Free Brothers in Arms by Odd Arne Westad Page B

correctness of the Chinese views. As Mao had expected that winter, "[Khrushchev] is afraid that the Communist parties in Eastern Europe and others countries of the world will not believe in them, but in us."
    85
The Soviets attempted to use the Romanian congress to surprise the CCP. Convinced of his personal ability to persuade and influence others, Khrushchev at the very last moment decided to lead the Soviet delegation himself and to deliver an overall defense of his perception of the international situation and Chinese behavior. "In present conditions," Khrushchev said, "when there are two world systems, it is imperative to build mutual relations between them in such a way as to preclude the possibility of war breaking out. . . . One cannot mechanically repeat what Lenin said many decades ago on imperialism, and go on asserting that imperialist wars are inevitable until socialism triumphs throughout the world." In order to illustrate Chinese fallacies, the Soviets circulated among the delegations a letter addressed to the CCP Central Committee setting out the Soviet case and complaining of Chinese factionalism. 86 The Bucharest meetings ended with Sino-Soviet relations in tatters, as Khrushchev lost his temper at a small session of party heads, calling Mao "an ultra-leftist, an ultra-dogmatist, indeed, a left revisionist." 87
In the weeks following the Bucharest meetings, Mao's strategy produced even more dramatic results than the chairman had expected. On July 16 the Soviet government informed Chinese President Liu Shaoqi that it had ordered all Soviet technicians working in China to return home by the end of August. No Soviet act could have been better suited to unify the Chinese leadership and make it rally to Mao Zedong, as it always did during times of crisis (even those that Mao himself had created). "This is a big event, which will shake the whole of China," Foreign Minister Chen Yi told the Soviet ambassador on August 4.

     

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"We are not Yugoslavia," said Chen; "if you want to treat us as Yugoslavia, then we will not accept it."
    88
The decision to withdraw the Soviet advisors was taken in haste, obviously as a result of Khrushchev's experiences in Bucharest. It was a policy mistake with far-reaching consequences: In one stroke Khrushchev had almost eliminated Soviet abilities to influence developments in China. Soviet Ambassador to Beijing Stepan Chervonenko later claimed that he tried to make Khrushchev change his mind, and supporters of Leonid Brezhnev in the 1964 leadership struggle saw the pull-out from China as one of the "impulsive foreign policy measures that damaged our own state interests." The Chinese had sown the storm and reaped the whirlwind. 89
True to form, Mao attempted to lessen the genuine shock many Chinese felt at the Soviet actions. Already in August, he sent Zhou Enlai to see the Soviet ambassador to iron out in which areas practical cooperation could continue. Mao seemed particularly eager not to cut all ties on defense and military production. China' s security needs and the possible political effects of the great disasters created by the "second wave" of the Great Leap made Mao send Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping to Moscow for the international conference of Communist parties in November 1960. After much haggling, Deng, who in the past had cooperated well with the Soviets and was critical of the excesses of the Leap, was able to reach a limited set of compromises at the conference. Liu went even further in his informal conversation with Leonid Brezhnev on the train between Leningrad and Minsk while touring the Soviet Union before his return to China. Both men looked forward to a time in which "ideological quibbles" could be resolved. Mao confirmed his support for the Moscow resolutions in a conversation with Ambassador Chervonenko in late December. 90
The lull in the Sino-Soviet dispute lasted for almost a year and a half a brief flare-up at the twenty-second Congress of the