Nam consists of ob solete equipment discarded by the Soviet armed forces or damaged weapons cleaned out of the warehouse."

The contemptuous blast was the latest round in the strident Sino-Soviet dispute that gets shriller and angrier by the day. Clearly discredited is the theory that the U.S. stand in Viet Nam might neutralize the ideological dispute between the two Communist nations and force them together in common cause. If anything, the rivalry has been intensified. When a Moscow weekly reprinted charges that the Red Chinese were exacting transit fees in dollars for Russian military and medical supplies shipped by rail across China to Hanoi, Peking hotly accused the Soviet Union of "resorting more fre quently to rumormongering, slander, and sowing discord."

What's more, cried People's Daily, Moscow's "rickety revisionists" had "extolled Lyndon Johnson, plotted with the U.S. to set up a counter-revolutionary United Nations armed force, joined hands with U.S. imperialism to support the Indian reactionaries against China [and attempted] to extinguish the roaring flames of the Vietnamese people."

All lies, of course, sniffed Pravda. The Soviet party newspaper denounced the Chinese as "leftist adventurers who want to fight to the last man. They do not recognize tactical maneuvering and insist only on resolute offensive and direct blows, and no matter how unfavorable may be the turn of events, they demand that the fight be carried on." On top of that gibe at the hard knocks the Chinese-backed North Viet namese are receiving, Moscow could not resist a further cackle, at Peking's expense, over the Chinese setback in Indonesia. "History proves that such a position leads to premature actions and abortive coups which are damaging to the mass revolutionary struggle," crowed Pravda. "The working class must not absolutize any single form of struggle, but must flexibly combine them, skillfully applying its entire arsenal." As to the charge of foisting damaged weapons on North Viet Nam, Moscow radio said: "The roar of anti-aircraft guns in Viet Nam drowns out the dishonest arguments of certain maligners."

The polemical protests from Moscow and Peking still lacked the malignity that marked the final period of Nikita Khrushchev, and indeed Moscow's new leaders, Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksei Kosygin, had kept their peace for 14 months after ousting Nikita. But last week's exchange proved once again that between rickety revisionists and leftist adventurers, peace is a forgotten word.