214
PARTISAN REVIEW
context of the Chinese threat, as an encroachment upon their national,
state, and territorial integrity. Their fear of China is, if you will, the
sinner's fear of the Last Judgment sublimated as a fear of disappearing
as a nation.
Given the ethnic isolation of the Russians within the boundaries
of their own empire, the fear of China is a factor which serves very well
in uniting and inspiring the Russians , and in justifying various
measures taken by the regime. That fear is no doubt largely responsible
for the stiffening of the USSR's foreign and domestic policies and for
the ideological revolution now taking place in the country. Inciden–
tally, one of the first to call for such a revolution was Solzhenitsyn, who
in his "Letter to the Soviet Leaders " (1973) advised them to switch from
a communist
to
a 'nationalist ideology, in view of an impending war
with China. Today, with the nation in a hazardous situation, Stalin
seems almost the ideal model for behavior. In this context, the seizure
of Afghanistan looks like a smaller, milder version of the war with
China, or like a prelude to it-a warming-up exercise for stale troops
before the big battle. For a preventive war with China is a temptation
that the Soviet leaders have constantly had
to
overcome-and one that
will ultimately prove impossible to overcome.
The French parliamentary leader, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, was
the only Western politician who managed to have a meeting with
Brezhnev in January 1980, shortly after the Soviet blitzkrieg in Af–
ghanistan. According to a report in the British newspaper,
The Daily
Mail
(January 29, 1980), Brezhnev kept changing the subject from
Afghanistan to China: "Believe me, after the destruction of Chinese
nuclear sites by our missiles, there won't be much time for the
Americans to choose between the defense of their Chinese allies and
peaceful co-existence with us."
We have no way of checking the accuracy of this quotation. The
French politician said nothing in public about his meeting with
Brezhnev; and his office refused to comment on the article in
The Daily
Mail.
We can, however, confirm Brezhnev's remarks indirectly,
through the Soviet press. Since that press is censored, it can be
compared to the tip of an iceberg, by which one can judge the
magnitude of the issues being repressed. And just as one's eyes are
stung by the brilliance of an iceberg's tip glittering in the sun, one is
staggered by the outspoken, sensational things said concerning China
in the Soviet press. Just one week after the invasion of Afghanistan, the
newspaper
Sovetskaya Kultura
(an organ of the Central Committee)
published a historical article full of topical allusions by the well-
