EIGHT
The Moscow Conference
The Chinese Party Congress in April 1969 symbolized the radical isolationism that had marked Peking's policies since the onset of the Cultural Revolution. Contrary to tradition in the Communist movement, there was no foreign representation at the CCP Con gress, and the policies propounded were those that had risen to the fore along with the Cultural Revolution forces, notably Lin Piao, now constitutionally enshrined as Mao's successor-designate. As the Chinese had retreated into isolationism since 1965, Moscow had been intent on seizing the opportunity to recover ground in the international Communist movement that it had lost to Peking's ideological challenge in the first half of the decade. It was for this purpose that the post-Khrushchev leadership had fashioned its line of "united action" in support of the Vietnamese comrades. Initial ly, in order to demonstrate its bona fides in offering to put aside the ideological ·rivalry in the interest of fraternal unity, Moscow had shelved Khrushchev's project for holding a new international party conference that, in effect, would have isolated China' from what the Soviets portrayed as the mainstream of the international movement. By late 1966, however, Peking's intransigent rejection of the Soviet line of unity prompted Moscow to revive the project as an instrument in the political struggle with the Chinese. That project had been temporarily derailed by the invasion of. Czecho slovakia but, after a difficult signaling and negotiating process, 124 The Moscow Conference
Moscow was able to put its plans together again. The Sino-Soviet border crisis now lent the project even greater moment. The International Communist Conference of June 1969 was a successor to the 1957 and 1960 conferences, which in turn were successors to the Comintern and the Cominform as instruments of international Communist consultation and coordination. The dis solution of the Cominform after Stalin's death was one of the steps toward destalinization, in this case a move by the new Krem lin leadership to remove the inheritance of Stalinist diktat from relations between Moscow and other Communist parties. It was the crisis in bloc relations resulting from destalinization, particu larly from the impact of Khrushchev's major initiative at the 20th CPSU Congress in 1956, that occasioned the 1957 Moscow Con ference, which issued a declaration of principles adopted by all the ruling parties except Yugoslavia. The Chinese having played a role in mediating the crisis in Soviet-East European Communist rela tions, the 19 5 7 Conference marked a significant step toward ac cording the Chinese a measure of authority in the determination of international Communist strategy and policy that had been the exclusive domain of Moscow as the arbiter of the movement's affairs. This was a step toward what has been likened to a "con ciliar" phase of international Communist authority, in analogy to the ecclesiastical councils of Christendom which competed with the Papacy in determining doctrine binding on all the churches and believers. It was the 1960 Conference, attended by 81 parties, that em bodied the conciliar phase at its height. That conference spoke in the name of the international Communist movement as a whole, and issues affecting the interests of all parties, ruling and non-ruling, were brought for resolution in what was almost fully ( the Yugoslavs were absent and were condemned) an ecumenical council. The Chinese now having mounted a serious challenge to Moscow's ideological and political authority on basic issues of international Communist strategy, the 19 6 0 Conference registered a further ero sion of Moscow's authority by bringing these issues for resolution to a tribunal constituted by the CPs of the world. There was, thus,