COMMUNISM: A HOUSE DIVIDED, A FAITH FRAGMENTED

ST. GEORGE'S HALL in the Great Kremlin Palace in Moscow remains a magnificent monument to the glories of the Czars, a sculpted hymn to Russia's historic national interests. The only concession to the Communist era is a giant painting of Lenin in the antechamber. Inside the hall itself, huge chandeliers illumine white marble wall plaques celebrating the knights who won fame and honor in the Czarist army; shaped in stucco are Russian victories from the 15th to the 19th century. It was amid those trappings last week that the Soviet Union, in quest of another, far more difficult victory, assembled some 300 leaders of 75 Communist parties from around the world for the third postwar summit meeting in the history of the Communist movement.

According to the official program, the leaders had come to consider "the most urgent question of our time--the tasks of the anti-imperialist struggle at the present stage and the unity of action of Communist and workers' parties, of all anti-imperialist forces." But the participants knew the real purpose of the meeting. Alarmed by divisions and defiance within Communism, the Soviet Union was out to salvage as much as possible of its once uncontested primacy over the movement.

The task that the Kremlin had undertaken in convening the summit was formidable. There was considerable suspicion that the conference, expected to last two or three weeks, would turn out to be a debacle for the Soviets. Never has the Communist movement been in greater disarray. Once the undisputed fountainhead of Communism, Moscow has seen many parties grow distant and independent and others turn violently against Soviet primacy. It is not too much to say that the Russians can now command unquestioning obedience only in those countries where their soldiers can enforce it.

Heirs of Lenin

As TIME Correspondent Jerrold Schecter filed on the eve of the conference: "The issue is no longer unity. It is finding the lowest common denominator on which there can be limited agreement in the world Communist movement. Observers in Moscow believe that the meeting, and how it is carried off, holds the key to the success or failure of the current Kremlin leadership. Faced with a border war with China, the Soviet Union today must defend its national interests at the same time that it tries to justify them under the banner of 'proletarian internationalism.' In Eastern Europe, the invasion of Czechoslovakia has polarized the struggle for economic and political reform within the Communist movement. The diversity of Communist parties, the lack of relevance of the doctrine to specific problems, and the internal pressures--economic, military and political--within the Soviet Union have raised the question: What is Communism today? Some Kremlinologists suggest that the best way to seek an answer is to view the Soviet Union as a latter-day empire seeking to maintain its sway."

Many of Moscow's guests were unabashedly reluctant about their presence, and ready to resist any Soviet attempt to railroad unpalatable resolutions through the assembly. Over the conference hung the shadow of Russia's intervention in Czechoslovakia--a shadow that even the presence of a docile Czechoslovak delegation led by new Party First Secretary Gustav Husak was unlikely to dispel. Still echoing were the gunshots exchanged by Soviet and Chinese soldiers along the Ussuri River. Then there were the ghosts at the banquet, the men who had refused to come: China's Mao Tse-tung, North Viet Nam's Ho Chi Minh, Yugoslavia's Josip Broz Tito, Cuba's Fidel Castro. They are the most famous figures of contemporary Communism; their stature, by any measure, dwarfs Russia's present leadership.

Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev and his coruler, Premier Aleksei Kosygin, obviously decided that the summit, for all its perils, was worth the gamble. In the complicated mystique of Communism, the right of the Soviet leaders to rule, in their empire and at home, is intimately linked to their ability to command the obedience and fealty of Communists abroad.

Their legitimacy derives from their role as custodians of the Communist faith. One important measure of their stewardship is the maintenance of Moscow's primacy as the leader of world Communism. The Soviet leaders need a successful conference to prove to their own people that they are indeed the legitimate heirs of Lenin. "To justify one-party rule," says Kremlinologist Victor Zorza, "you must have an international sanction." The Soviet leaders also need the international endorsement to reassert their primacy within Eastern Europe. For all these reasons, Leo Labedz, editor of Survey, a London quarterly on Communist affairs, calls the conference an attempt to find "an ideological fig leaf" to cover Russia's own self-interest. None of this, of course, would be so brazenly expressed in St. George's Hall in the days ahead.

