Word: chou
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Somehow or other, Red Chinese Premier Chou En-lai could not bring himself to leave Moscow. Perhaps it was the tonic weather-snow flurries and freezing temperatures. Maybe it was the charm of his hosts, burr-browed
Leonid Brezhnev and cozy, cadaverous Aleksei Kosygin. More probably, Chou, who was closeted with B. & K. at least once a day for most of last week, felt he was getting somewhere with his Russian adversaries-not fast but fast enough. After all, Peking's great enemy, Nikita Khrushchev, had been sacrificed; now both sides could make at least limited concessions...
Polaris-Malinovsky darkly warned that Russia's armed forces would "protect the fatherland and all countries of the Socialist community against any plots of aggressors." If Chou was impressed, he did not show it. To demonstrate his continued disdain for Khrushchevian wrong-think, he ducked around the back of Lenin's Tomb and paid a reverential visit to Stalin's modest grave outside the Kremlin wall...
Next day, Brezhnev addressed a jampacked audience in the Kremlin's Palace of Congress with an appeal for Communist unity, and pitched hard for a world conference of Communist parties to deal with the problem. Chou, staring indifferently over Brezhnev's shoulder, was the only man on the stage who failed to applaud. Khrushchev had called just such a meeting for Dec. 15, but with the intention of setting the stage for Peking's excommunication from the Communist movement. Since Brezhnev, Kosygin & Co. still claim to be the legitimate heirs to Khrushchevism, Chou could not readily agree...
...About the only concessions Brezhnev offered to China were promises to back Peking's claims on Formosa and pledges to support "the national liberation struggle of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America," thus hinting at a more pressing pursuit of revolution than Khrushchev had espoused. Both Chou and Castro's henchman, Ernesto ("Che") Guevara, applauded vigorously when Brezhnev warned: "Hands off Cuba." As to restoring unity within the bloc, Brezhnev said: "There is every objective condition for cooperation between Socialist countries to grow stronger." And at the Red Square anniversary parade, Brezhnev wound up old Rodion...