228
JOHN STRACHEY
the Russian and Chinese Governments and communist parties. That
controversy is far too complex and too obscure for it to be possible to
give any adequate account of it here. But even its more obvious
features reveal the fact that the Chinese government has intentions
of a different character to that of the Russian government.
One of the best accounts of this controversy is to be found in a
book by Mr. Kardelj, the scholarly Prime Minister of Yugoslavia,
entitled
Socialism and War
(Jugoslavija Publishing House). Mr.
Kardelj is intent to answer not only Chinese but also Russian charges
against Yugoslavia. For the Yugoslavs were in a sense the whipping
boys of both sides in this affair. The Chinese would accuse the Rus–
sians of being almost as bad deviationists as those abominable heretics
the Yugoslavs: the Russians would answer back indignantly pointing
out the wide differences between their own attitudes, which they said,
were still strictly Leninist, and the, admittedly, inexcusable heresies
of the Yugoslavs. So Mr. Kardelj had plenty to answer!
The controversy largely turned in fact, if not in form, precisely
upon this issue of whether or not a third world war with "the
Imperialists" was or was not inevitable. But the issue was blurred by
the fact that the Chinese would never say flat out that it was. On
the whole they took up the position that (a) the imperialists would
never surrender without a fight; (b) that it was of course indispens–
able to rid the world of imperialism and (c) that anyhow a third
world war wouldn't be so bad after all, for the damage it would do
to the socialist countries could be quickly repaired: and then a social–
ist world could go rapidly ahead in conditions of permanent and
assured peace. Mr. Kardelj sums up the Chinese attitude as follows:
Only incurable petty-bourgeois pacifists could believe that war is not
inevitable, say the Chinese critics of Yugoslavia. Only men whose heads are
full of illusions or who deliberately aim at putting a good face on imperialism
could assert that imperialism will renounce war, and only revisionists who
have no faith in the vital strength and mind of man could assert that
military technique can influence the course of social development, these same
critics continue.
We must allow for the fact that Mr. Kardelj is writing a polemic:
I repeat that so far as I know the Chinese have never in public said
that a third world war is inevitable. Nevertheless Mr. Kardelj is able
to substantiate that the above is not very different from the Chinese
