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And yet such distinctions are risky. The West, which for many years underestimated the importance of the split, should not now overestimate it. At any rate, it should not be taken at face value in the terms Moscow and Peking themselves use to describe it. China is not quite so warlike as Moscow pretends, nor Russia quite so peaceable. The Chinese attack Moscow for cowardice in signing the test ban treaty with the imperialists, and they have spoken cynically about the possibility of surviving a nuclear war, but after all, Russia, not China, has the Bomb. Russia, not China, risked nuclear war in Cuba and came close to risking it in Berlin.
A Bill Some Day. The story of the split is riddled with similar paradoxes; only a few years ago, spartan Peking was championing precisely the kind of economic liberalism Khrushchev now promotes, and at the time of the Polish revolt against Moscow in 1956, it was the hard-line Chinese who urged caution on Khrushchev, who was all set to crack down as he had on rebellious Hungary.
For a Communist, Khrushchev has given every evidence of sanity and of really believing in peaceful coexistence. And yet it is well to remember that Stalin, too, practiced a form of peaceful coexistence when he entered the popular fronts with the hated Socialists abroad during the '30s and fought alongside the hated capitalists in World War II. The West paid a price for this at Teheran and Yalta. It is not impossible that Khrushchev will present his own bill some day.
Obviously the West for the present has nothing to fear from the split, and perhaps something to gain. But just about the only sure thing is that the split, as such, will never solve the West's own problems, or preserve peace, or assure freedom. After all, no matter how Moscow and Peking interpret their Lenin, no matter what they read in that polished marble of his tomb, he is still the man who said: "We are all Chekists."