{"id":18403,"date":"2018-08-22T16:58:43","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T08:58:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinaworker.info\/?p=18403"},"modified":"2018-08-22T18:05:24","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T10:05:24","slug":"the-invasion-of-czechoslovakia-and-the-sino-soviet-split","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/en\/2018\/08\/22\/18403\/","title":{"rendered":"The invasion of Czechoslovakia and the Sino-Soviet split"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crisis in Czechoslovakia provided a welcome diversion for the Chinese regime, an opportunity to exploit the Russian bureaucracy\u2019s difficulties<\/strong>
\n<\/p>\n

Vincent Kolo\u00a0 \u00a0chinaworker.info<\/p>\n

The invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 by its \u201csister states\u201d \u2013 the Stalinist one-party regimes of Russia and Eastern Europe \u2013 produced splits and intense debates within the international labour movement.<\/p>\n

In China, another Stalinist regime,\u00a0with a bureaucratic ruling strata that hid behind the labels \u2018Marxism\u2019 and \u2018Leninism\u2019 to defend its power and privileges, the Soviet invasion was seized upon to sharpen the CCP\u2019s propaganda offensive against the Russian Stalinist regime.<\/p>\n

China was in the midst of the Cultural Revolution and by 1968 Mao was increasingly using the army to crack down on \u201canarchy\u201d and disarm sections of the workers and students in many parts of China.<\/p>\n

The international crisis in Czechoslovakia provided a welcome diversion for the Chinese regime, an opportunity to exploit the Russian bureaucracy\u2019s difficulties and win propaganda points by opposing military aggression. This was completely hypocritical however. In 1956, Mao\u2019s regime had fully supported the Russian Stalinists\u2019 invasion of Hungary to \u201ccrush capitalist counter-revolution\u201d. In reality, the mass movement in Hungary was an anti-bureaucratic workers\u2019 uprising rather than a pro-capitalist movement.<\/p>\n

The invasion of Czechoslovakia which began on 20 August 1968 was condemned by Chinese radio as a \u201cmonstrous crime\u201d. Premier Zhou Enlai attacked the \u201csavage fascist nature\u201d of the invasion by the\u00a0\u201csocial imperialist\u201d\u00a0Moscow regime.<\/p>\n

Many socialists and left-leaning youth around the world were outraged by Moscow\u2019s actions, while also seeing through the crocodile tears of the Western \u201cdemocracies\u201d \u2013 US imperialism was stepping up its barbaric war in Vietnam and Indochina. Significant layers of students especially turned to Maoism believing it offered a more progressive \u201canti revisionist\u201d left model to the Soviet Union. New Maoist parties and groups\u00a0began to sprout up in and around\u00a01968 with many thousands of members in Italy, France, Germany and other countries.\u00a0Mao\u2019s Little Red Book became the most printed book in the world by the early 1970s.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Sino-Soviet conflict<\/strong><\/p>\n

The conflict between the world\u2019s two biggest Stalinist regimes, the USSR and China, grew out of the rival national interests of the two bureaucratic elites. Their primary concern was not \u201csocialism\u201d but to protect their own power and privileges.\u00a0This was itself proof that these societies and regimes, despite the abolition of capitalism and introduction of state planning, were miles away from real socialism with democratic workers\u2019 control over the economy and the state.<\/p>\n

Their inability to overcome national rivalries prevented\u00a0cross-border\u00a0economic integration and\u00a0the achievement of economies of scale, thus cancelling out\u00a0many of the potential benefits of a planned economy. This\u00a0later became a decisive factor in\u00a0the collapse of Stalinism\u00a0and the restoration of capitalism.<\/p>\n

The 1960s saw a deepening split between Moscow and Beijing, and even a small-scale border war that rumbled throughout 1969 causing over 100 fatalities. These tensions prepared the ground for the Chinese regime\u2019s historic diplomatic flip-flop in 1971, allying with US imperialism against the Soviet Union,\u00a0thus strengthening US imperialism and undermining the global struggle against it.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Mao’s historic meeting with US president Richard Nixon in 1971.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chinese propaganda consistently accused the Russian Stalinists of being soft towards the US and wanting an accommodation with it. This was even said in relation to Czechoslovakia, despite the invasion provoking a serious diplomatic standoff between Russian Stalinism and the Western capitalist bloc.<\/p>\n

Stalinism never worried about such glaring inconsistencies.\u00a0Mao\u2019s regime, like Stalin and his successors, would flip from one position to another even diametrically opposite position without explanation. In Stalinist parties and regimes there were of course no democratic discussions \u2013\u00a0the \u201comniscient\u201d leadership would decide all questions based on defending their\u00a0own\u00a0power and prestige.<\/p>\n

Mao\u2019s regime had opposed and distrusted the Czechoslovak leader Dubcek\u2019s political reforms in 1968 and the mass pressure these had unleashed (the \u2018Prague Spring\u2019). The Chinese bureaucracy feared this example would undermine its authority internationally and could even gain an echo in China. Dubcek was instead held as an example of the \u201cdecay\u201d and \u201crevisionism\u201d within Moscow\u2019s camp.\u00a0The line changed abruptly after the invasion, which took Beijing by surprise.<\/p>\n

Nationalism<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beijing opposed the invasion and subsequently denounced the \u201cbetrayal\u201d of Dubcek in capitulating and urging the masses not to resist the Russian-led occupation. But the Chinese arguments were purely nationalistic. Dubcek had betrayed his \u201ccountry\u2019s interests\u201d.\u00a0The issue was \u201cnational sovereignty\u201d not the democratic and political rights of the workers or how to\u00a0fight for\u00a0genuine socialism. Eleven years later, in February 1979, China under Deng Xiaoping would invade Vietnam, another\u00a0\u201csocialist\u201d country, without much concern for its \u201cnational sovereignty\u201d.<\/p>\n

CCP propaganda called for a \u201cnational resistance movement\u201d by the people of Czechoslovakia against Moscow, but this was an empty slogan devoid of any practical strategy. It invoked the idea of rural guerrilla warfare \u2013 madness in a heavily industrialised and urbanised society like Czechoslovakia. There was no mention of the interests of workers in Czechoslovakia and the wider region.<\/p>\n

That Stalinism and capitalism could only be defeated by democratic workers\u2019 control and an international struggle to eliminate capitalism, casting off the unaccountable rule of the bureaucrats in the Stalinist states and ruling instead through elected workers\u2019 councils, this was of course absent from their critique.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Crisis in Czechoslovakia provided a welcome diversion for the Chinese regime, an opportunity to exploit the Russian bureaucracy\u2019s difficulties<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":18407,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail"],"yoast_head":"\nThe invasion of Czechoslovakia and the Sino-Soviet split - China Worker<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/en\/2018\/08\/22\/18403\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The invasion of Czechoslovakia and the Sino-Soviet split - 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