The Soviets made careful housekeeping preparations for the conference. In the Kremlin gardens, the beds of long-stemmed tulips and multicolored pansies were especially neatly tended, and squads of plainclothes security agents checked passes and guided the delegates to the huge hall. For several days, Brezhnev, Kosygin and other ranking officials shuttled to Moscow's four airports welcoming arriving delegations. For trusted comrades like East Germany's Walter Ulbricht and Mongolia's Yumzhagin Tsedenbal, there were Slavic smacks on the cheek. There were no kisses for the arriving Rumanians. Brezhnev proffered a perfunctory hand to Rumania's independent-minded President and Party Boss Nicolae Ceausescu, who has often opposed Soviet plans.

Chinese Criticism

The Italians, widely billed as most likely to make trouble, had a hard trip. Their crowded Aeroflot 11-62 from Rome was inexplicably delayed several hours. Announcements over the plane's public-address system were made in Russian, English, French and German--but not Italian. Someone asked Enrico Berlinguer, who led the delegation in place of ailing Luigi Longo, what he thought of the linguistic lapse. "It's their airline," he shrugged. On his arrival in Moscow, Berlinguer was met with a handshake by a second-level Soviet official, then hustled off to the Sovietskaya Hotel.

At the opening session, Brezhnev sat at the center of the long table of delegates in St. George's Hall, serenely sipping Borzhomi mineral water. Kosygin buried his head in conversation. Party Ideologue Mikhail Suslov, the man most responsible for the organization of the summit, fidgeted, tapping his red pencil. In his opening speech, Brezhnev merely exhorted the foreign comrades to close ranks behind the Soviet Union because "the attention of the whole world is now focused on this hall." The pooling of Communist "efforts was and remains an important condition of success in the anti-imperialist revolutionary struggle." On that jargon-laden, altruistic note, the deliberations began. The tone changed quickly; the jargon remained, but the altruism gave way to acrimony.

That the summit was taking place at all was no small achievement for the Russians. As long ago as 1962, Nikita Khrushchev had conceived the idea of convening the leaders of the world Communist parties. Already China was vigorously contesting Russia's claim to primacy and hitting the Kremlin where it hurt--on points of theology. On one level, Khrushchev's espousal of the principle of "peaceful coexistence" with the capitalist nations was a sellout, said Peking's theoreticians; his emphasis on more consumer goods for ordinary Russians was "revisionism" of the kind that could only destroy the spartan muscle that a revolutionary society needed. One good charge of heresy deserved another, Khrushchev felt, and his aim was nothing less than a Communist Council of Trent to read the Chinese out of the world movement, excommunicate them from the Red fraternity. But what really mattered was Mao's demand that Russia's immense military and economic power should be used not merely to further Soviet national interests but to promote the cause of world revolution. The Soviets' power should be shared, Mao said, with other Communist nations, notably China, so that they might build up their own strength and challenge the imperialist forces--even at the risk of war.

Prague Detour

Other Communist parties wanted no part of the Sino-Soviet quarrel, and Khrushchev never got his summit before he was ousted in 1964. His successors, Brezhnev and Kosygin, shelved the conference plan while they tried to effect a reconciliation with China. After Mao rejected their overtures and embarked on the Cultural Revolution, whose xenophobic excesses alienated much of his earlier support among other Communist countries, the Soviets sensed that the proper psychological moment had come to summon the comrades to Moscow.

The initial preparatory meeting, held in Budapest in February 1968, ended on an ominous note as the Rumanians, on orders from Ceausescu, walked out because they were criticized for not following the Soviet line of condemning Israel. An infinitely greater disruption came a few months later, when the forces of five Warsaw Pact nations, led by the Soviet Union, crashed into Czechoslovakia. Russia only outraged the majority of foreign Communists by stamping out a liberal experiment with which they sympathized and one that could have helped them win votes in the free world. At the same time, Russia once again ground under the tank treads one of Communism's dearest dogmas: Socialism brings everlasting peace among Socialist nations.

Foreign Communist reaction was an indication of both the Soviet Union's waning authority and the villainy of the deed. Twelve years earlier, in the much bloodier suppression of the Hungarian uprising, nearly every Communist Party in the world had supported the Soviet action. This time every major foreign party expressed disapproval, ranging from violent protest (Italy, Sweden, Yugoslavia) to distaste tempered by expediency (France and Cuba). Even Ru mania, a member of the Warsaw Pact, though it did not take part in the invasion, censured the action. Only in significant parties that depend on the Soviet dole (such as those in the U.S. and most in Latin America and the Middle East) endorsed the move.

