A Sabbath of Witches, A Canceling of Christmas

"Never before in all the history of the Soviet state has such an unbridled anti-Soviet campaign been conducted in any country, even those most hostile to the Soviet Union." The malefactor thus condemned last week by Tass was Red China, whose sparks of civil chaos are falling more on its onetime Communist allies than on anyone else.

In Peking, Chinese mobs manhandled Red diplomats, damaged cars and battered at legation compounds in such a xenophobic frenzy that the Russian, Yugoslav, Hungarian, Czechoslovakian and Mongolian governments all filed stiff diplomatic protests with the Chinese foreign ministry. Not sparing the few non-Communists in Peking, Red Guards also forced a French diplomat to stand for seven hours in Peking's freezing cold. Abroad, Chinese students and technicians demonstrated against the Soviet Union in Cambodia, Tunisia, Britain, Yugoslavia, Iraq and North Viet Nam. Typical of the venom that now marks Sino-Soviet relations was the chant of Chinese students outside the Baghdad embassy of the Soviet Union: "Hang the bastard Brezhnev!"

On the Diplomatic Nose. The Russian embassy in Peking bore the brunt of the Chinese assaults. Since Chinese students and Russian police clashed two weeks ago in Red Square, the Russian embassy has been surrounded day and night by firebrand-tossing, loudspeaker-keening Chinese. It was, said Tass, like a nonstop "witches' sabbath" of "violent abuse and bloodthirsty calls for revenge on the Soviet people." Dancing around a bonfire, the demonstrators stuck effigies of Brezhnev and Kosygin to crosses and set them afire, railed at the Soviet embassy staff cowering inside as "filthy swine, hyenas, rascals and scoundrels." The nearly 100 Chinese employees of the embassy walked off the job and joined the demonstrators, demanding by name the execution of their former employers.

This time, the Russians did more than protest the Chinese outrages. They began an emergency airlift of all of their more than 200 embassy dependents from Peking, who started boarding planes amidst a howling mob of angry Chinese. The Russians also retaliated in Moscow, where the Chinese embassy had mounted inside its compound a glassed-in display of photographs of police and students scuffling in what the Chinese called "The Bloody Incident in Red Square." Burly Soviet plainclothesmen chopped down the display case with axes and saws. When the Chinese rushed out to defend their art work, the cops pushed in a few diplomatic noses as well.

Moscow also accused Peking of deliberately delaying Soviet technicians en route to Hanoi to help the North Vietnamese war effort. Finally, if reports from Eastern European diplomats were to be believed, Russia began moving out of the line in Eastern Europe some 50,000 troops, transporting them by train across Poland to bolster Soviet defenses along the Chinese frontier.

Back to School. If true, it was as clear a warning as the Kremlin could deliver to Mao Tse-tung to keep his revolutionaries occupied with internal Chinese matters. Western observers believe that it is precisely because Mao is having trouble gaining the upper hand at home that he has so strongly rallied the Chinese against Russia--a trick as old as tyranny. Within China, though the swirl of disorder seemed to abate temporarily, opposing factions busily jockeyed about to win both minds and territory. Mao's increasing dependence on military force illustrated his conviction that "rifles make the regime." Army units in Canton warned that unless anti-Mao forces were defeated, "our state may change color."

Because he fears more disturbances--and because neither China's trains nor its depleted stock of foodstuffs could stand the strain--Mao canceled all Chinese celebrations of the Lunar New Year this week. It was the first such cancellation in 5,000 years of Chinese history, an act roughly equivalent to calling off Christmas in the U.S.

In a surprise move, Mao also ordered all Chinese youth back to school on Feb. 9, when the nation's schools will reopen for the first time since the students were turned loose to play Red Guards last summer. If China's youth do indeed give up guardsmanship, much of the nation's disorder will vanish overnight--but so would Mao's prime weapon until now in the power struggle. Equally curious, China's official news agencies, in a move that was new in the struggle, all last week urged tolerance for Mao's enemies. "To regard all persons in authority as untrustworthy is wrong," warned Red Flag, adding sweetly: "In party and government organizations, enterprises and undertakings, the majority of ordinary cadres are good." It sounded for the moment as though Mao may wish to work out some form of compromise before China is completely destroyed. Perhaps it was his own temporary form of a New Year's truce.

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