244. Current Intelligence Weekly Review0
Sino-Soviet Relations Continue To Deteriorate
The closing of the last two Soviet consulates in China is the latest illustration of the steady deterioration in governmental relations resulting from the Sino-Soviet controversy over party doctrine.
[Page 511]According to some reports, the consulates were closed at Peipingʼs request. The Soviet Embassy in Moscow has tried to put a better face on the matter by depicting the closing as an economy measure. It is possible that the Chinese, taking a leaf from their treatment of US consuls in China during 1949 and 1950, conducted such a campaign of harassment that the USSR decided it had no recourse but to shut down the consulates.
Some evidence of Chinese harassment is provided by White Russians who recently left Manchuria. According to one report, Chinese authorities rejected protests of the Soviet consul general in Harbin relating to procedures governing the departure of Russian residents. The Chinese were said to have replied that they were masters in the area. According to the White Russian refugees, Chinese troops threw a security cordon around the Harbin consulate several weeks before it closed. At the same time, the Chinese reportedly raided the quarters of a Soviet citizensʼ organization in Harbin. The activities of such organizations have been directed since World War II by Soviet consular officials.
The Chinese pressures against the consulates may have reflected Peipingʼs view that they provided bases for subversion that could not be ignored in the context of the growing estrangement between the two countries. In this connection, the Chinese could have recalled the subversive activity fostered by Soviet consulates in Sinkiang during the 1940s.
In its anxiety to diminish the Russian presence in China, Peiping appears to be expediting the emigration of White Russians, whom the Chinese regard as a suspect segment of the population. Well over 400 White Russians arrived in Hong Kong in September. This total compared with figures of about 170 in August and of only 50 or so per month earlier in the year.
Peipingʼs concerns about security have apparently led to increases in the contingent of border guards along the Soviet frontier, at least near Manchouli. Reports from the White Russians appear to be corroborated by a letter received by a recent Chinese Communist defector. The letter refers to the training of a Chinese public security unit for border-guard duty near Manchouli. The defector believes that this activity reflects Chinese Communist concern about subversive operations in the frontier area.
These measures to tighten state security have been accompanied by allusions in recent Chinese propaganda to “revisionist” efforts to subvert members of the Chinese Communist Party. A sign that these efforts may be continuing was provided by the publication in Pravda on 28 September of a “new document” purporting to be a decipherment of a hitherto missing Lenin draft. The Soviets claim that the document is an earlier version of certain chapters of Leninʼs report on “The Immediate Tasks of Soviet Rule,” which he had presented at the April 1918 session of the highest governmental body in Russia at that time.
[Page 512]The “new document” was offered by Pravda as a rebuttal to Chinese jeers at Soviet “economism”—i.e., an excessive concern for economic development, with a consequent refusal to wage the struggle against the West with sufficient militancy. Lenin was represented as affirming that political tasks are subordinate to economic tasks after a Communist party has come to power. “Agitators,” according to Leninʼs newly discovered precepts, were useful mainly for the tasks of seizing power; later and more complex economic tasks were said to require “practical leaders and organizers.” The implication that Communist China should borrow from the experience of the USSR was contained in Leninʼs alleged observation about learning from the “neighboring and very much more developed countries.”
The “new document” thus invokes Lenin in support of Khrushchevʼs long-standing condemnation of the extremist economic programs promoted by Mao and his associates against the objections of more realistic sections of the party. The Chinese leaders are obviously sensitive about such appeals by Moscow to susceptible elements in China. Recent Chinese statements ominously suggest the vulnerability of such elements in any new party purge.
For those who might have questions about the presence of these unreliables in the armed forces, Communist Chinaʼs chief of staff included some pointed remarks in a speech on 6 October. He “expressed the hope,” according to the Chinese Communist news agency, that the army would be the agent of further victories “in the defense of the party central committee and Chairman Mao.” He exhorted the armed forces to heightened vigilance against the countryʼs enemies “no matter who they are.”
- Source: Central Intelligence Agency: Job 79-S01060A. Secret; No Foreign Dissem. Prepared by CIAʼs Office of Current Intelligence. The source text comprises pp. 3-4 of the Weekly Review section of the issue.↩