Because of the uproar, the conference, originally set for November 1968, had to be rescheduled for May 1969; it was then postponed again to last week. One indication of the magnitude of the dis agreement was the formulation of the working document for the conference.

At Soviet instigation, a joint draft was drawn up by a committee of eight parties and submitted to a preparatory session attended by 65 parties in Budapest last February. Other parties offered some 300 amendments, at least 100 of which were incorporated in the text. In order to hold a conference at all, the Soviets had to scratch out the old claim, reaffirmed by the 1960 world conference, that they were the leaders of the world Communist movement. Further, they had to delete any critical reference to China or any wording that could be construed as approval of the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Socialist Commonwealth

Despite their exclusion from the agenda, it was plain that China and Czechoslovakia were the real issues at the conference. On both, the Russians had tried to cover their positions in ad vance. Moscow propagandists a month ago performed their own unilateral ex communication of China by pronouncing that Mao's party now had "nothing in common with international Communism" and was merely the apparatus of a "military clique" ruling China and masquerading as Communists. Since the shooting on the Ussuri River last March, the Russians have been trying to enlist the sympathy of foreign parties and the world by saying that Russia is not only defending its Far Eastern borders but also holding back the Maoist yellow peril that threatens humanity. For the Russians, who have so long regarded themselves as the providers of aid and arms to other Communist countries, the response has been deeply dis appointing. Requests for token military units or even observers to come to Siberia to join the Red Army in its vigil on the long, lonely border have reportedly been refused. No other Communists want to be caught in the thrashings of the two giants.

Besides a condemnation of China, Russia has something else that it would dearly love to extract from the delegates. That is an endorsement of the principle of limited sovereignty as expressed in the Brezhnev Doctrine. As a justification for the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet party boss last November expounded a new policy asserting that members of the Socialist Commonwealth have the right to intervene in the affairs of another member whenever the purity and primacy of socialism are endangered in that country. Foreign Communists who feel most threatened by the policy, notably the Rumanians and Yugoslavs, fear that the So viets will use the doctrine not only to keep any socialist country from defecting to the Western camp, but also to enforce their own brand of political orthodoxy. As Lumea, the Rumanian foreign-news weekly, declared: "Limited sovereignty makes no more sense than limited honesty."

Aware of the opposition, the Soviets enlisted support for the doctrine from its first victims. Shortly before leaving for Moscow, Czechoslovak Party First Secretary Gustav Husak, who in April replaced Alexander Dubcek, declared that "anti-Communist and anti-Soviet insti gations" had justified the intervention of Czechoslovakia's Warsaw Pact neigh bors. In Moscow, Husak, accompanied by new hard-line officials who only the week before had accomplished a purge of most of the prominent liberals on the Czechoslovak Central Committee, pleaded with the Italians and other foreign Communists not to discuss the Czechoslovakia issue in the conference.

His request was likely to go unhonored, if for no other reason than that the Italian Communists, who have great hopes for doing well in the next gen eral elections, fear the influence that the Brezhnev Doctrine would have on Italian voters. They can foresee their opponents' campaign slogan: "Put the Communists in power and the Red army will keep them there!"

First Controversy

The conference had hardly got un der way when the ground rules were shattered and the fumes of controversy began to leak to the outside world. The opening speaker on the second day was a delegate from Paraguay, who launched an attack on the Chinese. The first nasty epithet was scarcely out of his mouth before Rumania's Ceausescu was scribbling a reply on the notepad in front of him and demanding the floor. The Rumanians had made clear that they would attend the summit only on the understanding that the internal affairs of any Communist Party, present or absent, would not be discussed.

When the Paraguayan finished, Ceausescu broke in to issue a blunt, 500-word warning that the discussion was taking an unwelcome and unwise turn. "To our regret, in today's speech by the representative of the Communist Party of Paraguay, attacks and condemnations were included against one party that is not attending the conference. We consider that if other par ties follow this procedure, this will lead to a course fraught with danger for the success of our conference," he said. Undeterred, Polish First Secretary Wladyslaw Gomulka resumed the Soviet-orchestrated attack on the Chinese: "The principles of internationalism have been betrayed by the present leaders of the Communist Party of China, who have, from positions of anti-Soviet nationalism and great-power chauvinism, violated the solidarity of the international Communist movement."

