(3 of 11)
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.