Comrades, Dogs, Capitalists: Lend Me Your Ears!

It was winter in Moscow, but the atmosphere oozed with amiability nevertheless. Khrushchev himself was at flag-draped Kievsky Station to greet Yugoslavia's paunchy Marshal Josip Broz Tito as a "dear comrade" before bundling him and his handsome wife Jovanka off to a Kremlin apartment.

Officially, the two-week visit was billed as a vacation, but it was obvious, from the big delegation of Yugoslav economic and political experts who accompanied the boss that Tito had more in mind than a suntan at Sochi. Among the subjects: more aid, more trade. Forgotten for the time being: the bitter, angry recriminations of the past.

But the meeting had its obvious repercussions in Red China. Radio Peking called Tito "a running dog of U.S. imperialism" and the newspaper Kuang Ming described Yugoslavia as a hotbed of crime and adultery, pointing out that 10% of the children born in Belgrade each year are illegitimate.*

The Sino-Soviet split was showing up elsewhere. At the Italian Communist Party meeting in Rome, a trio of Red Chinese visitors sat glowering while Party Boss Palmiro Togliatti--looking almost as chubby as Tito--delivered a four-hour attack on Chinese opposition to Moscow's peaceful-coexistence line. Next day Khrushchev's No. 2 man, Frol Kozlov, produced a bitter condemnation of Red China's "dangerous adventurism" in India.

When the chief of Peking's delegation finally got the floor, a hush came over the hall. He denounced Moscow for not returning "blow for blow" in Cuba, and Tito for having "restored capitalism" in Yugoslavia. "It is extremely grave," he continued, "that at this congress the views of the Chinese Communist Party were attacked directly."

Italy's Communists did not back down. Glaring at the Red Chinese trio, Giancarlo Pajetta, a leading member of Togliatti's Central Committee, declared: "When we want to say 'China,' we don't have to say 'Albania.' Our congress unanimously rejects your attack, which we find unacceptable, and condemns your views, which we find not to be just."

* Actually, not a very high figure. Comparable statistics: West Berlin, 15%; East Berlin, 15%; Milwaukee, 16%; Washington, D.C., 32%.

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