The next day Brezhnev added the Soviet voice to the anti-Chinese chorus. In a bitter speech the Soviet party boss warned that the Chinese were preparing to start a war and charged that "the damage caused by the breakaway activities of Peking to the common cause of Communists cannot be underestimated." Said he: "The practical activities of Peking in the international arena more and more convince us of the fact that China has actually broken with proletarian internationalism and lost its class Socialist content." It sounded as if the Soviets had decided after all to press on with their original plans to excommunicate the Chinese from the movement. But such a move was certain to lead in the conference to heated debates and perhaps even walkouts and further divisions within world Communism.

As a myth and a generalized faith, Marxism has proved remarkably durable, partly because it has been interpreted and stretched so broadly that widely different political movements can and do invoke it (see TIME ESSAY, page 35). In its specific applications, the faith is hopelessly split. Within little more than a decade, Communism has undergone a great schism (Moscow v. Peking), experienced an abortive reformation (Dubcek's Czechoslovakia), and developed a plethora of protestant sects (Yugoslavia and Rumania, among others). The once vaunted and feared unity of Communism has shattered into a bewildering, quarrelsome, logic-and dogma-defying set of parties.

Mirroring the larger schisms within Communism, the individual parties have divided, subdivided and often split into opposing parties. The Australian and Israeli Communists are divided into two parties. The Swedes, Indians, and Greeks all are split three ways. Labedz has propounded a rule that Communist politics "are complicated in inverse proportion to the party's importance in the country"; thus the Ceylonese Communists, who number only 2,300, have proliferated into eight discernible factions.

The Four Variants

In the squabbling, all sense is turned upside down. By any measure, Yugoslavia is as "revisionist" as a Red state can be; yet China, keeper of the purist faith, is now making some indirect conciliatory gestures toward Tito. Even though China branded the Dubcek regime revisionist, it condemned the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Out of the welter of crosscurrents, at least four principal variants of Communism are alive in the world today. They are 1) Soviet Communism, 2) Maoism, 3) Castroism and 4) reformist Communism as it occurs in two sub-variants: Western Communist parties out of power and ruling parties within the Red world.

> Soviet Communism is now among the world's most conservative systems. Its overriding theme is the preservation of the status quo within the Soviet sphere of influence. Watering down Leninist eschatology, Soviet Communism no longer believes in an inevitable violent clash with capitalism and has shown in practice that the worldwide revolution is the least of its concerns. Soviet Communism has long been called "bureaucratic dictatorship," and the description is apt. A party-controlled bureaucratic bossism pervades every area of life, with stultifying results. Art and literature must conform to the precepts of "socialist realism;" that means they must provide didactic uplift about Communism. There are few civil rights for individuals. Dissent from party and government is severely punished. Even so, a small band of dissenters continues to protest against the growing repression (see box, page 33).

On the economic front, limited innovation, such as the introduction of a form of the profit motive and expansion of managerial authority, is being attempted to improve output and efficiency. But Soviet-style Communists resist any thoroughgoing reform for fear that economic liberalization might spill over into social and political areas. Soviet Communism remains in command throughout most of Eastern Europe, constitutes the major influence on the French party, and controls a number of minor "pocket parties" such as the one in the U.S. and nearly all of the small Middle Eastern and Latin American parties.

> Maoism, the antithesis, is wildly revolutionary in word if not in deed. It is also highly emotional. A modern echo of classic Chinese opera, Maoism whines in shrill hyperbole. Rigidly doctrinaire, Chinese Communism retains the traditional belief that a clash with capitalism is inevitable; it calls for wars of national liberation throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. Mao, who immodestly considers himself a Communist innovator on a par with Marx and Lenin, sees the development of world revolution as a repetition of the strategy used by the Chinese Communists to achieve power in 1949. At that time, mass peasant armies surrounded the cities where the government held power, and finally seized them. Mao envisions the peasant masses of the underdeveloped world encircling and ultimately conquering the industrial nations. As the Cultural Revolution illustrated, Maoism within China glorifies perpetual revolution to enable the party to avoid the barnacles of bureaucracy that have encrusted Soviet Communism.

