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The new Kremlin rulers took extraordinary pains to please Mao Tse-tung. His funeral delegation got places of honor. In the orations and proclamations, the other "People's Republics" were lumped together, but Mao's was always singled out first for praise. Malenkov assigned a key man as new ambassador to Peking—Vasily Kuznetsov, newly named a deputy foreign minister, and member of last fall's shortlived, 36-man Soviet Presidium. A bright star of Malenkov's generation (52) who headed the Soviet trade-union movement until recently, Kuznetsov once punched a time clock at Ford's River Rouge plant (for a brief period in 1932), got an engineering degree at Carnegie Tech, returned to the U.S. in 1945 at the head of a factory-touring delegation of Russian union bigwigs. He was once said to be "pro-American," but many silly things were said in those days.
No Will or Way. Moscow's pampering of Mao, and Peking's prudence, set commentators to talking again along their favorite line—Titoism. But in China too, the facts are against such a development. Items:
¶ Even without a war to fight, Mao is utterly dependent on Soviet Russia for industrial products to run his country—for the materials, tools and technical skills to begin developing the industrial potential he needs to complete his revolution.
¶ With the Korean war to fight, he is completely dependent on the Russians for guns, tanks, MIGs, equipment and ammunition for his army.
¶ Ideologically, Peking and Moscow are blood brothers. Of all the Kremlin's allies, Mao, to judge by his own behavior, should be the last to flinch at cruelties, big lies or broken promises.
¶ The Sino-Soviet border stretches for some 5,000 miles along the northern and western edges of China. In partnership, it needs no policing. If he tried to break with Russia, fight in Korea, hold on to Manchuria, and hold off a revived Nationalist China, Mao would in effect be turning his borders with Russia into a suicidal second front.
Sources of friction undoubtedly exist between Malenkov and Mao. Does Malenkov dare let Mao develop industrial independence? How hard is Moscow squeezing Peking economically to pay for its military help? Who keeps Manchuria? These sources of friction now engage the attention of Washington's psychological warriors. They also engage the minds of many who think that Mao will become a Tito if only the West is gentle with him. "Imagine," editorialized London's New Statesman and Nation last week, "that the Chinese Communists were given their rightful seat on the Security Council . . . Then the cement that holds the Stalinite empire so rigidly together might begin to flake away." The New Statesman inhabits a pink cloud all its own, but on this particular issue there were some surprising echoes to the left & right in Britain.
Beyond Gravity. Yet Westerners who talk glibly of "making more Titos" forget that the West had little to do with making the original Tito. The marshal clapped on his space helmet and plunged on his own into the unexplored outer realms of Communist heresy. It was not until he passed beyond the pull of Kremlin gravity that the West gave a helping hand.