Polemic on General Line of International ... - From Marx to Mao

portunity for an exchange of opinion on different questions.Comrade Mao Tse-tung would be able to see how the Sovietpeople are working, and what successes they have scored inthe construction of communism and in the implementation ofthe Programme of our Party.If a visit by Comrade Mao Tse-tung to Moscow cannot takeplace at present, we are ready to accept your ideas about a toplevelmeeting between representatives of the CPSU and CPCin Moscow. We believe that a meeting of this kind could takeplace around May 15, 1963, if this date is acceptable to you.We are very pleased that the Chinese comrades, like ourselves,regard the forthcoming meeting of representatives ofthe CPC and the CPSU as a “necessary step in preparing forthe meeting of representatives of Communist and Workers’Parties of all countries.” Indeed, without violating the principleof equality and without infringing upon the interests ofother fraternal Parties, this meeting must facilitate the betterpreparation and holding of the meeting. Without such a meeting,and without the ending of open polemics in the press andof criticism within the Party of other fraternal Parties, preparationfor the meeting and the achievement of its main aim— the strengthening of the unity of the international communistmovement — would be difficult. Precisely for this reason theCentral Committee of the CPSU, while agreeing with the proposalsmade by the Vietnamese, Indonesian, British, Swedishand other comrades at the beginning of 1962 regarding theconvocation of a meeting of fraternal Parties of all countries,at the same time stressed the need for taking such measures aswould create a favourable atmosphere for the work of the worldcommunist forum.In its letter of February 22, 1962, the Central Committee ofthe CPSU urged that “unnecessary arguments be stopped regardingquestions on which we have different opinions, thatpublic statements capable of aggravating rather than smoothingout our differences be given up.” In the letter to the CentralCommittee of the CPC of May 31, 1962, we wrote:497