Mao did succeed in destroying the bureaucratic system, but it is an open question whether he can now create an alternative system through which he can govern China and promote its industrialization. At present, he must rely largely on the army to help him run the country. Outside China, Maoism commands the allegiance of only one ruling party, in Albania, and a handful of insignificant parties (including those in New Zealand, Burma, Thailand). But Maoist factions and splinter parties exist in many countries, and Mao has become a hero to the New Left.

> Castroism is essentially romantic, evoking the image of the lone defiant man, bristling with machismo, who dares to shake his fist at the citadel of capitalism. Castro competes with Mao in dedication to fomenting revolution. Like Mao, he generalizes from his own success when he and a small band of guerrillas from the Sierra Maestra were able to take power. But unlike Mao, Castro contends that not a mass party, but a handful of armed intellectuals is sufficient to spark revolution among the Latin American peasantry. Bragging that he would turn the Andes into the Sierra Maestra of South America, Castro hoped to export revolution to all of Latin America. Indeed, twelve governments have accused him of exporting subversion and supplying arms to guerrillas in their countries; nowhere did he score a real success. In 1967, his dream of victory was punctured by the Bolivian army bullets that killed Che Guevara, his longtime aide and strategist. In the wake of Che's death, Fidel slowed down his revolutionary activity, and his threat to Latin America began to wane. One reason was that local Communists regarded Castro as a competitor and did not help his guerrillas. Also, Russia was not sympathetic to Castro's calls for drastic action. Its strategy calls for a via pacifica in Latin America. The Soviets hope that local conditions, abetted by U.S. blunders, will play into their scheme of things. At present, their great hope is for making serious inroads in Peru, where the nationalistic military junta is pointedly turning to the Soviets to step up its feud with the U.S. over the American-owned International Petroleum Company. Though Castroism has caused fewer factions in Communism than the other currents, Fidel remains an important influence and a hero to many of the world's youth.

> Reformism exists in the Communist parties of both the West, where they are out of power, and Eastern Europe, where they are in power. Best exemplified in the West by the Italian Communist Party, the reformist strain is rational and reassuring. According to their pronouncements, the reformers aim to do what Alexander Dubcek attempted: to give Socialism a human face. The reformers reflect the trend toward embourgeoisement of the party members. Recognizing that voters are no longer gripped by old revolutionary slogans and that today's prosperous workers are more interested in Mercedes-Benz than Marx, many Communists have changed their tactics. Accepting the rules of the political game in their countries, the reformers vow to seek power only by legal means. If they ever get into it, they promise, they will reform the society, not violently tear it down. They will, so they say, respect civil rights and freedom of the press while bringing about a more equitable distribution of wealth. Some Western European reformers even envisage allowing political opposition. It is a notion that outrages orthodox Communists, who insist above all on the paramount control of the party.

Among ruling Communist parties, the reformist showcase is the Yugoslavia of Josip Broz Tito, Communism's first heretic. There is far more freedom of expression and action in Yugoslavia than in any other country of Eastern Europe. Newsstands and bookshops offer Yugoslavs easy access to Western publications without fear of reprisals. There is, of course, censorship; certain books, like Milovan Djilas' works, are not available, and the press is controlled. Yugoslavs, if they can afford it, can travel abroad freely, in the East or West. Conversely, Westerners, whether tourists, businessmen or journalists, gain ready admission to Yugoslavia. By scrapping Communism's harshest dictates, the Yugoslavs have created a thriving market-oriented Socialist economy in which the workers share profits and managerial responsibility.

All this is a far cry from the days of Lenin and Stalin, when Moscow was truly the capital of the world revolution. Housed in a dingy building just across the street from the Kremlin, the Comintern ran a shadowy, tightly organized network of agents and conspirators who carried Moscow's orders to parties far and near. In those days, the first duty of a Communist anywhere in the world was to support the Soviet Union. Stalin said: "A revolutionary is one who without arguments, unconditionally, openly and honestly is ready to defend and strengthen the U.S.S.R."

