Communists: Now for the Main Event

Nikita Khrushchev had more reasons last week to wonder why he ever invited a Red Chinese delegation to Moscow. Twenty-five reasons, to be exact, all neatly numbered in a letter for convenient "point-by-point discussion" at the scheduled Sino-Soviet meeting next week. Mao Tse-tung's latest message to Nikita—the most vehement to date in the continuing quarrel—doomed the confrontation to failure before it began. Peking deliberately left the Kremlin no room for compromise. After years of discussion over whether the split was real, Western skeptics could no longer doubt that it was deep, jagged, and unbridgeable for a long time to...

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