Peking on Coexistence

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AMONG the factors cited to explain Premier Khrushchev's resumption of an uncompromising "Stalinist" line has been the strong opposition voiced from Peking to any efforts to relax world tensions which might diminish the revolutionary fervor of the Communist peoples. An extreme example of this attitude was furnished by an article in the April 15 issue of Red Flag, the organ of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. The article, written by the journal's Editorial Department, and presumably approved by the Control Secretariat of the Party, is entitled "Long Live Leninism!" It goes beyond usual official pronouncements from Peking in assailing not merely "opportunists" and "revisionists" like Tito but by implication elements in the Soviet Union and in Communist circles elsewhere who favor coexistence and even coöperation with "capitalist imperialism" in a manner which endangers "the emancipation of the proletariat." This emancipation, it is emphasized, "can come about only by the road of revolution and certainly not by the road of reformism."

The article asks: "What kind of 'coöperation' is meant? Is it 'coöperation' of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie to protect capitalism? Is it 'coöperation' of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples with imperialists to protect colonialism? Is it 'coöperation' of socialist countries with capitalist countries to protect the imperialist system in its oppression of the peoples in those countries and suppression of national liberation wars?"