By the same author
RUSSIA IN THE THAW
e Two Red Giants
An Analysis of Sino-Soviet Relations
BY ALBERTO RONCHEY
TRANSLATED BY RAYMOND ROSENTHAL
e
w •
NEW YOU
W • NORTON &: COMPANY • INC •
4iIIII
\
Contents
COPYRIGHT
© 1965
BY W. W. NORTON & COMPANY, INC. 7
FIRST EDmON 11
30
Originally published under the title Russi E Cinesi, copyright © 1964 by AIdo Gananti, Editore 40
55
65
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 65-13527
79
89
ALL BIGHTS RESERVED
Published simultaneously in the Dominion of Canada by George J. McLeod Limited, Toronto PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOR THE PUBLISHEBS BY THE VAlL-BALLOU PRESS, INC.
1234567890
~/'If? Nel
I
/
I
0 ..j""
fB
102
The Two Red Giants
Today the <1aw" holds true primarily in Asia, which Robert
Malthus knew more thoroughly than Marx, at least after
he had rounded out his studies by teaching at Haileybury
College, subsidized by the British East India Company for
the education of colonial administrators. Marx, who did not
even imagine a Communist Asia, tried to take care of Malthus
Simply by affirming that in a Socialist society the "actual
demand" would always be inferior to production. At present
this is not even true in Russia, the most advanced of the
Communist countries, where the population grows faster
than the production of foodstuffs. But Russia possesses a
great industrial structure, while China is still in the phase
which, according to students of the "stages of development,"
demands a slackening in the growth of the population.
China's immense economic frustration, after the cyclical
holocausts experienced throughout its history, is a better
explanation for its expansionist policy and its atomic fatalism
than are any doctrinal disputes. Of course, the economy is
not everything (the tragedy of subsistence is only one among
others) yet it is a great deal, at least in the sense indicated
by a famous speech of Keynes to the Royal Economic
Society. "I offer you a toast," he said, "in the name of econ~
omy and economists, who are not the administrators of
civilization but of the possibility of civilization."
inhabitants) had increased only at the reduced rate of 0.5 per cent a year,
it would today have reached a thousand billion.
CHAPTER
5
The Border
"In April and May, 1962, the leaders of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union used the Soviet organizations
and personnel in Sinkiang to carry out subversive activity
on a large scale in the region of the IIi and to lure and
force several tens of thousands of Chinese citizens to go
to the U.s.S.n."
(From Jenmin Jih Paa, September 6, 1963.)
"Beginning in 1960, military and civilian Chinese have
systematically violated the Soviet frontier. In 1962 alone
more than 5,000 violations of the Soviet frontier on the
part of the Chinese have been registered. They even
carry out attempts at 'occupation' of certain small sec­
tions of the Soviet territory."
(From the Declaration of the Soviet government,
September 21, 1963)
No border in the world seems as tenuous and unstable
as the border between China and Soviet Asia. It is not really
64
65
-
The Two Red Giants
The Borde,
Immediately after this rebuttal, on September 21 and 22,
1963, Pravda and Izvestia published in installments a zayav­
lenie, that is, a formal declaration by the Soviet government,
which stated that China's pressure on the borders of the
U.s.S.R. was as great as that which it exerted on the borders
of India. Peking has raised the problem of the revision of the
old treaties imposed by Czarist Russia, but «it avoids consul­
tations on the subject," exploiting instead the lack of accuracy
of certain maps as a pretext for a continual penetration into
Soviet territory. "In 1962 alone," the document affirms, "more
than 5,000 violations of the Soviet frontier on the part of the
Chinese have been recorded. Attempts have even been made
to occupy certain sections of Soviet territory." Such attempts
took place chiefly along the Amur and Ussuri rivers, which
separate the Soviet Far East from Manchuria. Peking's prop­
aganda, according to the Soviet government, "artificially
excites nationalistic passions" and, furthermore, "puts for­
ward territorial claims based on the crumbling tombs of our
forefathers."
Anyone who knows the dismay already aroused in Russia
by the deviation of Chinese Communism, paralleled by the
failure of "the great leap forward" and the continual growth
of the "giant people," can well imagine what sort of national­
istic passiOns were in turn stirred up by Pravda and Izvestia's
cry of alarm. On September 26, 1963, Russian newspapers
announced that vast transfers of population were under way
inside China. "Uguri, Kazakhs, and Kirghizes," the poet
Bukhara Tyshkanbavov, who had escaped from China after
a period of imprisonment, wrote in Literaturnaya Gazeta,
"are forced to emigrate from the frontier areas to those well
74
.
inside the country, while the influx of Chinese sent to replace
them continues." One also learned that Russian literature
is banned from Chinese schools and that even the portraits of
Pushkin have disappeared from the classrooms. Another refu­
gee wrote in Leninskaya Smena of Alma Ata that since 1960
Russian newspapers and £1ms have been forbidden in Sin­
kiang, and whoever tries to contact the Soviet consulates is
subjected to long interrogations.
No Western source of information, even when presenting
the most extensive interpretation of the Russo-Chinese con­
Bict, had gone so far as to imagine that such grave events
were taking place on the borders between the two major
powers of the Communist world. The Russian press, appar­
ently afraid that public opinion might not believe these de­
nunciations and might consider them mere expedients in
defense of Khrushchev's policies, asked for and amply used
the first-hand testimony of private citizens. Thus Sovietskaya
Rossiya, the newspaper of the Soviet Federated Republic of
Russia, the largest of the U.s.S.R:s fifteen republics, pub­
lished an indignant letter from a woman doctor named An­
tonina Pivoravova, who denounced repeated incursions of
Chinese military barges onto the beaches of a Soviet island
in the Amur; the Chinese "hooligans" chased the Russians
and overturned their fishing boats.
Disregarding the possibility of arousing a violent anti­
Chinese psychosis, Kazakhstanskaya Pravda on October 1,
1963, added that in May, 1962, a contingent of Chinese troops
armed with machine guns had opened fire on a crowd of
people who wanted to return to the U .S.S.R. The massacre
allegedly took place at the frontier station of Ili-Kazakhskaya.
75