The Russians still spend billions of dollars annually in furthering the Communist cause abroad. The bulk of the money goes for arms for North Viet Nam and oil for Cuba, which are items that advance Soviet diplomatic aims. The U.S.S.R. until recently supplied one-fifth of the Italian party's $10 million budget, helps the Indians financially, subsidizes the illegal party of West Germany and supports the Latin American parties. Danish Communist leaders get three free suits a year made in East Germany, and some parties get a rake-off on whatever trade or tourism their countries do with the Soviet Union.

Central Committee Secretary Konstantin Katushev is in charge of relations with ruling Communist parties, while Boris Ponomarev attends to the affairs of the nonruling parties, and both are busy all year long as hosts or traveling salesmen. Their emissaries try to influence developments within the parties. After Luigi Longo's strong stand against the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Embassy in Rome distributed a pamphlet criticizing the Italian party leader --and cut back on aid to the Italians.

Russia might have done better in maintaining its leadership of the Communist world if the Soviet model were more attractive. Despite the Soviets' excellence in weaponry, space, aeronautics and many other scientific pursuits, they have failed to build either an effective, well-balanced economy or a pleasing life style. Soviet economic weakness is, in fact, a major reason that the Russians must use force in order to keep their grip on Eastern Europe. The Eastern European countries badly need outside aid in order to overhaul and modernize their industries. Since the Soviets cannot provide the aid without harming their own economic plans, the Eastern Europeans want to seek technical and financial assistance from the West. Fearing that economic ties with the West might loosen political allegiance, the Soviets oppose such links. One manifestation of the Soviets' attitude is their denunciation of the West's attempts to "build bridges" of tourism, culture and trade to Eastern Europe.

On a global scale, Russia's reliance on force and authoritarianism hurts its role as a Communist leader. Partly for that very reason, the movement's fission has proved to be a downright political advantage to many Communist parties. The image of Communism's being run by an alien despotism in Moscow has faded to a great extent as individual parties have become more independent. The French party for years cringed under Socialist Guy Mollet's indictment that "the Communists are not of the Left but of the East"; by asserting a moderate amount of independence, the French Communists have gained a new respectability in French political life (see page 41). The Italian party, the largest European Communist Party outside the East bloc, which is likely to share power in an Italian government sooner rather than later, stresses its independence of the Soviet way of doing things. Long the lepers of Finnish politics, Communists now participate in the coalition government in Helsinki. By campaigning on an independent platform, Indian Communists have gained power through free elections; they now head coalition Cabinets in the states of Kerala and West Bengal. One reason that the Communists are the fastest-growing political party in Japan is that they refuse to identify with either Peking or Moscow, insisting on the priority of their own interests over those of Russia and China.

Except in Southeast Asia and parts of Latin America and West Germany, public fear of Communism has noticeably declined. The change in the public climate offers an opportunity to the reformist parties. If they actually do achieve power through elections, the test for the reformists will be to show that Communism can indeed be the liberating, uplifting force that Marx envisioned and not the tyranny that the Soviets and Chinese made it. To judge from all past evidence, it would be dangerous and foolhardy for any Western voter to bet his liberty in the expectation that this will ever happen. But if it did, would Communism still be Communism?

Legacy of Moscow

In a way, that question is really what the Moscow summit is all about, though perhaps none of those present in St. George's Hall would frame their purpose in such a transparent way. Certainly not Brezhnev, Kosygin and the other Russian hosts. Judging by the initial head-on assault against China, they have cast aside the promises made to many of the delegations and are determined to wrench from the parties the long sought writ of excommunication against Mao Tse-tung. It seems a reckless act, and having embarked on it, the Soviet leaders have little more to lose by also demanding from the conference an endorsement of the Brezhnev Doctrine --and gaining expiation for their invasion of Czechoslovakia.

That, too, would be reckless, for on neither China nor Czechoslovakia are the Russians likely to have their way at the conference. Communism has existed too long, embraced too many diverse peoples, adapted to too many local needs and seen too many second-and third-generation visions for the monolith ever to be reassembled again. The descendants of the 1917 Revolution are mutants, dedicated to making Communism --their Communism--safe in a world of diversity. It is disturbing that the men in the Kremlin do not understand that, or cannot accept it. In demanding that the parties of the world fall into line, they are virtually guaranteeing that the legacy of Moscow, 1969, will be a Communist world more at odds than ever before.

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