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

articles, and let all the Soviet comrades and Soviet peoplethink for themselves and judge who is right and who wrong?You are of course entitled to make a point-by-point refutationof these articles you consider “groundless attacks”.Although you call our articles “groundless” and our argumentswrong, you do not tell the Soviet people what our argumentsactually are. This practice can hardly be described asshowing a serious attitude towards the discussion of problemsby fraternal Parties, towards the truth or towards the masses.We hope that the public debate among fraternal Parties canbe stopped. This is a problem that has to be dealt with inaccordance with the principles of independence, of equalityand of reaching unanimity through consultation among fraternalParties. In the international communist movement, noone has the right to launch attacks whenever he wants, or toorder the “ending of open polemics” whenever he wants toprevent the other side from replying.It is known to the comrades of the CPSU that, in order tocreate a favourable atmosphere for convening the meeting ofthe fraternal Parties, we have decided temporarily to suspend,as from March 9, 1963, public replies to the public attacksdirected by name against us by comrades of fraternal Parties.We reserve the right of public reply.In our letter of March 9, we said that on the question ofsuspending public debate “it is necessary that our two Partiesand the fraternal Parties concerned should have some discussionand reach an agreement that is fair and acceptable to all”.* * *The foregoing are our views regarding the general line ofthe international communist movement and some relatedquestions of principle. We hope, as we indicated at thebeginning of this letter, that the frank presentation of ourviews will be conducive to mutual understanding. Of course,comrades may agree or disagree with these views. But inour opinion, the questions we discuss here are the crucial52