The Quarrelling Brothers: New Chinese Archives and a ... - CiteSeerX

as the head and having the CPSU as the center. We do not favor [it]. The MoscowDeclarations are correct, and should be adhered to continuously.” 26 Zhou made theconcerns of Chinese leaders evident in his conversation. “This weapon,” Zhou said,referring to having the Soviet Union as the head, “cannot be revoked, otherwise it wouldbe equivalent to handing over the knife to the enemy and letting him play against us.” 27In his meeting with Khrushchev on January 25, Zhou again indicated that given theexistence of the two camps, the Soviet Union should be the core and leader of thesocialist camp. 28 Khrushchev accepted Zhou’s opinion and dropped the initiative.In his speech delivered at the 21 st Congress of the CPSU on January 28, Zhouwarned against the danger of war initiated by imperialism and stated that a strongsocialist camp and Sino-Soviet unity would serve as a good deterrent to the “war plot ofimperialism.” Rhetoric aside, Zhou’s speech made clear that Chinese leaders believed theunity between China and the Soviet Union should be preserved: “Under the condition ofthe existence of a strong socialist camp in the contemporary world, all the peace-lovingnations and peoples across the world are united to carry on struggles, and the war schemeof imperialism can be stopped.” Zhou went on to warn, “Of course we cannot forget thatimperialist warmongers, in order to salvage their failures, might very well, as a desperate26 In November 1957, Mao led a delegation to attend a communist parties and workers’ parities conference in Moscowat which Mao put forth the famous proclamation that “the east wind has prevailed over the west wind,” meaning thesocialist forces have outweighed the imperialist forces. The conference concluded with the Moscow Declarations,which stressed the unity of the socialist camp and declared “the imperialist aggression groups of the United States is thecenter of the reactionary forces around the world.” Mao considered the Moscow Declarations to be in accordance withMarxism and Leninism. Wu Lengxi, former chief editor of the People’s Daily and head of the Xinhua News Agency,who was a close adviser to Mao and frequent attendant of the Politburo meetings, gave a lively account of the 1957Moscow conference in his memoirs. Li Yueran, Mao’s top Russian interpreter also recorded the behind-the-scenesstories in his memoirs. Another brief but informative account can be found in the memoirs of Liu Xiao, who servedChinese ambassador to Moscow from 1955 to 1962. See Wu Lengxi, Shinian lunzhan—1956-1966 zhongsu guanxihuiyilu (A Decade of Polemics—Memoirs of Sino-Soviet Relations, 1956-1966) (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian,1999),pp. 92-155; Li Yueran, Zhongsu waijiao qinliji—Li Yueran huiyilu (A Record of the Personal Experiences of the Sino-Soviet Diplomacy—Memoirs of Li Yueran) (Beijing: Shijie zhishi, 2001), pp. 148-179; Liu Xiao, Chushi sulian banian,pp. 65-73.27 Zhou Enlai nianpu, vol. 2, p. 203.28 Liu Xiao, Chushi sulian banian, pp. 93-94.11