Seldom since the blusterous days of Nikita Khrushchev had there been such an epithetic attack on China by a Soviet leader. Launching the Soviet Union's 50th anniversary celebrations in Moscow last week, normally restrained Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev lashed out at Peking for "malicious slander of the Soviet political system and foreign policy," for "absurd claims to Soviet territory," for "sabotage of efforts for disarmament," for "continuous attempts to split the socialist camp," for trying to "foment discord" among "national liberation" movements, and for attempts "to range the developing countries against the Soviet Union."
Brezhnev stopped just short of reading...