Communists: The Battle over the Tomb

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would come of this. Should we switch our industry to the production of belts, so that we may draw them in tighter? Will this inspire the people to march ahead? To where? Into the grave? What do their own people want—war or rice? I think they want rice."

The Chinese, Khrushchev hinted, are merely envious of Russian prosperity—but this prosperity is necessary to the revolutionary cause, he added virtuously, for it inspires workers everywhere. Moreover, if the Chinese have economic problems, then they have only their own "reckless experiments" to blame. Obviously still smarting at not being consulted, Khrushchev recalled how Mao Tse-tung in 1958 informed him of his disastrous plans to set up agricultural communes. "He was not asking me," said Khrushchev, "he was telling me. So I said, 'It is your business. You try it. But we tried it long ago and failed.' "

General Havoc. As usual, Khrushchev's speech was studded with supporting quotations from Lenin, and, as usual, so were the replies from Mao. The baffled Western spectator could only wonder which one was the real Leninist and just what the prophet had really said.

The trouble is that Lenin, in scores of books, pamphlets and collected speeches, said enough to prove almost any side of any case. Moreover, he naturally had different views as a frustrated exile, as a revolutionary organizing street fights in Russia, and as the head of a government. Thus the battle of Lenin quotations could go on until won ton turns to borsch, but in essence it shapes up something like this:

∙ PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE. Closely following Marx, Lenin was convinced that competition for markets among capitalist countries would inevitably lead to war, and moreover that "the existence of the Soviet Republic side by side with imperialist states is unthinkable. One or the other must triumph in the end. And before that end arrives, a series of frightful collisions between the Soviet Republic and the bourgeois states will be inevitable." Lenin was sure that the general havoc caused by war was necessary for the spread of Communism. He vaguely referred to the idea of peaceful coexistence only a few times, and for special reasons—once while trying to get Russia out of World War I.

∙ REVOLUTION. Like Marx, Lenin thought that violent revolution was both inevitable and necessary. "Those who are opposed to armed uprising," he wrote, "must be ruthlessly kicked out as enemies, traitors and cowards." He dismissed the notion of peaceful victory over capitalism as heresy, akin to the hated belief in mere social reform. This, as Lenin and Marx saw it, provides a palliative for the workers that, by lessening their misery a little, only delays revolution. On the other hand, Khrushchev can quote Lenin as saying that the time must always be right for revolution before it is tried, and also that "revolution cannot be exported," meaning that each country must reach it on its own.

∙ NATIONALISM. At least to begin with, Lenin put the cause of worldwide revolution ahead of any one nation's self-interest. "I don't care what becomes of Russia. To hell with it," he said after the October Revolution of 1917. "All this is only the road to a World Revolution." On the other hand, when White Armies were storming toward